The term ‘Civil Society' is mostly used for voluntary organizations, non-governmental organizations and non-profit institutions. These are also called as civil society organizations. Interestingly, most of these organizations are always busy in criticizing the state (which is of course not wrong as the state is a failure), but they themselves behave like the state when it comes to the issues of Adivasis, Dalits and Women of D-section (deprived sections), even though they have also failed in delivering justice to marginalized peoples. Most of these organizations are led by elites even after 62 years of Indian independence. They enjoy corporate rate salaries, luxurious accommodations and air travel in the name of Adivasis, Dalits and women of D-section. The misappropriation of funds in the name of marginalized groups remains uncounted, despite that they are masters in lecturing on the issues of responsibility, transparency and accountability.
There are very interesting kinds of so-called civil society organizations – 1) based in the small cities or villages and getting less funds, 2) headquartered in Delhi and other big cities and bagging huge funds, and 3) NGO federations called people's organizations. Perhaps, the secretary, director and chief functionaries of these organizations are never replaced against their will, though they talk much about democracy. These civil society organizations also bring the mass organizations, social movements and displacement movements into their clutches and cash these in dollars, euros and pounds. Don't be surprised if some organizations based in Delhi show you a beautiful power point presentation about the Adivasi movements against displacement in Jharkhand, Orissa or Chhatishgarh.
There are also the holy cows called ‘funding agencies' (national and international), who love to be called civil society organizations, whose prime job is to collect the money, enjoy most of it and give the rest to other organizations. Ironically, these organizations fund those NGOs headed by non-Adivasis for the revival of Adivasi tradition, culture and ethos, but at the same time they avoid joining hands with Adivasi-headed organizations for the same purposes. The sad part is, the Adivasis are still unqualified for the funding organizations; therefore, a few Adivasis can be seen in the lowest strata of these organizations, despite their professional qualities, commitment and dedication. There are also some organizations who advocate for the Adivasi Chief Minister for the state of Jharkhand, but when it comes to the matter of their organizations, they cannot bear to see an Adivasi in the driving seat. They also advocate for promotion and protection of Adivasi languages, but their doors are always closed for the non-English speaking, marginalized people.
These organizations tirelessly use the connotation ‘empowering the marginalized', ‘voice to the voiceless' and ‘women empowerment,' but when it comes to the question of leadership, they just escape in one way or the other. Why did the civil society organizations fail in bringing up the Adivasi leadership was the most important question repeatedly asked in the National Consultation on Adivasis of India organized by the National Centre for Advocacy Studies (NCAS) in Delhi on December 15-16, 2009. A noted Gandhian and founder of the Ekta Parishad, P.V. Rajgopal, accepts in denial mode that the civil society organizations have failed in bringing up the Adivasi leadership but he also advocates for a united fight by saying, “The issue like displacement is not just limited to the Adivasis but it is also hitting the farmers, vendors and fishermen.” But does it mean that the question of Adivasis get less priority?
Ironically, the non-Adivasi leaders of the civil society organizations not only respond diplomatically but also justify their leadership of the Adivasis. While responding to the questions of Adivasis leadership, a prominent social activist from Jharkhand, Sanjay Bosu Mullick, says, “Since the Adivasis do not know about the exploitative system and structure of our (non-adivasis) society, therefore we are fighting with our people on behalf of them.” One can only appreciate this diplomatic response and thank the God who has given wits, wisdom and knowledge only to the non-Adivasis for not only understanding their society but also the Adivasis, and shame on those Adivasis (like me) who do not even possess the wisdom to understand their own society.
The reality is that the Adivasis are racially discriminated, exploited economically and denied their rights in the civil society organizations. Similarly, the Dalits are treated like untouchables, uneducated and inhuman, and the women of D-section are not only exploited socially, economically and mentally but they are also exploited sexually by the Big-bosses of the civil society organizations. The irony is, our participation is for them is to listen to our sorrows patiently through their tongues in a conference hall, give our consent to their words and always make sure that they are our messiahs. How would you explain it when your wisdom, commitment, dedication, capacity and efficiency do not matter for them but your race, caste, class, colour and relationship possesses multiple values for them instead?
