National Intellectual Forum for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, organized a round table meeting of lawyers, professors, doctors, engineers and other educated sections and leaders of organisations from Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and other professionals at Hotel Harita Plaza on 9th May 2024.
Prof. Mallesh, OU, Prof. Khasim, Sri. Rajendran, Sri. Mahesh Raj, Sri. Ramana, general secretary of SC, ST association, Prof. Surepally Sujatha and various other officers attended the conference.
The conference was organized with a view to protect the constitution and reservations. This became necessary as there was a threat from the ruling party at the centre to amend the constitution. In
view of the open communal ideology of the ruling party and the attacks of its cadre on minorities and scheduled castes, there is a general apprehension among Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes that the ruling party if it comes to power again there is every possibility to abolish reservations. The gathering was aimed at the programme of action in the coming elections for parliament in May/June 2024. Ms. Jhansi Geddam, National Convener of DSS was invited as guest of honour to share her opinions on the subject.
Ms. Jhansi Geddam, explained about how DSS has already been campaigning to save the Constitution. DSS vigorously campaigned on this theme in towns, slums, villages and educational institutions from 1st April 2024 to 14th April 2024. There is a vacuum of people’s movements and as
such the governments are feeling free to do whatever they like and are not afraid of people. When radical movement was leading the society during the decades of 1980s, the downtrodden were feeling strong and all governments were behaving responsibly towards the downtrodden. Powerful movement against Karamchedu Dalit massacre resulted in the passage of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. But now there is no people’s movement worth the name. There is no unity and we are all divided in the guise of castes and sub-castes. That is why a small percentage of dominant castes are able to control 95% of downtrodden people. We speak of Ambedkar but confine only to garland his statues without sincerely implementing the ideology of Ambedkar. In fact, we claim to be ambedkarites but in practice we follow manuvada as much as the dominant castes. Due to lack of real ambedkarite ideology and influence of manuvada, we find many persons from Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes are joining the communal party for the sake of power and positions. The gathering felt there was urgency to do something in view of the short time for elections. There is only two days for voting. There is no point in worrying about the short time as it is impossible to impact the society in such a short span of time, that too without chalking out any concrete programme. Instead of worrying about the present elections, it is necessary to devise means of strengthening the oppressed castes and build a united movement. If we can build a united people’s movement, we can exert pressure on the governments irrespective of whoever is ruling, to act in favour of the people. For this it is necessary for the youth organizations to come forward and organize people on democratic lines on the basis of the ideology of Dr B.R. Ambedkar.
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