COMMENTARY Economic & Political Weekly EPW august 27, 2016 vol lI no 35 13 Everyday Dalit Experiences of Living and the Denials Sitaram Kumbhar Indian democracy acknowledges the legitimate claims of Dalits and provides for institutional provisions to safeguard them. However, successive governments and society at large deny such claims. Wildly inaccurate descriptive representation of Dalit reality conspicuously rejects most of their genuine claims as citizen. Sitaram Kumbhar (sitaramjnu11@gmail.com) is with the Department of Political Science, Shyam Lal College, University of Delhi, Delhi. C onstitutional provisions to insti- tutional guarantee of rights for India’s historically marginalised are conspicuously available and demo- cratically acknowledged. The abundance of institutions has not necessarily matched the deliverance of protective rights, and surprisingly, state action in many areas breed opacity and flimsy excuses for procedural misrepresentation. In many cases, state mechanism defeats the chances of the socially marginalised, enforcing claims of human dignity and universal non-derogable rights through legal mecha- nisms formally available to them. India’s vibrant democracy has received wide acclaims, but less recognition of the substantial disgust and fervour of the suppressive weight of state mecha- nism and primordial social structure against the so-called lower caste groups. What to speak of the progressive imple- mentation of non-derogable rights of Dalits by governments over a period of time? Rather they have been wilfully callous and blind. Caste-related violence and exploitations are a reality. But the state’s reluctance to acknowledge their endurance, and the assiduous efforts to silence them, shows the decadence of substantive human rights to lower castes, tribal, women and minority which is comparatively available to fellow humans in the liberal democracies. Dalit Experiences of Living Pretentious ignorance and denials of basic rights of Dalits by governments are not new. The Indian government is not ready to acknowledge that caste is one of the fundamental causes of deprivation, exclusions, atrocities, and honour killings in most parts of India. Raising such issues in public invites virulent criticism from every direction as if they are illegiti- mate issues. This has encouraged myopic prescription of policies and assailable defences of them by overlooking com- plex and real problems that marginalise Dalit issues. The killings and atrocities unleashed on Dalits have started to in- crease gradually despite the fact that we are in the phase of economic liberalisa- tion where profound changes have taken place in many areas. At this critical juncture, Dalit move- ments around India require to think afresh about new strategies to success- fully oppose the government’s moves to dilute constitutional and legal provi- sions such that they can freely raise their legitimate issues. The opponents of Dalit movements attempt to misrepresent it by negative interpretation because they are ideologically averse to it and there- fore attempt to maintain sociocultural status quo. Wildly inaccurate descriptive representation of Dalit reality conspicu- ously rejects most of their genuine claims as citizens. Indian intellectuals have started to suggest that Dalit movements are getting subsumed into the current resurgent mainstream saffron brigade. Prime Min- ister Narendra Modi’s promises have had profound impact across social groups and it is natural that some drifts towards the Bharatiya Janata Party ( BJP ) even among the Dalits were inevi- table. The political insignificance of the Dalit movement with seasonal saffron resurgence and its emergence onto the political scene cannot truly mean proba- ble amalgamation of two inherently an- tagonistic ideological extremes. The Dalit movements have traversed a path which is independent and unusual to mainstream imagination to secure a soci- ety based on liberty, equality, justice and compassion. It is a different matter that the sacrifices of many have not been effective to remove everyday sufferings of countless and uproot the institution- alised social and structural constraints. Policy Failures The Indian government’s accomplishment in guaranteeing decent and honourable lives to the people in the lower rungs of society is being weakened. Inadequate