Narendra Dabholkar was assassinated by the far-right forces in India. Far Right in India has been posing a great danger to India as a nation. Why was Narendra Dabholkar killed?

He was trying to fight superstition in the garb of religious practices. One can fight the dominance of heinous ideas which lead to obnoxious practices by either revolution or by legislation that will completely invalidate and make illegal and hence punishable to practice anti-human and anti-social religious ideas.

The awakening of society is a complex process and sometimes the common legislation can play its role in ending some of the commonly held ideas such as caste system. Though untouchability is illegal in India, there is no effort to make a practice of caste illegal. Caste is anti-constitution. Hence those associations which are run in the name of caste should be banned.

There is another important question that needs strong legislation. That is, opening up the door of the priesthood to people from all the castes in all the temples. What I mean thereby is to select temple heads based on the percentage of the population like the affirmative action (or reservation policy) to end the monopoly of the Brahmin priests (the absolute reservation for the Brahmins in the temples). This will be an important source to redress the growing unemployment. There is a need to legislate on this.

However, whoever talks about the progressive legislation like the Anti-superstitious Act of the state of Maharashtra, they will have to face the fate of Narendra Dabholkar: assassination. Hinduism is posed to the outsiders as the peaceful religion, however, the intolerance in Hindu Right wing is often overlooked or diluted.

Narendra Dabholkar effectively challenged the Hindu Orthodoxy.

The question of public immorality is another question. Asaram who was found violating a child is just one example of how religion in India is used to satisfy lust and power hunger of so called upper caste Hindus.

Gandhi was killed by the right-wing Hindus (Gandhi was the greatest advocate of the Hinduism in the modern world including advocate of Varna, and supremacy of Brahmins, but he was Bania, merchant, and hence a great danger to the Brahminical hegemony). How can Gandhi, Bania, lead the Brahmins. Gandhi in effect led himself to killing himself by not opposing Brahminism. His criticism of the caste system is not only absent, but positively glorified views of it are scattered throughout his writings and speeches.

Now, what is the point of bringing Gandhi in this discussion?

Gandhi was experimenting with young girls to get the power to pacify India which needed Gandhi’s power unbridled by sexual passions to redeem Indians.

Sometimes, I wonder this dangerous mix of using lofty political ideals (Gandhi) and religions (Asaram) to satisfy and hide one’s own mundane lust and hunger for power creates a cycle of personal and public immorality.

Lessons that one can learn from assassination of Narendra Dabholkar and rapes perpetrated by Asaram are simple: Do not believe in godmen and the institutions that create godmen and give them power to exploit others through actual rapes and/or silencing the voice of the oppressed by invoking religion, in case of India, Hindu religion, which is another name of supremacy of a few!

Author – Mangesh Dahiwale, Human Rights Activist