From the paddy fields of remote Odisha to be the presidential candidate of JNU students union election in 2019.

This is one incredible journey of our dear brother Jitendra Suna who is fondly referred to as Jitu in the anticaste circles.

You see those hands holding sickles, yes those very hands of a Dalit person now will address to you the presidential speech of JNU students union election 2019.

Belonging to a poor untouchable Dom family of a remote village called Pourkela in the Kalahandi district of Odisha is where Jitu’s life journey started.

Dom caste in Odisha is such a community which is detested in an abominable manner in their everyday lives by the Upper Castes not just because of the Caste hierarchy but also because of the powerful resilience shown by this untouchable community against Caste oppression through education, anti-caste mobilizations and cultural consciousness. Jitu is a manifestation of that very spirit and resilience of this untouchable community and it is inevitable for him to not confront and rebel against these so-called Modern progressive spaces hegemonized by the twice-born.

JNU campus should consider this historic instance as an immense privilege where sickles and hammer are mere pop-culture symbols and topics of debates by those sections of the society on whose ancestral lands these hands have worked for.

It is indispensable to know the life world of someone like Jitu, if one has to know the philosophical basis, the paradigm of his politics and the whys and hows his heart and mind has wrestled with throughout this span of more than two decades and a half.

Born into a poor Dalit Family in one of the remote villages of Kalahandi in Odisha is how Jitu started his life.

From grazing cattle in his village as a young boy to witnessing Caste violence, running away from home to Nagaloka in Nagpur to working as a daily wage labourer by digging holes in the roads of New Delhi, to working in petrol pumps for less than few hundred rupees as a helper to desperately struggling post his mother’s death during his highschool days.

This is one part of Jeetu’s life.

The other part of Jitu’s life starts from 2012 engaging in anticaste activism through United Dalit Students forum in JNU campus. He was one of the founding members of BAPSA in 2014 since then he has been a very actively crucial figure in establishing the anticaste discourse not just in JNU campus but also in Odisha by running an independent Bahujan vernacular media portal called Nirvedya.

Jitu’s articulation of the discourse blends in three very important constituents of his life: His Life journey, His activism and his academics. His Mphil thesis is a critique of the hegemonic Upper Caste Odisha Nationalism. He has written dozens of articles on Caste, Politics, higher educational institutions, history and many more. UGC protests in 2015 for increasing fellowship to Justice for Rohith Vemula movement, Jitu has always been an active regular presence in these crucial times.

Beyond all of this, there is a cultural activist in Jitu which is rooted in his childhood life and the art forms of Dom and Gana community of Odisha. The way he plays the Nissan and Tasa two instruments which are associated with Dom and Gana community of Odisha is an assertion of another kind.

The loud noise of Jai Bhim around when Jitu plays these instruments stigmatized by the Upper Castes is a way of reclaiming our cultural identity.

Far beyond this JNU election, it is a matter of celebration and this incredible story needs to be told. Just as we see Jitendra Suna contesting for the post of President in JNUSU election, Swati Suna, elder sister of Jitendra Suna left for Australia to pursue her PhD in Sydney a few days ago. For years now she has been an active voice in the Dalit Bahujan movement of Odisha. Her research work is based on Dalit Women in Higher education. This two siblings struggled together through all kinds of circumstances since childhood, reached higher education, actively engaged themselves for years and are now contributing back to the community in such concrete manners. These are the victories and stories of resistance our community needs where anti-caste and Feminist struggles are embedded into each other reflected through personal lives which translates into something we witness today with these two siblings and their politics. Their life journeys are a theory and Praxis in themselves, we might not need to look for it or learn from elsewhere. We are immensely grateful for your contribution to the anti-caste movement and wish you all the best.

Jai Bhim to our beloved brother and leader Jitendra Suna.

Sumeet Samos

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