On Saturday morning, people entering Pune’s Ganesh Kala Krida auditorium were greeted by dozens of police officials at every gate, multiple security checkpoints with metal detectors, repeated bag-checks and body pat-downs, and police sniffer dogs roaming around the compound.
The intense police scrutiny was on account of the event held at the auditorium: Elgar Parishad 2021, the defiant second edition of an event that became controversial after the Maharashtra police accused its organisers – a coalition of 250 anti-caste and human organisations – of instigating caste-based violence in Pune’s Bhima Koregaon area on January 1, 2018.
The first Elgar Parishad was held in Pune’s Shaniwar Wada on December 31, 2017, a day before lakhs of Dalits from across India gathered at the village of Koregaon Bhima to commemorate the 200th anniversary of a battle in which a Dalit contingent of the British army defeated the region’s Peshwa Brahmins. To mark the occasion, speakers…