When the Adivasis enter into these organizations, especially in the funding ones, their years of work experience are counted as one or two years (so that they can be kept in the lowest strata), they are compared with their counterpart (always a non-adivasi is used as a parameter for them) for further promotion and their ten achievements are not enough to beat the couple of achievements of a non-Adivasi. When one raises these issues in the organizations, they would manipulate, manufacture consent with their colleagues and dilute the whole debate to ensure that the Adivasis lose the game. Finally, if the Adivasis leave these organizations, they would frame them as opportunists, non-committed to the Adivasi cause and counted as one more enemy of the Adivasis.
One can question that why are the marginalized people of these organizations keeping quiet in these circumstances? The instant answer is, a wage labourer bears all kinds of discrimination, exploitation and torture only because he/she knows that the day a question is raised, he/she would be thrown out of the job. Similar theory is applied to the marginalized people, who are ensuring their daily bread from these civil society organizations. How can one dare to question the big-boss, when he/she is just struggling for survival? Can you imagine how the marginalized people are being exploited, denied and discriminated against in those organizations, who tirelessly talk about participation, empowerment, rights, equality and justice?
The fact of the matter is the perception, attitude and behaviour of the elite heads of civil society organizations towards Adivasis, Dalits and women of D-section are no different from the common people of the so-called civilized society. They talk much about participation, empowerment, rights, equality and justice merely to ensure themselves a luxurious life, bag awards and become a role model in the name of Adivasis, Dalits and Women of D-section; therefore, they also play the game of words just like the politicians do. Can anyone remind me about how many Adivasis, Dalits and women of D-section were awarded (megasese) for their extraordinary work and became a role model for all Indians?
Interestingly, the vision of these organizations is more or less the same – formation of an equitable and just society, but the pertinent question is how the utopian vision can be achieved through discriminatory, inequitable and unjust practices? In fact, the elite heads of the civil society organizations should stop their uncivilized practices, which they are carrying out for decades. It is the right time to let the marginalized people play their own game, become umpires and take over as the match referee. And the elites should only become the fourth umpires rather than playing match for the marginalized people. Then only their talks about the empowerment, equality and justice can be fulfilled.
Before civil society organizations organize the next consultation, convention or conference on Adivasi, Dalit or Women's Rights, all marginalized people should stand up and say strongly that enough is enough, let the Adivasis, Dalits and women of D-section speak for themselves. The time has come to tell them (non-Adivasis heads) that we are grateful to you for advocating on behalf of us for the last six decades, but no more manipulation please. We are tired of hearing about our grievances through your holy tongues; therefore, we want the world to listen to our grievances through our mouths. We want to speak for ourselves and we are capable enough to save our culture. But the question that may remain unanswered is, will you, the Messiahs of the Adivasis, Dalits and women listen us?
Gladson Dungdung is a Human Rights Activist and Writer from the Adivasi (Indigenous) Community of Jharkhand. He can be reached at gladsonhractivist@gmail.com
Bhagat Singh finds a place not only among India’s but world’s greatest revolutionaries. His life, work, struggle and the way he kissed and embraced death bring him in league of world’s great revolutionaries such as Socrates, Bruno, Joan of Arc, Che Guevara etc. His martyrdom will continue to inspire many generations of revolutionaries to sacrifice their lives in defence of truth, justice and freedom. He was a rare thinker. The mastery he could acquire in the art and science of revolution even at a tender age of twenty three when he died is very rare. We still feel the loss that our country suffered on his untimely death. It was not for nothing that the British imperialists hanged him and the future rulers of India preferred to remain silent on his death sentence.
