VIJAYAWADA: The coastal districts particularly Guntur and Krishna are sitting on a tinderbox and a single spark could trigger off a conflagration.
The speed with which Dalit’s in several parts of the state rallied round their stricken brethren of Tsunduru has galvanized the non-Dalit’s led by the upper castes into preparing for a showdown.
While the Dalit’s were marching in protest against the Tsunduru carnage in every town the upper castes were quick to organize counter-rallies and ride the bogey of “atrocities on upper-castes”. A day after a rally was organized in Guntur by teachers and students of the Christian educational institutions in which the principals of the prestigious Andhra Christian College and Andhra Christian College of law participated Sarvajanabhyudaya Porata Samiti –an upper caste organization ransacked. AC College and its two boys’ hostels destroyed its furniture and set fire to the warden’s room.
Earlier when a bandh call was given by the Dalit youths in Narasaraopet in Guntur district traders who normally close their shops whenever calls are given for any such cause resisted and had pitched battles with the dalit organizers with soda water bottles.
Vijayawada traders took the initiative. The city Chamber of Commerce conducting a meeting and decided to resist the bandh call. They also roped in representatives of all political parties (and the Police Commissioner) except BJP. The political parties fell in line and agreed not to call bandhs for “frivolous causes”. The Chamber even offered to compensate the merchants who had suffered losses by keeping their shop open defying the bandh call. At Kuchipudi in Krishna district a Dalit rickshaw-puller was arrested by the police on a complaint lodged by two upper caste women who had engaged his rickshaw. They said they had lost their gold anklets in the rickshaw.
The police department which dilly-dallied about the arrest of those who killed the dalits in Tsundur took no time to take the rickshaw-puller into custody. The dalit rickshaw-puller “fell un-conscious” after his detention
Article extracted from this publication >> September 13, 1991
