After the Tehelka sting, Bangaru Laxman was disowned, condemned, banished and isolated.
The Prime Minister just attacked the Congress party for humiliating its once-president Sitaram Kesri, a “Dalit”. Besides the fact that Kesri wasn’t a Dalit but a bania, albeit from a sub-caste defined as OBC in Bihar, we need to check how the BJP treated its only Dalit president so far.
His name was Bangaru Laxman. Remember him, from those Tehelka tapes?
In an earlier National Interest, we had looked at his fate subsequent to his being caught in the Tehelka expose, and compared it with another of his party colleagues, caught similarly.
Also read: Are leaders from ‘lower’ castes and subaltern groups more corrupt?
So, two of its senior leaders were caught on camera accepting cash at different points in time. One, Dilip Singh Judeo, caught taking Rs 9 lakh in 2003 was of a high caste, and was happily rehabilitated, fielded in an election again. He returned to Parliament, a respectable man. He had, in fact, been caught on camera speaking that immortal line a Bollywood script-writer will someday copy for his mafioso: “Paisa khuda toh nahin, lekin khuda ki kasam khuda se kam bhi nahin (cash isn’t God, but by God, it is no less than God)”.
He was a junior minister in the Vajpayee government then and said this while killing a bottle of Black Label with the bribe-giver. All on camera.
The other, Bangaru Laxman, was caught taking just Rs 1 lakh in the Tehelka sting (2001). Compared to Judeo who was a mere junior minister, Bangaru was the BJP’s national president, no less. It’s just that he was a Dalit, the first – and until now the only – Dalit to rise that high in BJP.
Also read: Congress calls out PM Modi for latest gaffe—Sitaram Kesri was OBC, not Dalit
He was disowned, condemned, banished and isolated. He went to jail and died (on 1 March 2014) fighting the charges in that Tehelka sting case all by himself. He died totally unsung, as badly ignored in death as P.V. Narasimha Rao by the Congress.
It’s an unfortunate description but it must be used: the party treated him as an expendable outcast even as it continued to defend Judeo. Even corruption in our politics has a caste differential. The BJP needs to look within first.