We are well aware of Bhagat Singh’s thoughts on topics such as socialism, revolution, India’s independence, working class movements, religion, god etc. His life and death centred around these concerns. We are generally not aware of his take on caste system as he has not written much on this. It may be due to the fact that he was a Sikh where caste based differentiation and discrimination is not as acute as among the Hindus.
Yet his article ‘Achoot Samasya’ (The Untouchability Problem) is very important because we get glimpses of his revolutionary thoughts on this basic problem of Indian society. Now when in the post-mandal phase caste and dalit questions have acquired paramount importance in socio-political discourse it has become relevant to understand his thoughts on this question.
Bhagat Singh wrote this article in the month of June, 1928 as the volume of his collected works indicates. Baba Saheb Bhim Rao Ambedkar had already made history by burning ‘Manusmriti’ with his followers on December 25, 1927. On March 20, 1927 Baha Saheb with his followers had touched water of Mahad pond which was hitherto not accessible to the achoots (untouchables). Baba Saheb with his followers had been demanding right of separate electorates from the British government. The year also witnessed the publication of Katherine Mayo’s ‘Mother India’ and furore over the content of the book. Mahatma Gandhi dubbed the book as a gutter inspector’s report. The evils of Indian particularly Hindu society were most nakedly, mercilessly and authentically exposed in the book. The moral hypocrisy, insincerity and hollowness of the elites of Hindu society on the question of eradicating social evils were brought forth before the world. In his article ‘Achoot Samasya’ Bhagat Singh has quoted a speech of Noor Mohammad, a legislature in the then Bombay council, which also finds a place in ‘Mother India’. Not only this Bhagat Singh also quotes Mayo: ‘Those who would be free must themselves strike the blow’. Thus three major events of 1927 viz. Mahad Satyagrah, burning of Manusmriti and publication of ‘Mother India’ had brought the social question onto the surface of the national movement with a vengeance.
In a speech in Bombay council in 1926 Noor Mohammad had demolished the Congress demand for political rights from the British government. He famously spoke, “If the Hindu society refuses to allow other human beings, fellow creatures so that to attend public schools and if...the president of local boards representing so many lakhs of people in this house refuses to allow his fellows and brothers the elementary human rights of having water to drink, what right have they to ask for more rights from the bureaucracy? Before we accuse people coming from other lands, we should see how we ourselves behave towards our own people.....How can we ask for greater political rights when we ourselves deny elementary rights of human beings.” Bhagat Singh quotes Noor Mohammad in original English and then translates it in vernacular. He is not content with just quoting Noor Mohammad. He whole heartedly supports the stand of Noor Mohammad, “What he says is fully justified, but as he is a Muslim, he will be accused of pitching for conversion of untouchable Hindus in Islam.” He then supports religious conversion, “If you treat him worse than animals, they will convert to other religions, where they will get more human rights and will be treated like human beings. Then your lament that the Muslim and the Christian are harming Hindu fold will be futile.” In all these quotes Bhagat Singh’s thoughts are strikingly similar to those of Dr Ambedkar. Yet one thing is remarkable that by 1928 when Bhagat Singh penned this article Dr Ambedkar had not yet declared his intention to leave Hindu fold and to embrace other religion. The thoughts of Bhagat Singh on religious conversions have become even more relevant particularly in the backdrop of the then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s advocacy of national debate on religious conversion after gruesome killings of Graham Staines and his two children. Till now they have been challenged by Dr Ambedkar’s thoughts. Bhagat Singh’s thoughts too are confronting them.
Bhagat Singh recognised that the caste system basically promotes contemptuous feelings for labour and, therefore, has blocked India’s rise. He writes in most simple words, “.....Disrespect for even urgent types of work grew among the people. We scorn the Julahas. Even weavers are treated as untouchables. This has retarded our development.” Obviously Bhagat Singh links development to the social justice unlike the today’s model of development where economic development has been completely delinked from social justice.
