Dalit women must fight for rights: Ambedkar's granddaughter

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B R Ambedkar’s granddaughter Ramabai Anand Teltumbde on Tuesday appealed to women to ‘unite and fight’ for scholarships and employment opportunities, indirectly hitting out at the Modi administration.

Addressing a massive convention of Dalit organisations under the umbrella of the Dalit Sangharsha Samiti here, Ramabai said her grandfather’s clarion call to all oppressed classes to ‘educate, agitate and organise’ is now even more relevant.

“In the last six or seven years, employment opportunities and educational opportunities are becoming scarce in the country due to government policies,” she said, adding that Dalit women need to come out of their homes and fight for their children’s rights.

She was apparently referring to the union government’s decision to stop pre-matric scholarships for schoolchildren from SC/ST, OBC and minority communities studying classes 1-8.

Referring to the Bhima Koregaon case, she said Dalits are steadily adopting a “silent stance,” despite being attacked regularly across the country.

“Post-Bhima Koregaon, we (Dalits) have forgotten the clarion call given by Babasaheb. Now, it is high time for Dalits to come out and demand what is rightfully theirs,” she said.

Speaking at the event, former High Court judge Justice H N Nagamohan Das took a dig at the BJP government in the state for hiking SC/ST reservation without filling up backlog vacancies.

“The ruling government at both the state and the Centre are increasingly privatising PSUs. This clearly means the ruling party intends to take away employment opportunities from SC/ST communities,” he argued.

He urged Dalit youths to launch an agitation against the state government, demanding to fill backlog vacancies.

Meanwhile, prominent Dalit intellectuals and leaders such as former DGP S Mariswamy, Indudhar Honnapura, Mavalli Shankar, D G Sagar, N Muniswamy and Lakshminarayan Nagawara flayed the union government, accusing it of misusing provisions of the sedition law and the UAPA to ‘silence’ activists.