How do ordinary human beings going about their lives abruptly become extremely antagonistic towards their Dalit neighbours?
Written by Pushparaj
Deshpande , Dr. SDJM Prasad | Published:July 21, 2016 10:39 am
The Gujarat
government has been conducting itself exactly like a dominant community in a
village.
In what can only be characterised
as Indian apartheid, Ramesh, Vashram and two other Dalits in Una, Gujarat were
publicly stripped and beaten with metal rods by various men who took turns to
do so, all the while swaggering like conquering heroes. Outcries of pain were
met by harder swings, while people in the background heartily endorsed the
flogging. The whole incident was being scrupulously recorded and subsequently
posted online as a warning. As a people, how can we even begin to make sense of
such the mentality of those so called vigilantes, their mindlessness, and utter
lack of humanity?
How do ordinary human beings going
about their lives abruptly become extremely antagonistic towards their Dalit
neighbours? How can few people incite and invoke the support of an entire
community to attack Dalits? Why do they then collectively commit the vilest
atrocities on Dalits, be it stripping, raping, beating, burning, or
force-feeding feces/urine to them? After all, they commit these atrocities
knowing fully well that they go against the Constitution of India, as also
basic human rights.
They do this so impudently (and
routinely) because the Dalit dares to challenge those regressive religious
norms that maintain the social status quo. They do it to teach the Dalit a lesson
(hence the video); to not forget his/her place in society, and to continue
kowtowing to their caste superiors. Ultimately, they do this to reinforce the
hegemony of their caste over the Dalit, and to inculcate the same culture of
hierarchy in future generations. Without such a hierarchy in place, they cannot
differentiate from, and maintain their complete dominance over the Dalit.
What’s perhaps equally regrettable
about this incident is Home Minister Rajnath Singh’s
statement. Condemning the atrocities as a “social evil”, he spoke about how
arrests had been made and how officials had been reprimanded. Yes, those things
have happened, but they happened after a Dalit killed himself, after 12 other
Dalits also tried to commit suicide and after violence erupted in Rajkot,
Surendranagar, Amreli, Junagadh, Ahmedabad, Dhoraji and other towns of
Saurashtra. Rajnath Singh was therefore making a political statement, to
address the public outcry on the issue, but not to address the root of the
matter. In fact, his statement was a clear abdication of the State’s moral
responsibility to reform society. Not once did he speak about how and what the
government will do to permanently end the regressive caste and religious norms
that still tarnish Hinduism.
The reason he (or for that matter,
anyone who believes in it) won’t, is because they fanatically adhere to a rigid
and inhumane form of Hinduism, namely Hindutva. Because the Sangh parivar has
meticulously proselytised and socialised increasingly larger sections of
society to Hindutva (and because the current political dispensation
deliberately turns a blind eye to its violent consequences), people are
emboldened to escalate atrocities against Dalits (from May 2014, there has been
a 19% increase in atrocities).
What all of us don’t realize (or
perhaps, we don’t want to, considering we deny that untouchability and casteism
is even an issue in India) is that the recent incident is just the final tipping
point for Dalits in Gujarat (and in view of the nationwide uproar post Rohith Vemula’s
suicide, perhaps the rest of the country). Despite having the formal backing of
the Constitution and numerous laws (which are expressly meant to invalidate the
abovementioned caste and religious norms), Dalits have been continuously
subjugated and subjected to gruesome violence, and the Gujarat government.
(like the NDA government.) has either turned a blind eye or actively
facilitated these. Consider these:
1.
Although the Scheduled Castes Sub Plan (SCSP) mandates
that a state must allocate monies in proportion to the SC population of the
state (7.09%), the Gujarat government. has not done so in the last ten years.
In a July 2015 report, the state shockingly argued (in stark violation of the
SCSP guidelines) that “it was very difficult to take up area based development
exclusively for the SCs”! Here is a clear signal to society (especially the
regressive elements) that Dalits aren’t a priority, and that the state won’t do
much to change the status quo.
2.
When Navsarjan (an NGO working for Dalit rights) and
the Robert F. Kennedy Centre for Justice & Human Rights (an internationally
renowned NGO working for human rights) pointed out that in 2009 that
empirically, untouchability was widely prevalent in both the public and private
sectors in Gujarat, the Modi government. refused to even accept the existence
of casteism! It even went so far as to commission a report to champion the idea
that casteism in Gujarat was eradicated. This is despite that fact that between
2006 and September 2013, 8,884 cases of atrocities were officially registered
in the state (and 11 of the 26 districts in the state were recorded as highly
atrocity prone). Here is the state actively denying that there is even a
problem that it needs to resolve.
3.
Because of this callous and deliberate indifference to
casteism and untouchability, the mandatory Vigilance and Monitoring Committees
(that are, under the CM’s personal supervision, meant to ensure the
implementation of the Prevention of Atrocities Act, 1989) in Gujarat have never
met! Similarly to date, not a single lawyer has been appointed in any district
in the state to aid Dalits fight atrocity cases (as the PoA Act mandates). Here
then is how regressive elements committed to upholding a casteist society
capture the state apparatus, and consciously undermine the tools of social
justice.
The Gujarat government has been
conducting itself exactly like a dominant community in a village. It has denied
the rights due to a section of society because they belong to a certain caste,
and done everything in its power to uphold an atavistic status quo. Not only is
this unconstitutional, it is simply unacceptable.
To transform India into an
egalitarian and just one, we first need to lift the veils of illusion that we
collectively hide behind, and awaken to the casteist reality of India. Unless
we do so, the horrific mentality that suppresses and denies will continue to
thwart the law of the land. Secondly, the State must guarantee the rights to
dignity, equality and equal opportunities, which it is mandated to uphold (but
has been found wanting, especially recently). Finally, we cannot keep outsourcing
the responsibility of creating a just society solely on the State. Each one of
us needs to own and champion constitutional principles in every aspect of our
lives. Together, we must protect and further the idea of India, without which
millions of our fellow Indians will continue to live in a cesspool of
discrimination and violence.
© The Indian Express Online Media Pvt Ltd
Source: indianexpress
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