Bhagat Singh supported the untouchables’ (‘dalits’ in today’s parlance) demands for separate electorate system. On this point also he is standing in league with Dr Ambedkar. On March 23, 1931 Bhagat Singh was hanged along with his two comrades. Had he been alive he would have supported Dr Ambedkar in his battle with Mahatma Gandhi over separate electorate system in 1932. He is unmistakable on this count, “We do understand that their organising themselves separately and, being equivalent to the Muslim in population, demanding equivalent rights, are welcome indications. Either do away with caste based discriminations or bestow separate rights to them. Councils and assemblies must strive to give them equal rights to avail facilities of schools and colleges, wells and roads. It should not be lip service but they themselves should lead them to public facilities. They should ensure admission of their children in schools. But the moot question is, in an assembly where in the name of religion people raise hue and cry over a legislative bill to curb child marriage, how can they dare to embrace the untouchables. It is, therefore, necessary that they should have their own representatives so that they are able to secure more rights for themselves.” It is noteworthy that Dr Amedkar had crystallised the demand for separate electorate for dalits only by first round table conference in 1930. But other dalit protagonists had been demanding separate electorate for themselves. By supporting separate electorate for dalits Bhagat Singh stands in opposition to the social imperialists and wins everlasting love, respect and confidence of the dalits. Gandhiji too opposed practices of untouchability prevalent in the society but he was dead against bestowing rights of separate electorate system to the dalits. By supporting dalits’ demand for rights of separate electorate system he proved that he was their true friend. As Kanshiram has contended in his famous polemic ‘The Age of Stooges’, the Poona Pact that denied rights of separate electorate system to the dalits became the chief tool to prevent the emergence of independent leadership from among the dalits. To repeal Poona Pact and win right of separate electorate system for themselves is still occupying a place of prominence in the Dalit agenda and therefore Bhagat Singh is still relevant for Dalit politics.
The militant Bhagat Singh suddenly turns bitter in his article and says, “Laton Ke Bhoot Baton Se Nahi Bhagte” i.e. “Those fit to be thrashed cannot be dismissed by words.” He goes on,” Unite, be self dependent and then challenge the whole of society. Then you will see no one will dare to deny you your rights. Don’t allow others to deceive you. Don’t expect anything from others.” But before this he arouses pride in dalits , “ The so called untouchables, the true servicemen and brothers of the people, rise. Know your history. None but you were the muscle of the army of Guru Govind Singh. It was on your strength that Shivaji could do what he did and for which Shivaji is still alive in history. Your sacrifices have been inscribed in golden letters.” Then he quotes Mayo, “Those who would be free must themselves strike the blow.”
In this article Bhagat Singh puts forward an important formulation which still holds great importance for dalit politics. He warns dalits against bureaucracy, “Don’t get trapped by bureaucracy. They are not willing to reach you help. Rather they are in look out how to make you pawns of their designs. This capitalistic bureaucracy is the real cause of your poverty and slavery. Never make an alliance with it. Beware of their machinations. Then everything will be set aright..” This is very important as Bhagat Singh does not blame directly the British regime for their miseries. Instead he takes an indirect route to blame capitalistic bureaucracy. He does not even name it “British bureaucracy.” So far as Bhagat Singh desists from directly blaming the British regime he is in conformity with Dr Ambedkar who too did not blame the Britishers directly for the ills of the dalit. However if we watch the scenario of dalit politics today the words of Bhagat Singh appear prophetic. The biggest faultline of dalit politics today is that it is heavily dependent on bureaucracy in two ways. First, it takes guidance from dalit bureaucracy so far as fixing the agenda of dalit politics is concerned. Second, dalit politics when it comes in power like Mayawati has done in UP again depends entirely on bureaucracy for preparation as well as for implementation of government welfare measures. All talks are centred on how to increase dalit participation in state apparatuses. Dalit as well as other political parties professing their agenda of social justice are in the habit of talking about that when they come in power they