The rage of the ragged

 

 

First, some facts you didn’t know. There are 500 to 600 organisations fighting for Dalit rights in India (and more outside the country). Dalits living Below the Poverty Line have fallen from almost 50% in 1993-94, to 37% in 1999-2000 (according to the National Sample Survey). Dalit residences with electricity grew from 29% in 1991 to 44% in 2001, according to the two Census reports respectively. Now, some things we know but can’t recall. Every day, three Dalit women are raped, two Dalits are murdered, and two Dalit homes torched (a vast number are not reported). In the year 2005, reports the National Crime Records Bureau, 26,127 crimes were committed against Dalits including 1,172 rapes against Dalit women and 669 cases of murder.

Into this smelting pot were tossed the defiled corpses of women in Khairlanji, Maharashtra, gangraped till their humiliated minds and bodies broke, and the severed head of Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar, separated at one go from his old and tired statue-body in Kanpur. Ambedkar had it easy. Surekha and her daughter Priyanka were paraded naked and gangraped, and sticks were pushed into their reproductory organs. Their crime: Surekha was fighting to get back a portion of her farm, which was grabbed by upper caste landlords. Anger erupted after this show of barbarism. Maharashtra was in flames and the world was forced to take note of the mutilation of the hapless. When the politicians finally awoke, they were arrested in a pre-emptive measure and thrown into a temporary jail. “I’m under arrest here (in Nagpur) with everybody else,” said D. Raja, National Secretary of the Communist Party of India. When TSI got across to them, the non-Congress, non-BJP leaders who had planned to gherao the Maharashtra Assembly session in Nagpur were already incarcerated. “Social problems enrage Dalits so much. Even today, their women are raped and butchered, people are chopped off, and others made to eat human excreta. This is anti-human,” says Raja. Dalits exist in Hinduism and other religions. They form 16.2% of the population, which translates to a whopping 17.84 crore (178.4 million) people. Their rise, and the constant pressure to make life more equitable for them, is grating on the nerves of the upper castes who are scared of having to make way. Organisations lobbying for Dalits say there are reasons why Scheduled Castes (the official name for Dalits) are targeted, like in Khairlanji. The Global Action for Dalits, one of the more active bodies, lists four reasons: 1) When Dalits try to uphold their identity and assert civil rights (more so when it concerns equality and self-respect). 2) When Dalits assert cultural rights and refuse to accept what other castes say. 3) When they assert economic rights, or right to entitlement by laying claim to common resources like land. 4) When they assert political rights by contesting elections (the New Delhi-based National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights listed 142 incidents of anti-Dalit poll violence during an 11-month period till July 2006).

Says Ramdas Athavale, Lok Sabha member and President of the Republican Party of India, “Dalits are angry because they are unemployed. Around 13-14 crore Dalits have no jobs. Reservation in jobs is not the only solution. We are asking for 25% reservation in agricultural land. There are eight crore hectares of land vacant in India. We are asking for five acres per family to make them economically independent.” This is big enough to cause bloodshed. The demand is gaining because nothing much has changed in the way Dalits are treated in many parts of India.

According to studies conducted by social organisations, Dalits are still not allowed entry into the streets and houses of other castes in rural India (see box). Dalits are told they can’t touch others, or be touched by others. They are forced to live in separate settlements on the outskirts of villages, in a sort of ostracism. Concepts like ‘defilement, pollution, impurity, and exclusion’ are attributed to Dalits (in parts of several states it is believed that impurity can be transmitted by the touch of a Dalit, or even by his approach within a certain distance). In 2,000 villages of Tamil Nadu, they have separate aluminum tins in which tea is served to Dalits. They are not allowed to fetch water from common water sources like wells. They act as messengers to carry news of death of upper castes, are human scavengers in some parts, can’t enter temples and have to treat their dead in separate crematoriums (they say you can smell a Dalit before he arrives). Periodically, it boils over. Recently, when a flyover was being constructed in Chennai, a statue of Ambedkar was removed. The Viduthalai Siruththaikal, the leading Dalit party Tamil Nadu, in alliance with the ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, went on a rampage. Buses were damaged, traffic disrupted, men and women injured in stone-pelting. Finally, Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi announced an acceptable place for the statue to be placed temporarily till the work on the flyover is finished. Says Thirumavalavan, General Secretary of the Viduthalai Siruththaikal, “All over India, Ambedkar’s statues are being attacked. People still see him as someone from a lower class family”. After decades of observing, something which it still often does, the government moved. A mother law to cover crimes against Dalits was brought about. The Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act was brought into force from 30 January 1990. Its objective was “to prevent the commission of offences of atrocities against the members of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes, to provide for Special Courts for the trial of such offences and for the relief and rehabilitation of the victims of such offences and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto.” Many times, it’s not enough. On 31 August 2005, the largest Dalit colony in Haryana’s Gohana was looted and burnt by a mob of Jats after a Jat youth was killed in a scuffle with Dalit youngsters. Dalits fled their homes fearing attacks by Jats after the murder. They were wise: 54 Dalit houses were torched.

So Dalits tend to protest in other ways as well. Every year, Dalits and Buddhists gather at Nagpur to remember the 14 October 1956 conversion to Buddhism led by Ambedkar – said to be history’s largest single act of conversion (close to 5,00,000 Dalits became Buddhists that day). This year, an incredible 15,00,000 people – according to police estimates – gathered from across the world to mark the 50th anniversary of Ambedkar’s conversion. The government could help, by fast-tracking cases involving crimes against Dalits. Fear is a good antidote to crime; who better than the government to instil it.