Bhopal: Days after the Madhya Pradesh government booked and arrested Pravesh Shukla, the accused in the Sidhi urination incident, the Brahmin community in the district has come forward to help his family rebuild the house that was razed as part of action against him.
Shukla’s identity as a “pandit” also came to the fore when the victim, tribal man Dashmat Rawat, also demanded his release Friday. Speaking to local media, Rawat said Shukla has realised his mistake. Calling it his last request to the government, Rawat, on whom the alleged aide of a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader relieved himself, as shown in a viral video, said, “He is a pandit of our village and that is why, I do not want to say more. It is my demand that the government just releases him.”
Pandit Pushpendra Mishra, state president of Akhil Bhartiya Brahman Samaj (ABBS) — a pan-India organisation of the community with presence also in MP, UP, Uttrakhand, Delhi, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh and Telangana — has criticised the demolition and assured all assistance to the family.
“The community strongly condemns Shukla’s act but it isn’t right to punish someone else for a person’s actions. I assure complete help to his family,” said Mishra’s press note dated 6 July.
Meanwhile, another man from the community has taken to social media to garner public support for the Shukla family. The four-minute video by Avinash Tiwari has been shared over 600 times and viewed by nearly 1.20 lakh people since it was uploaded on Facebook late Friday.
According to Professor Yatindra Sisodia, director at MP Institute of Social Science Research in Ujjain, in the past few years, many caste-based organisations have come up in the state, with each trying to establish itself. “There might be a few Brahmin associations that might be objecting to the government action but it’s their way of consolidating the community and establishing their politics,” he said.
Stressing that despite being just 5 per cent of the population, Brahmins influence the politics in the state, he said, “Brahmins are an influential community but they are also the traditional voters of the ruling BJP. The Sidhi incident is unlikely to have an impact on the community’s support to the party when it comes to the assembly election.”
A social activist in Sidhi, advocate Umesh Tiwari, said that in the district, the upper castes comprise Brahmins and Thakurs. “Thakurs here are traditional Congress voters while the Brahmins side with BJP. This equation will remain unchanged.”
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Support gathering force?
ABBS state chief Mishra has also directed all the MP district in-charges of the ABBS to assist Shukla’s family in whichever way they can. In the press note, he also pointed out that the Sidhi district unit has given Rs 51,000 as financial aid to the Shukla family.
Speaking to ThePrint Saturday, he said the ABBS will file a petition, challenging the demolition. “The house didn’t belong to Shukla and his joint family lived there. How can the government demolish that house,” he said.
Meanwhile, 30-year-old Tiwari, a theater artist who works in Bagheli language, said to ThePrint, “No one is justifying Shukla’s action, but the demolition was a political move. It is not as if Shukla was absconding and they demolished the house to pressure him into surrendering…the song for the video, ‘Mat todo ghar mera’, has been written from the perspective of Shukla’s father.”
“Why punish the family for what Shukla did? His sister kept requesting the CM to think of her as his sister and not make her homeless, but the administration did not relent,” Tiwari added.
He said there is anger among the people of the community who feel that the government’s action was politically motivated.
“I’m not a political person but I can tell right from wrong and what is just politics. All these photos of calling Dashmat Rawat over and washing his feet are for optics and the government will get an answer. The video is being widely shared only because it is striking a chord with people,” he said.
(Edited by Smriti Sinha)
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