E-Paper
Dalit march to hand over brass coin to President Murmu halted
The march titled “Bhim Rudan” (lament of Bhim), was being carried out in memory of Dr BR Ambedkar and his dream to see the untouchability obliterated. The group had planned to present the brass coin to the President on August 15 to be kept at the new Parliament building.
A group of about 350 Dalits returned to Gujarat on Tuesday after their march to Delhi — along with a specially designed brass coin, weighing 1,111 kg, which they wanted to hand over to the President to be kept at the new Parliament building — was halted by police at the Haryana-Rajasthan border.
The march titled “Bhim Rudan” (lament of Bhim), was being carried out in memory of Dr Ambedkar and his dream to see the untouchability obliterated. The group had planned to present the brass coin to the President on August 15 to be kept at the new Parliament building.
The Haryana police stopped the group, which has also collected Re 1 coin from 2 million people, at Shahjahanpur on the Rajasthan-Haryana border on Sunday evening, Mackwan said. “The group stayed there and staged a day-long protest before returning to Ahmedabad on Tuesday,” he added.
The march had started on August 1 by six buses, three trucks and one lorry carrying the brass coin.
About 1,200 people from Punjab and another 600 from Uttar Pradesh, who were to join the yatra in Delhi, were also stopped by police, Mackwan said. “We will soon decide on the next course of action.”
“After 75 years of India’s independence, untouchability is very much there in our society and it is a collective failure of all political parties. We are not against any particular political party or in support of another,” said Mackwan. “The coin in the foundation of the new Parliament house was meant to be a reminder to abolish untouchability.”
The word untouchability has been inscribed on the coin in 15 different languages and a letter was sent earlier to the Union government, informing about the yatra, he added.
“We have recorded data only after 1977 about the atrocities faced by Dalits. It shows that 26,000 Dalits have been killed and 55,000 Dalit women have been raped in the last 45 years or so. About 1.25 million cases of atrocities have been registered with the police in this period,” he said. “The atrocity level has been going up in most parts of the country... Similar is the case with tribals, where 5,000 have been murdered and 22,000 women raped in the country during the period.”
Rajesh Kumar, deputy superintendent of police (DSP), CM’s flying squad, Rewari, said they had instructions not to allow them to proceed further. “There were about 350 people carrying a coin in a truck and we stopped them at Shahjanpur (Rajasthan) border. Police was deployed to prevent any law and order issues,” he said.
Station house officer, Shahjahanpur police station, Vikram Singh said Rajasthan police did not stop them, rather gave them escort till Haryana border. It was Haryana police which didn’t allow them to enter.
(With inputs from Leena Dhankhar in Gurugram and Sachin Saini in Jaipur)