are helpless in reaching government welfare measures to the targeted population because of low representation of SC/ST/OBC in bureaucracy. They are unable to understand that so far as Brahminic system continues there will perhaps not come the day when bureaucracy will have sufficient SC/ST/OBC representation. It is the bureaucracy that supports Brahminism and SC/ST/OBC bureaucrats are compelled to make compromises in order to survive in the Brahminic bureaucracy. No system has ever been changed by people who became part and parcel of that system. Despite sixty years of SC/ST and fifteen years of OBC reservation in central services their percentage has remained abysmally low in elite services of IAS, IPS, IRS etc. The Hindustan Times, dated December 21, 2009 carries a news item based on figures provided by Minister of State for Personnel that states that of 88 Secretary level officers in Government of India there is no dalit, of 66 Additional Secretaries only one is dalit, of 249 Joint Secretaries only 13 are dalits and of 471 directors only 31 are dalits. So it is essential that besides doing everything to widen the scope of reservation so as to increase SC/ST/OBC representation in bureaucracy our attention should also move towards how to restructure the administrative system so as to decentralise and democratise it. Though SC/ST/OBC participation in bureaucracy has not reached to the desired level, we have seen substantial increase in dalit bahujan legislators and people’s representatives in parliament, state assemblies and local government bodies. In a true and effective democratic set up, elected representatives are everywhere entrusted and delegated the powers of executives to oversee and supervise the implementation of governmental projects as well as maintenance of law and order. In our country in order to vest power in the Brahminic bureaucracy the MLAs and MPs have been reduced to mere ceremonial figures having no authority in his or her constituency. An MLA or MP is a helpless onlooker of excesses of a police and administrative officer in his or her constituency. All powers are concentrated in DMs, SPs and then in the Chief Minister of the province. It is not without reason that it is commonly commented that the administrative system of the country is run by DM (District Magistrate), CM (Chief Minister) and PM (Prime Minister). Such centralised administrative system can never provide relief, welfare and succour to the poor and hapless citizens of the country of whom the overwhelming majority are dalit bahujans. So the best course of action for the sake of democracy and dalit bahujan empowerment at grass root level will be to take away to the maximum possible extent the administrative powers from bureaucracy and devolve them to the elected people’s representatives. In such a backdrop the observation and warning of Bhagat Singh to the dalits to beware of capitalistic bureaucracy assumes significance. Unfortunately, the dalit discourse spends all its energy in targeting Hindu religion to such an extent that other pressing issues remain neglected. Capitalistic bureaucracy is one such issue that has seldom been taken up by dalit intellectuals in their discourse. State question has an important place in strategy and tactics of any democratic movement.
By the end of the article Bhagat Singh provides another important formulation. He writes, “You are the real proletariat...get organised.” This is a great lesson to the Indian left who has never taken into account the social question in determining the class who would provide vanguard sections of revolution. The dalits are economically and socially the most oppressed sections of Indian society. Hence Bhagat Singh takes the position that they are the real proletariats.
In Indian society the location of a person in the caste system determines his consciousness. Capitalism in India is not more than one hundred fifty or two hundreds old but caste system dates back to ancient times. So the social-political consciousness arising out of hundreds of years old caste system is deeply ingrained in our psyche. Improvement in economic conditions of life may dampen revolutionary fervour of an upper caste proletariat but may fuel social consciousness of a dalit proletariat. Improved economic conditions of life may provide him the leisure in life giving him the opportunity and occasion to study the history of oppression, subjugation and discrimination faced by his ancestors. So the economic criteria alone cannot help a theorist of social revolution to determine which class is the real proletariat in the concrete social conditions of Indian society. By taking into account the social as well as economic conditions of life Bhagat Singh reaches at the conclusion that the dalits are the real proletariat of this land.
