Dr John Mohan Razu
Everyday stories that are of enormous proportions and callous magnitude concerning the Dalits keep surfacing in the print and visual media. Stories that we read and see are real that underlines one clear message that as we move on in our free-Independent India for the last 74-years and keep adding year after year to our Republic, unfolds that our mind and heart are rather shrinking and yet to be liberated. Majority of Indians are corroded and insulated with casteism and caste, despite tall claims and huge laurels. In reality, for the majority, casteism as a doctrine and practicing caste offers huge incentives and so their attitude and behaviour towards their fellow humans have not changed.
The ways with which some communities are treated in their day-to-day dealings are becoming more ruthless, narrower and cruder. India as a nation and a Republic in the Second Decade of the 21st Century in this respect has miserably failed to adhering to the principles of constitutionality. Citizens, by and large, have failed to show maturity in their thinking and behaviour. People also in their dealings should treat all as equals, irrespective of caste, creed and other considerations and recognize everyone has equal rights and one value like others and everyone is part of the participatory process of peoples’ democracy.
Citizens will have to be guided by values upholding and promoting quality of life and should not be propelled by divisive values premised on the heinous systems that triggers fragmentation and demeans communities as lesser-humans by lowering the very meaning of human beings. In reality, Indian society functions on caste lines, and so, by and large, the casteists believe in the system of caste and thus subscribes to the ideology of casteism. The tenets of caste are to polarize, divide and create toxic environment in the society. Caste and casteism are the functional theory and ideology of the Indian Society.
Indian society by and large considers “Dalits Lives Hardly Matter”, because majority of the Indians do want to accept the data, day-to-day encounters that the Dalits face and experience. In a climate of widening inequality in which the Dalits are pushed further to the margins. Horrifying crimes perpetuated against and meted out by the Dalits hardly matters to them. Indian society has reached such a low point that those who think that they hail from so called “dominant/high caste” categories and so are given the licence to humiliate, ridicule and alienate who they consider as “Untouchables” and “lesser human beings”. Ideology of casteism is constructed on stratification and differences between humans.
Caste and casteism are tearing apart the Indian society. Most Indians use caste and casteism that offers a number of incentives to them Out of many stories that are happening in the life of the Dalits we observe, read and watch in their settings and locales, two episodes occurred in the years 2019 and 2020 in the state of Tamil Nadu known for pioneering rational thinking and humanistic understanding; promoting equality and admonishing superstitious socio-religious practices makes some to wonder despite taking clear position against social evils those engaged in protecting the rights of Dalits and promoting their well-being struck me intensely and should raise alarm to others as well.
It makes me to wonder as to: what happened to their efforts being carried out all these years by the political parties and peoples’ movements in the state of Tamil Nadu? Have they failed? If this is the state of affairs in Tamil Nadu for the Dalits, then what about the entire Indian society—gloomy one? On the 15th of August as free Independent India was celebrating 74th Year of Independence, V Amirtham, Panchayat president of Aathupakkam near Gummidipoondi, not far from Chennai was prevented from hoisting the national flag by her fellow office-bearers because she was a Dalit. The office-bearers of the Aathupakkam panchayat belonging to “high castes” had the audacity to stop her.
A gory incident happened few days after the Independence Day of 2019. Having denied the right to cremate, the dead bodies of the Dalits are being cremated on the banks of Palar river as the land strips allegedly encroached upon by two so-called “high caste Hindus”. Dalits living in a village called Narayanapuram near Vanniyambadi town in Tamil Nadu have been forced to drop their dead from atop of a 20-foot high bridge for the past four years. A video of a Dalit’s body being lowered to the riverbank for cremation went viral on social media with these details. Kuppan, 55, of Naryanapuram Dalit Colony had died in a road accident. After the completion of all formalities the body was handed over to his family—a routine procedure.
Even after 74-years of India achieving its independence, we repeatedly hear that Dalits are denied decent cremation and burial and use the jargon: “Due to lack of space in the village crematorium, we have been cremating our dead on the banks of the Palar river for the past four years”. To be frank and open, it is not the space in the crematorium or cemetery. It is the caste system that prohibits and enforces the so-called “Untouchables” not to be buried or cremated alongside the so-called “pure” or “high caste super-humans”. Christians are no exception as there are two cemeteries—one for the so-called “pure” and the other for the “polluted”. Caste-triggered Hinduism and Brahmanized Indian Christianity are to be blamed which Dr. Ambedkar called as Hindu Christians.
After more than half a century of legislation against such abuses, why should we be so passive and muted not showing any reaction against heinous crimes. Right from birth to death and even after death Dalits do not enjoy any freedom, dignity and equality as citizens of this land. Beginning with landmark legislation in 1938 and 1939, Tamil Nadu has been a pioneer in banning untouchability. In 1949, the Constitution abolished it. Article 17 of the Constitution declares, “… Untouchability is abolished and its practice in any form is forbidden. The enforcement of any disability arising out of ‘untouchability’ shall be an offence punishable in accordance with law”.
These powerful words were meant to put a stop to centuries of injustice. Further, to reiterate and to be more effective to the constitutional mandate, Parliament passed the Untouchability Offences Act (Act 22 of 1955). This act underwent amendment and was renamed in 1976. Section 10A of the 1976 ‘Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955’ unequivocally states that the state government has the authority to impose collect fine if it found that inhabitant of an area had directly committed an atrocity as defined by law, or had abetted such a commission. All these have hardly achieved desired results. Subsequently, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities (Act 33 of 1989) was passed.
Legislations are enacted, but hardly have we deterred the magnitude and intensity of atrocities perpetuated against the Dalits and Tribals. Legal luminaries and attorneys say that Section 16 of the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act, 1989, should have been invoked in both the cases based on the discriminatory practices against a community, but the process takes its own time and those powerfully connected hood-wink the laws and enforcements and go scot free. For instance, till this day two-tumbler system is practiced in the villages and forms of violence and Untouchability have taken new twists and turns. Indian society is casteist and so caste per se should be targeted and in the process annihilated.
Those who are supposed to translate the laws belong to the so-called ‘high castes’, and so nothing will work as long as we have corroded mind-sets and casteists in legal, law enforcement, legislative and bureaucracy. Year after year we will be celebrating our Independence and our Republic keep adding the number, but the Dalits remain in the same rungs and live in the same locales called as ‘colonies’/’’cherries’/’wadas’. When would this nomenclatures and names change? How long to wait? These are the questions that loom at large.
System of caste is the longest standing social schema that exists in the Indian society for about 3,500 years. Those who subscribe to caste and casteism need to change their corroded mind-sets and think rationally, if not as we move on in history at one point or the other, they would be pushed to changes through some means or the other. Certainly, it should change and will change as Dalits are the subjects of history and agents of change.
