Reality Of Dalit Oppression: The Urgency of Social Reform
Praful Bidwai
22 October 2002
The social reform movement was closely integrated with the freedom struggle and many of its gains were incorporated in the Constitution. But as caste atrocities like the Chakwara and Jhajjar show, social discrimination continues and is getting boosted by the attempt at a conservative Hindutva resurgence
For many urban Indians, the bristling reality of Dalit oppression is often softened by rare, but true, individual success stories. For instance, Ms Mayawati rules India’s largest state. Until early 2001, the BJP had a Dalit president. More Dalits are in the middle bureaucracy today than before.
Untouchability of the overt, "in-your-face", kind has declined in the cities. The Dalit problem, the gradualist view goes, may be on the way to resolution ...
This view requires a reality check. Nothing furnishes this better than a visit to Chakwara, a dusty village, barely 50 kilometres from Jaipur, Rajasthan.
Drive to Chakwara, and you plunge straight into Middle Age-style social servitude and economic bondage. At the centre of this is entrenched discrimination against Dalits, sanctified by religion.
For over a year, Chakwara has been in turmoil over the issue of access to the common village pond. The pond and the steps leading to it (ghats) have been maintained over the years with state funds and village contributions, including the Dalits’ too.
But the Dalits are barred from the ghats. "Tradition" treats them lower than the buffaloes and pigs which have access to the pond. (The only exception is women, irrespective of caste.)
On December 14 last, two Bairwa Dalits, Babulal and Radheshyam, defied hallowed "tradition" and took a dip in the pond. The caste Hindus subjected the Bairwa community to vile abuse, threats of a "bloodbath", a nightly siege of their mohalla, and a crippling social boycott.
No landowner would employ them; they couldn’t buy even a cup of tea in the village; the local doctor won’t treat them. Their men were stalked, their women abused.
The local administration and police should have acted with alacrity to protect the Dalits. Instead, they sided with the upper castes. Anti-Dalit discrimination is prohibited under the Constitution (Article 17), Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955, and above all, the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 (POA).
The POA was drafted explicitly to punish anti-Dalit abuse. It defines abuse fairly comprehensively, i.e. beyond mere name-calling and barring Dalits’ entry into places of worship.
The police failed even to register a case against Chakwara’s caste Hindus. Instead, in January, they bullied some Dalits into signing a "compromise", which erased their right to the pond. The agreement produced discontent-which has simmered.
Last month, the discontent broke the surface: the Bairwas decided to assert their rights through a rally through the tehsil town Phagi, to Chakwara in collaboration with the Centre for Dalit Human Rights, and People’s Union of Civil Liberties. They aimed to take a collective dip in the pond.
The savarnas (caste Hindus) decided to "teach the Dalits a lesson". On September 21, a mob of 10-15,000 men gathered, armed with sticks and gophans (slings to deliver heavy stones). The Dalits, sensing big trouble, terminated their rally. The savarnas attacked the police. More than 50 people were injured, including 44 policemen.
Today, the anti-Dalit confrontation has, ironically, pitted the state temporarily against the savarnas. This has encouraged the Bairwas to bathe in the pond regularly. But the savarnas have boycotted it.
Chakwara seethes with tension, fear and anger. Unless the Dalits are protected, there could be a bloody carnage. Rajasthan has recently seen many anti-Dalit atrocities, the worst of which was the 1992 Kumher massacre of 17 Jatavs.
Rajasthan has a dismal record of offences against the Dalits, with an annual average of 5,024 crimes. These include 46 killings, 134 rapes, and 93 cases of grievous injury every year.
There is extensive discrimination against Dalits all over Rajasthan. These abuses include name-calling, prohibiting Dalit women from using footwear, denial of such services as the barber’s, forcing Dalit schoolchildren to sit at the back of the classroom, and gross inequality in access to water and common lands.
Oppression of 160 million Dalits is an enduring reality of India’s countryside. To be a Dalit means having to live a sub-human, degraded, insecure existence. Every hour, two Dalits are assaulted. Every day, three Dalit women are raped; two Dalits are killed.
This violence has a precise function: perpetuate social hierarchy, defend servitude, and preserve conditions for the ruthless exploitation of the poorest people.
Corrective measures are needed-urgently. The most important is applying the Prevention of Atrocities Act 1989 to declare Chakwara "atrocity-prone". Then, a Monitoring Committee should survey abuses and prevent violence. Equally important is the Act’s Section 4 which punishes public servants involved in anti-Dalit atrocities.
However, administrative methods must be combined with purposive attempts to transform people’s perceptions of "tradition" through a reform of oppressive customs.
India has had a great modernist social reform movement. This movement was integral to the Freedom Struggle. Indeed, it preceded it and infused content into its goals.
The reform movement’s substantial gains in the last century were incorporated into the Constitution. But the momentum ran out by the 1950s, yielding to conservatism. This now finds its highest expression in casteist Hindutva.
The social reform movement must be revived. Without it, India won’t be able to combat numerous evils like sati and bride-burning, or superstition, irrationalism, ignorance and illiteracy.
Ultimately, we must ask two questions: What is the meaning of development and progress, if the most wretchedly oppressed people remain subjugated? What does that say about our democracy? Is it acceptable that millions of Indians have no freedom, no human agency, no way of realising their elementary potential?
Secondly, can we tolerate gross injustice against the most underprivileged without generally legitimising large-scale injustice? Is that the way to a modern, open, just society?
Postscript: The horrific lynching of Dalits in Jhajjar (Haryana) in the presence of the police underscores both social reform’s urgency and the VHP-Shiv Sena’s vile Hindutva casteism.
Copyright 2002 Content Providers International
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