SHAHJAHANPUR: Dayabhai Dafda (45), along with 350 people, started from Ahmedabad in six buses and four trucks on August 1 to reach Delhi, where the group planned to donate a brass coin weighing 1,000 kg and bearing a weightier question for the new Parliament building.
However, police stopped the group - which was also taking to the capital one-rupee coins worth Rs 20 lakh collected from Dalit families - at Shahjahanpur on the Rajasthan-Haryana border on Sunday evening, refusing them permission to go any further.
Apart from featuring B R Ambedkar and Gautam Buddha on its two sides, the brass coin made from utensils that Dalit families donated has the word untouchability engraved on its surface in 15 different languages, besides the question (in Hindi and English): 'Will the 1947 dream of untouchability-free India be a reality in 2047?'
The group said it will return to Ahmedabad now to plan its future course of action.
At the border, Dafda, who is the head of the Jivapur at Bhavnagar in Gujarat, told TOI on Monday that despite his position, he was still served tea in a 'rampatra' (a separate steel cup to serve tea to Dalits) at panchayat meetings.
"No barber in the village cuts our hair because we are Dalits. There still are separate wells for Dalits and non-Dalits in our village. During the time of Navratri, the people of our community are refused milk for nine days and entry into a temple in the village because we are still untouchables and because 'our entry will compromise the purity of the deities'. It is 2022, but 75 years after independence, we are still facing these issues," Dafda said.
Martin Macwan from a grassroots Dalit organisation, Navsarjan Trust, who has been leading the group, said the idea behind the journey was to remind parliamentarians that untouchability still exists in the country and that they have done nothing to change it.
"We started the journey from Ahmedabad on August 1 and were supposed to reach Delhi on Sunday. When we entered Haryana (on Sunday) at around 8 pm, the police stopped us in Shahjahanpur and showed us a letter from the ministry of home affairs, which had clear instructions stating that we could not proceed further. We shall camp here till 8 pm on Monday and then go back to Ahmedabad to decide on the further course of action," he said.
Macwan said among the 350 people in the group were 140 women and two children who represented 14 different states and had joined the initiative to show solidarity.
Manju Kumari (20), also part of the group, said that when she was in Class 5, a new school in Jamalpur in Bihar outright denied her admission because of her caste. "From admission in a school to taking a bus to my college, every place is a reminder that we are Dalits, and hence should face caste-based discrimination," said Kumari, who is now pursuing a BA at Maharaja College in Ara, Bihar.
For Manjibhai, living in a Dalit neighbourhood in Gariyadhar in Gujarat, a big feat for him and his family was when his brother rode a horse on his wedding day. "Dalits in our village are not allowed to ride a horse at their wedding processions. When my brother got married a few years ago, I decided to challenge this norm. I sought police protection and made my brother ride a horse, but in our village, not up to the wedding venue. Caste-based discrimination is so deeply rooted that our entire life has become a struggle," Manjibhai said.
DSP Rewari Amit Bhatia and SP Rajesh Kumar did not respond to calls and messages for a comment.