Bhagat Singh concludes the article, “Bring revolution through social movements and then be prepared for political and economic revolutions.” This is yet another important formulation of Bhagat Singh. Right from Jotiba Phule to Dr Ambedkar all have stressed upon the importance of social revolution in bringing about the final revolutions in political and economic sectors. Bhagat Singh who otherwise devoted major part of his short life for socialism and national liberation did not digress much from India’s great social revolutionaries in prescribing the trajectory of revolution. Bhagat Singh had started off his revolutionary life by making national liberation from subjugation of British rule the sole preoccupation. In a very short span of time he had realised that the ground for political-economic revolution in India cannot be prepared unless social revolution is effected. This was a great and stirring journey of Bhagat Singh in the realm of philosophy.
(Note: All the quotations of Bhagat Singh from the article have been translated in English by this writer from the Hindi version. The article in question has been taken from Bhagat Singh’s collected works published by Rajkamal Prakashan)
Twenty-five years after the world’s worst industrial disaster occurred at midnight on December 3, 1984, the only fact that seems worthy of being reported is that there is nothing about the disaster that is hidden anymore. Nothing that has not been written about; nothing more required to point fingers.
And yet, as the nation mourns the first anniversary of 26/11 through war-like visuals on TV, questions about Bhopal linger. While the perpetrators of 26/11 are being tried in court, justice has not been delivered to the victims of chemical poisoning here.
Even after a quarter century of protests, of misery, of lives lived in the shadow of death.The media finds catharsis for the trauma of 26/11 in its footage of the restored Taj Mahal hotel. But there is nothing redemptive for TV about slums full of poor survivors living on contaminated water demanding their right to justice, which are the only images 3/12 has to offer.
Victims of the Bhopal disaster note that while the Indian government submitted several dossiers of evidence to Pakistan over 26/11, it has failed to get one man, a declared fugitive, extradited from the U.S. even after every piece of evidence against him and the corporation he headed, Union Carbide, is public knowledge.
The Chief Judicial Magistrate of Bhopal, while issuing a second non-bailable warrant for the arrest of the then Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson earlier this year, held that the “wilful non-execution” of this warrant was a “punishable offence under sections 217 and 221 of IPC” on the part of the Union government and “public servants” concerned.
It also held that the “public servants” responsible for the execution were “Cabinet secretary K.M. Chandrashekhar and Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon.”
The industry-sponsored trivialisation of the Bhopal issue, including the Dursban bribery scandal, is not news anymore. There is enough on-the-record information about the captains of India Inc pitching in for Dow Chemical, which now owns Carbide, asking the government to free the U.S. conglomerate of the responsibility of cleaning up the Union Carbide factory premises.
Documents obtained by Bhopal activists through RTI reveal Ratan Tata’s personal letters to Manmohan Singh, Home Minister (then Finance Minister) P. Chidambaram and Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia in 2006, urging them to let Indian industry clean up the Bhopal site as it was “critical for Dow to have the Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers withdraw their application for a financial deposit by Dow against the remediation cost.”
Dow Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris was more forthright. In a letter to Ronen Sen, Indian ambassador to the U.S. at the time, he wrote: “Certainly, a withdrawal of application would be a positive demonstration that the GOI means what it says about Dow’s lack of responsibility in the matter.”
In return he offers, “economic growth in India, including key foreign investments that will promote job creation…”
“When we met the Prime Minister in 2008 and brought up the issue, he raised his hands and said he didn’t want to hear a word about Dow, saying tragedies happen and this country needs to move on,” says Rachna Dhingra of the Bhopal Group for Information and Action. But for those who still live with the contamination all around them, moving on is something they find impossible to do.
Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange. Four members of his family, including two women, were hacked to death in September 2006. In September 2008, six persons were awarded the death sentence in the case, but their appeal is pending in the Bombay High Court.
