Why are Dalits in Narendra Modi's India angry?

Anger among Dalits in Gujarat has been mounting in recent weeks

Four years ago, a group of upper-caste men arrived at Mehul Vinodbhai Kabira's modest two-room home in Gujarat and threatened to burn it down. 

Bhayla is a nondescript village of around 450 low slung brick and cement homes straddling a highway dotted by pharmaceutical, engineering and bio-tech factories. Most of the homes in this dense village are owned by land-owning upper castes, but around 70 belong to Dalits (formerly known as untouchables) like Mr Kabira, who form the lowest rung of India's harsh caste hierarchy.

Dayabhai Kanabhai Kabira is a Dalit farmer

Mr Kabira's crime? He dared to park his newly-bought auto-rickshaw for passengers near the village at the bus stop, which also doubled up as its three-wheeler stand.

...who built a second storey on his tiny plot to accommodate his growing joint family

His parents worked all their lives as scavengers, collecting manure, but their son had decided to shun the indignity of a lowly caste-based occupation. Instead, he took out a loan and started plying a three-wheeler.


"Most of the auto-rickshaws here are owned by upper-caste men. They couldn't tolerate a Dalit plying his trade at the bus stand. So they beat me up and threatened me," he says.
 Mr Kabira did not take any chances. He left the village with his family to live with a relative some 15km (nine miles) away and drove his three-wheeler.

When he returned to Bhayla in 2014, he sold off his auto-rickshaw, paid back his loan and signed up as a 217 rupees-a-day ($3; £2.40) contract worker in the "housekeeping" - a euphemism for a cleaning job - at a pharmaceutical factory.

'Increased conflict'

A few houses away, Dayabhai Kanabhai Kabira, 42, faced the ire of upper-caste neighbours in a different way. A canny farmer, he had inherited two acres of farm land from his father, and sold it to buy a four-acre plot some 40km away to augment his income.

As his joint family grew, he built a second storey on his tiny plot to accommodate a growing joint family of a dozen people into four-and-a-half crowded rooms. His next door neighbour, an upper-caste farmer who lives in a shiny three-storey house, promptly built a 20ft (6m) high "caste" wall between the two homes.

"They built the wall so they didn't have to see my face any longer," says Mr Kabira.