• 20/06/2022
• By binternet
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In India, the battle for the voices of the low castes<

They are two young men and a blue sari woman to brave the afternoon furnace to survey the huge alley bordered on both sides of 62 giant elephant sculptures. With its memorial, its granite statues and its marble -shaped esplanades, the Ambedkar Park endowed Lucknow, the capital of the Indian State of the Uttar Pradesh, with a unique decor, worthy of a peplum . Its geometric grandiloquence contrasts with the refined vestiges but eaten away by the humidity and the vegetation of its Muslim past - of the time of the Persian nababs - then British. Pride of the dalits, formerly called "untouchables" because of their alleged impurity, the gigantic park was built between 1995 and 2009 in honor of Ambedkar, leader Dalit and father of the Indian Constitution of 1947, which proscribed, in principle, discrimination of caste. On the initiative of Kumari Mayawati, the most famous Dalit political leader in India, who wants to be his heiress.

Head of Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), she was four times the leader of the Uttar Pradesh between 1995 and 2012, and is one of the potential prime ministers in the event of the opposition victory in the Indian general elections which take place from April 11May 23."It would be fantastic if she became Prime Minister," said one of the young people in the trio, in the shade of a giant elephant.Anurag Jaswar, 23, has technology training."I am Dalit, we all come from afar, and it is an obligation to visit the park, he makes me proud," he said."And then when you're here, you feel free to talk, it's a slap in the figure of the High Castes.The Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, is certainly himself from the lower caste, we note."But he doesn't fight for them!""Retorts Anurag.

Dalits are at the bottom of a castes system that has thousands of subdivisions. They continue to be forced by all kinds of taboos, especially in the countryside, such as riding a horse, despite the positive discrimination policies in favor of the category of "castes and tribes listed" (official appellation of the dalits) and that "other backward classes" (that is to say the lower castes of Indian society), through quotas in administrations and institutions. Not without electoral calculations: political parties all sought to draw from the most disadvantaged votes tanks - the dalits alone representing almost 20 % of the Indian population. Considered a high caste party, the Indian People's Party (BJP) of Narendra Modi has also co -opted certain heads of communities of Castes of Uttar Pradesh, which he designated as candidates. Cantor of Hindu ethnic and religious supremacy, the party wants to be a great gathering of Hindu Indians beyond the castes.

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