GROWINGUNEASE By Lyla Bavadam in Mumbai
ATROCITIES against the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes registered a steady rise in Maharashtra from 890 cases in 1999 to 1,385 cases in 2007, the latest year for which government statistics are available. In 1995, the Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party alliance promised to repeal the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, if voted to power. The reasoning was that it was a hindrance to communal harmony. One of the first moves of the Sena-BJP government (1995-2000) was to withdraw more than 1,000 cases registered under the Act, saying many of them were false. This in itself was illegal since it requires the court’s consent to withdraw cases. Most of the cases related to the aftermath of the violence that followed the renaming of MarathwadaUniversity as Dr Ambedkar University. Upper-caste Hindus protested violently at the time. Even now, caste tensions in the Marathwada region are the highest in the State.
Apart from the Sena-BJP’s attempt to get rid of the Act, there are doubts about the commitment of the government, of whichever party, towards it. Quoting figures from the 2007 annual report of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), the Asian Centre for Human Rights’ publication “Torture in India 2009” states that the NCRB “reported a total of 30,031 cases – including 206 cases under the Protection of Civil Rights Act and 9,819 cases under the S.C./S.T. Act – against the S.Cs in 2007. Although the average charge-sheeting rate for the crimes against the S.Cs was 90.6 per cent, the average conviction rate was only 30.9 per cent. A total of 51,705 persons (78.9 per cent) out of 65,554 persons arrested for crimes committed against Scheduled Castes were charge-sheeted, but only 29.4 per cent were convicted, consisting of 13,871 persons out of 47,136 persons against whom trials were completed.”
Special courts to try atrocity cases do not exist in Maharashtra. Instead, the government makes placatory gestures that do not go beyond reiterating the provisions of the S.C./S.T. Act. The most recent example was when the previous government said it would fine and curtail development funds to an entire village where a caste atrocity was committed . This provision exists in the Act. N.K. Sonare, national president of the Ambedkar Centre for Justice and Peace, India, said: “Everything is on paper. Nothing is applied. Instead there is always pressure on the people not to file complaints. The police are instructed not to file FIRs or to leave loopholes in investigation.” Sonare added that there were numerous conventions and recommendatory reports that supported victims of caste abuse, but the government was lax about following them.
If it had, then incidents such as the one that took place at Rajnai village in Beed district on August 23 could have been prevented. A 15-year-old S.C. girl was kidnapped and gangraped by three men, one of whom is believed to be a Hindu priest. She was left at a bus stand by her assailants. Her family filed an FIR but the police initially refused to register a case under the S.C./S.T. Act, though they did it later, under pressure from a non-governmental organisation (NGO). The main accused has not yet been arrested and the family is under pressure to withdraw the case. “They are landless people and depend on the upper castes for their income. This is being used to put pressure on them,” said a representative of the NGO.
If they did own some land and decide to grow something on it, they could meet the fate of Madhukar Ghatge of Kulakjai village in Satara district. When he retired from his job in the Railways in Mumbai in 2007, he only had one aim – cultivate his land in the village. One of the first things he did was to dig a well after acquiring the permission from the panchayat. It was, tragically, his last action. Ghatge’s upper-caste neighbours were enraged at his “audacity”. On April 26, 2007, he was attacked with rods and axes and he died on the way to hospital. Fourteen people were identified as the assailants and 12 were arrested and charged under sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the S.C./S.T. Act. A charge sheet was filed and they were released on bail. They are now believed to be absconding.
At Khairlanji village in Maharashtra's Bhandara district, outside the house of Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange.
If Dalits raised their voice, they were silenced brutally, as a young mother (name withheld) was at Telgaon village in Solapur district in March 2006. She knew she was taking a bold step when she complained against the liquor barons in her village but had no idea that they would use her caste against her. The mother of a child was stripped, beaten, paraded and then kept on “display” for a few hours. Her child was with her through this humiliation. After media intervention an FIR was filed under the S.C./S.T. Act, but the young woman’s social, emotional and economic support systems had been destroyed. Social pressures forced her husband to abandon her. She has no land and others are unwilling to employ her. Under the Act she is eligible for rehabilitation, but the district administration refused this. Instead, she was told that she could live in a government institution for abandoned women. Her child lives in another such institution. Her case is in the sessions court at Solapur at present.
