Paying homage to victims at Golana By Gagan Sethi* Eight years of continuous engagement, which included setting up of forestry cooperatives and conscientisation work among the youth, helped us infuse a sense of confidence and self-respect among the Vankar Dalits of Golana village, situated off Bay of Khambhat. Thanks to these efforts, the community had begun to stand up for its rights. It had begun to identify the entitlements the Dalits should get and also how they were deprived of their rights because the existing socio-political setup. An application for allocating land had been sent to the mamlatdar of Cambay, as Khambhat was called then. It was the same land that had been encroached upon by the upper caste Darbars of the village. In official records, it was a government land, set aside for housing for the weaker sections. The mamlatdar acted in favour of the Dalits. He did this despite political pressure. We believe he had orders from the then Kheda district collector, Ravi Saxen