“Lord Hanuman was a Dalit, a deprived and forest dweller,” said UP CM Adityanath, was a line on the newspaper. My fingers without any delay searched for Lord Hanuman on Google, because since childhood I had known that the lord was born to a chief named Kesari. And according to our caste hierarchy, ‘a Dalit’ is entitled to do only a specific thing. And even if we assume Lord Hanuman was a Dalit, how did our pure Brahmins and priests worship him? Because as per them, Dalits should not mingle with the ‘pure and pious’ Brahmins or upper caste.
The point here to be given focus on is how our politicians make everything revolve only around caste and clan. Is it really necessary to link the Gods to caste? Is it really necessary to even know about God’s caste? Is it really necessary to bring Gods in speeches during election rallies? Because in our country there are several issues to work on instead of raking up these fiddlestick issues.
But now I wonder, considering that the CM has said that Lord Hanuman was a Dalit and that Dalits in Agra have demanded to take management of Lord Hanuman’s temple all over the country, will they actually be given this responsibility? And, will this statement help in discarding the caste hierarchy? Because if we can worship a Dalit God, we can also accept our Dalit community I guess. And, is this, finally, the beginning of ‘acche din’?