DALITS IN INDIA..........

Burri nazar walle, theri ghar mein ladki paida ho (You
evil-eyed people, may girls be born in your homes).

SCRAWLED ON the back of a lorry in Gohana, those words
capture the soul of casteism in Haryana. Even while taking a
crack at Dalits whose houses they had reduced to rubble, their
oppressors couldn't fail to proclaim women to be a
curse. (A view many of them clearly act upon. You can see that
from Haryana's appalling sex ratio of 861. That was the
worst among major States in the 2001 census.)

About the time 50 Dalit houses were set ablaze in
Gohana, the country marked 50 years of a law giving effect to the
Constitution's abolition of untouchability. As if to rub in
the irony, 25 more Dalit homes have been torched in
the same week. This time in Akola, Maharashtra.

Of course the Constitution banned untouchability. It
was to give effect to Article 17 that Parliament passed the
Untouchability (Offences) Act, 1955. This was later
made more stringent and renamed the Protection of Civil Rights
Act,1955. Still the crimes went on. So, along the way, we
brought in quite a few other vital laws. Like the Scheduled
Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act of
1989. Crimes under this Act invite harsher penalties than
similaroffences would under the Indian Penal Code. Half a
century into the process, we grapple with the very crimes the
first of these laws sought to end.

Was Gohana 2005 a one-off aberration? We could then
say: awful, but these things happen. And get on with life.
The catch of course is that they happen every so often.
And to the same people. Even a show of mandatory anguish —
"what an atrocity" — doesn't begin to meet the problem. Not
when the crime is systemic, societal, and structured. Not when
a state disables its own citizens.

The countless reports on the subject over the years do
not show discrimination against Dalits to be dying away.
The many volumes of the National Commission for the Scheduled
Castes and Scheduled Tribes make grisly reading. Crimes
against Dalits and Adivasis have risen by the decade. By as
much as 25 to 28 per cent in some periods. Yet the number of such
cases ending in conviction of the criminals is dismal. Less
than one per cent in some courts.

The events in Gohana and Akola are just a part of an
ongoing crime against humanity. For that's what caste-based
discrimination is. (But I'm still sure you'll see
editorials that tell us these things are wrong because `they send
bad signals to investors.')

In Gohana, the dominant castes, the police, the state,
all did their bit in bringing terror and ruin to the Dalit
basti. (The police say that after a Jat died in a clash with some
Dalits, the Jats `retaliated.') Fearing an attack, over 1,000
Dalits fled the basti. The police steered clear of the
village while a mob of some 1,500 people burned around 50 Dalit
houses to the ground. A thousand people had fled knowing an
attack was coming. Yet the police claim they were clueless about
it.

The Dalits here are Balmikis. That group is possibly
the worst off within the Scheduled Caste fold. More so in terms
of the humiliation it bears. In caste society's eyes, the
Balmikis embody the worst forms of "impurity." They are `manual
scavengers.' They handle and dispose of "night soil."(That's
polite society's term for human excreta.)

Gohana's Balmikis had tried to climb out of that
caste-imposed rut. They had educated their children. Got jobs
outside their traditional role. Some even landed low-level
government posts. And over years the Balmikis fought off the efforts of
the Jatsto extract begar — or forced labour — from them.
Their relative improvement was itself a major provocation.
This is consistent with attacks on Dalits in other parts of
thecountry too. Doing better is a crime.

The mob in Gohana did not kill any Dalits. Partly
because they had already fled. The focus, though, was on looting
and on destruction of property. Dalits owning decent houses?
With fridges and television sets? They had to be shown
their place.Houses having gas connections were destroyed using the
absent owner's LPG cylinders. The relatively good houses of
the Dalits were an eyesore to their enemies.

Gohana's Balmikis had, against daunting odds, emerged
from the depths of deprivation. They had created these houses
and assets over decades. With a kind of effort that much
of society might never understand. In these, they
invested not just their money but their emotions, passion, dreams,
and the future of their children. The death of those dreams,
the destruction of those assets, was achieved in hours.
Petrol cans and police connivance were all it took.

The State now offers each home Rs. 1 lakh as
compensation. A fraction of its losses. Forget tending to the trauma.
Note the manner in which the Dalits were `punished.' In true
feudal tradition, an individual offence became a collective
crime. A Dalit is alleged to have killed someone. All Dalits in
his basti must pay the price. The due course of law gets
dumped.The caste panchayat reigns higher than the courts.

It was in the same State a few years ago that police
battered little Usha, also a Balmiki, in Jind. The girl, not
yet in her teens, was helping her mother clean a local school.
The school headmistress accused her of stealing a gold chain. Not
content with thrashing the frail child herself, she called in
the Haryana police. Meanwhile, the chain was found. The
headmistress had merely mislaid it. The family got the
girl back, unconscious, badly bruised and with teeth
broken.

We could, of course, say "that's Haryana." And there
would even be an element of truth in it. Except that the
same prejudices work in many ways across most of the
country. Chunni Lal Jatav, a survivor of the Kumher massacre in
Rajasthan, once put it famously. "All the judges of
the Supreme Court do not have the power of a single police
constable. That constable makes or breaks us. The
judges can't re-write the laws and have to listen to learned
lawyers of both sides. A constable here simply makes his own
laws. He can do almost anything." With state and society winking at
him, he pretty much can.

And those committing crimes against Dalits know they
have a great chance of getting away with it. State
Governments have dropped countless cases filed against upper caste
offenders under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes
(Prevention of Atrocities) Act of 1989. Kalyan Singh's BJP Government
in Uttar Pradesh dropped such cases in thousands. A move
quickly emulated by the Shiv Sena regime in Maharashtra. Later
governments did not reinstate these cases.

In Tamil Nadu, Dalits have been forced out of elected
office even in reserved panchayats. In Melavalavu, the Dalit
panchayat president's head was severed and thrown into
a well. Dalits in Dravidian Land, an excellent book by
Frontline's S. Viswanathan, paints a powerful picture of Dalit life
in that State.

Oddly, whether it's Gohana, or Jhajar before it, discussion on
these issues seldom links up to those other, ongoing
debates. For instance, that on reservation. No link is seen
between any of this and the debates on social justice. On present
SC / ST quotas. Or on the call for quotas in the private
sector. Gohana actually has people who gained, if modestly,
from reservation.

Against huge odds, Gohana's Balmikis snapped their
chains. They educated their children. This is not easy. In
schools, their boys and girls face the taunts of `upper' caste
peers. (Across the country, large numbers of Dalit pupils
drop out of school to escape such humiliation.) First, society
places them under inhuman handicaps. Then we demand a "level
playing field" against them in jobs and education.

The children of manual scavengers and other poor
people return each evening to homes without electricity. And so
cannot study in the way other kids can. They go back to homes
without good books. They cannot afford "tuitions." They have no
"connections" to land them jobs or seats. In the face
of these odds, their achievements are admirable. A true level
playing field could actually tilt the balance in their favour.
For it would start by ending their handicaps. But look at the
fury stoked by the mere idea of private colleges setting
asideseats for such people. (Never mind that the Supreme
Court judgement allows such colleges to create quotas for
rich NRIs.)

Yet, Gohana's Dalits have achieved something more.
Dalits in Haryana are now stepping into the public space in a
way not seen too often. And Dalit women appear to be in the
forefront of the protests. There is a lot of pressure on the
government to act. The Congress' own Dalit MLAs are in the hot
seat. All this is good. Yet there is a much larger house on
fire. If only we could see it.

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P.Sainath

this article appeared in THE HINDU,Sept. 6, 2005
http://hinduonnet.com