You can ally and empathise with the oppressed without having to kowtow and vote for or support their supposed leaders (and their utterances and actions) or even the so-called influencer intelligentsia in their midst who are attempting to drive the oppressed group as well as the movement for their freedom toward a direction that has more to do with their personal agenda than anything the oppressed group might benefit from.
Indeed, you can stand with the oppressed without having to automatically stand for everything their leaders claim they identify with. Leaders, regardless of which caste/class they come from, must be classified on basis of whether they are well-intentioned, put their money where their mouths are, and are proficient in the job they are expected to do in public office. A bad or corrupt or stupid or lazy or incompetent leader is a bad or corrupt or stupid or lazy or incompetent leader, caste or class be damned. I am not under any obligation to empathise with or vote for an oppressed classes leader just because I stand against the oppression of the classes that leader claims to represent.
In any case, hero-worship, cultish behaviour, and authoritarian leadership are a bane of human society. Indeed, any worship is harmful to our collective soul and the future of this species. It matters little if you worship a book or a living or dead human or an object or an imaginary line on a map or whatever. If you worship something, you are already wrong. It does not matter whose altar your worship is directed towards. The faster we end this grovelling, obsequious behaviour, the better it is for humankind as a whole.
So, one can be on the side of the Sikhs without having to side with the SGPC, Dalits, without having to vote for or speak in favour of Mayawati, North-Eastern Indians without supporting secession and violence against the state, migrants without glorifying their corrupt leaders back home, and even Muslims without becoming an apologist for Islam or for the crazy Muftis doling out regressive fatwas. One can be supportive of the Chinese without having to also support their government, ditto Russians, Venezuelans, North Koreans, Pakistanis, Iranians, Ukrainians, British, French, or Americans. One can be a patriot without having to defend a government one does not agree with. In fact, one can be a Nehruvian or a Gandhian without having to accept and condone everything these two gentlemen did and stood for. We must learn to separate these from each other inside our heads. That is, in fact, the mark of an evolved human.
tl;dr: You can stand with the oppressed without having to stand with their leaders.
