Back to anger and hatred

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"It's all one skin and bone, one piss and shit, one blood, one meat. From one drop, a universe. Who's a Brahmin? Who's a shudra? So sang Kabir, the Bhakti saint in the fifteenth century. But Mayawati is not singing any songs. Instead, she's angry again, raging again, on the warpath again. She has brought a fearsome Jat patriarch to his knees. Perhaps for the first time in the history of caste relations in Uttar Pradesh, an upper caste senior man has had to fold his hands and apologise to a younger dalit woman. The sheer power of the Dalit political machine was in evidence when Mahendra Singh Tikait, chief of the rowdy Bharatiya Kisan Union was arrested by Mayawati for daring to make a "casteist" remark. Mayawati is the dalit 'virangana', who swept to power last year, in the 150th year of the....