Healing After Horror: Why We Should All Be Grateful To Shivraj Singh Chouhan For Washing The Feet Of Dashmat Rawat

The video of a deranged person who considered himself upper caste, urinating over a Scheduled Tribe (ST) youth went viral on the social media.

Today (6 July), the video of Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan washing the feet of the abused youth Dashmat Rawat and apologising to him has gone viral.

Along with this, the illegal construction made by the abuser has been bulldozed.

This is an action that should be seen beyond politics. This is an act of civilisational atonement.

The act of abuse against Rawat (some news outlets refer to the victim as 'Pale Kol') degraded us all. It was a testimony to an inhuman India. It was an act that showed us that we have not done away with our past prejudices.

Every now and then such inhuman activities come to the surface. They are not isolated events. They are the manifestations of a deeper rot in the society.

There is an ideology that exists in the society that states that birth-based discriminations are right.

There is an ideology that says that social exclusion of some communities is right.

Justifications have been made based on scriptures, though the real reason for the aggravation for these inhuman conditions may be colonialism. But inhumanity was tolerated here at least for a few centuries, not millennia as made out, in the name of Dharma.

Reservations empower the marginalised sections of the society.

Reservations give marginalised communities the legal and money power to demand and obtain social justice.

Along with social justice one also needs social harmony. There are forces working overtime on both sides of the fence to create bitterness out of such affirmative actions.

They spread hate narratives of venomous Brahmins perpetuating millennia of enslavement through religious indoctrination and superstition.

Meanwhile, on the other side, the so-called traditionalists, though a dinosaur like fringe, fantasise about bringing a rule-based on Sharia-like Dharma-Shastra rule.

It is all but ridiculous and dangerous fantasy. Worse these dinosaur-Dharmics want to piggy back on Hindutva movements.

The dislike the dinosaur-Dharmics have for the Shudras, scheduled communities, Gandhi and Ambedkar is a mirror image of the dislike the anti-Hindus have for Savarkar and Gandhi, Brahmins and so-called 'caste Hindus'. The anti-Hindu as well as dinosaur-Dharmic both despise Hindutva.

This is because the Hindutvaite sees the whole picture. He understands the need for atonement. He understands the need for social justice. He also understands the need for healing and creating a harmonious society based on social justice.

What the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh did by asking for the forgiveness of the tribal victim and washing his feet is not just an apology for a single misdeed.

It is a civilisational apology. We as a civilisation did not raise and remove our prejudices despite the principle of Tat Tvam Asi and Aham Brahmasmi being part of this civilisation.

Surely, the British played a cunning role. But should we not have our spiritual strength conquer their manipulations.

Instead, we had our 'Dharma defenders' who went happily to British Privy Council asking for them to uphold every social evil — from child marriage to not-allowing scheduled communities to enter temple. And in free India, we termed one such movement as 'Ram Rajya Parishad'.

Ideally, a dharmacharya should have washed the feet of the person. But the Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister surpassed all dharmacharyas when he did this wonderful deed of punya.

Now the duty is upon us every Hindu to spread this divine message of spiritual equality.

I wish, in Tamil Nadu, the adheenams would take a leaf out of what the Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister did and shall wash the feet of a scheduled community child in an act of atonement, and declare to their followers that untouchability and discrimination in any form as well as abuse of a person based on his birth are sins against Dharma.