Yechury questions government's silence on Maharashtra violence

New Delhi: CPI-M leader Sitaram Yechury on Thursday questioned the government's silence on the violence in Maharashtra, alleging that Dalits may have been excluded from the ruling BJP's definition of who is Indian.

"Does the BJP government consider Dalits to be a part of India or not? Or are they excluded from being Indian in its definition? Only that view explains its silence on what is happening in Maharashtra," Yechury said in a series of tweets.

He said "Sangh ideology is opposed to" the idea of equality of B.R. Ambedkar, one of the architects of the Indian Constitution.

"As Ambedkar said, one person is equal to one vote and one vote equal to one value. But until each citizen does not equal the same value, in socio-economic terms, the struggle must continue."

He said the attempts to blame the "historically oppressed sections of our society for speaking up reflect the core beliefs of the BJP-RSS, of asserting an old and oppressive social order".

Yechury's tweets came in reaction to clashes during the bicentenary celebrations of the Bhima-Koregaon battle on Sunday and the subsequent violence that spread across Maharashtra.