Caste hatred at its worst perhaps was witnessed at Khairlanji village in Bhandara district in September 2006 when four members of a Dalit family, the Bhotmanges, were lynched by their neighbours belonging to the Other Backward Classes (OBCs), apparently following a dispute over the ownership and use of land. The two women victims were paraded naked and were said to have been gangraped by the residents of the village. All of them were ultimately hacked to death. In September 2008, six people were given the death sentence for the crime but they went in appeal and the case is in the Bombay High Court.
The greatest criticism against the handling of the Khairlanji case was that it was handled from a purely criminal angle and without invoking the S.C./S.T. Act. The charges related to murder, outraging the modesty of women, criminal conspiracy and unlawful assembly with deadly weapons (rape charges were not brought since the post-mortem did not give proof of that). The caste hatred and atrocity angle was completely bypassed even though the Bhotmanges lost their lives because they were Dalits.
That a person’s Dalit identity still overrides everything else in the villages was something Mumbai-returned Dilip Shendge, 25, forgot when he presumed that the use of the public handpump in his village, Bhutegaon in Jalna district, would be on a first-come, first-served basis, in May 2003. For this “lapse” he was murdered and his sister was accosted by a group of upper-caste Patils who taunted her about her caste. Later, she was beaten unconscious when she intervened in a fight between another brother of hers and some boys. Later that evening, the brother, sister and their mother were set on fire outside their house by a mob of Patils. Neighbours doused the flames, but it took them three hours to get the victims to hospital on a bullock cart. Dilip died a few days later of severe burns. A fact-finding team from the Committee for Protection of Democratic Rights was told at the police station that the register for the Bhutegaon case could not be found.
In July 1997, half way into the Sena-BJP government’s term, one morning the mainly Dalit residents of Ramabai Nagar in north Mumbai woke up to see a garland of slippers around a bust of Dr B.R. Ambedkar. They reacted violently, stoning vehicles on the nearby highway. The State Reserve Police Force (SRPF) was called in, and within minutes of their arrival they opened fire, killing 10 Dalits. On May 2009, a fast track court in Mumbai sentenced the SRPF platoon commander, Manohar Kadam, to life imprisonment. Though he was ultimately convicted of culpable homicide (and not under the S.C./S.T. Act), the real reason for the trouble remains a mystery.
The incident brought the Dalit population together in a way that Dalit leaders failed to. Already enraged by the 1995 decision to withdraw cases filed under the S.C./S.T. Act, Dalits were further infuriated by the defence of the firing by Chief Minister Manohar Joshi of the Shiv Sena and Deputy Chief Minister Gopinath Munde of the BJP. In the 1999 Assembly elections the alliance was voted out and it is widely accepted that Dalits, who form 12 per cent of the State’s population, played a significant role in this.
HOSTILEACTS By T.K. Rajalakshmi in Jaipur
IT is still known as “Kumher kaand” (Kumher carnage). The massacre of Jatavs in Kumher town in Rajasthan’s Bharatpur district 17 years ago is something that is not forgotten easily. The incident occurred on June 6, 1992, when 254 homes and hutments were set ablaze. Officially, 17 Jatavs were burnt alive, but independent sources put the number of dead at 30. There were cases of arson, molestation and destruction of property of Jatavs by Jats of the area. Some 600 families reportedly fled Kumher. The BJP was the ruling party in Rajasthan in 1992 and Bhairon Singh Shekhawat the Chief Minister.
P.L. Mimroth, founder of the Centre for Dalit Rights (CDR), recalls not only the incident but the struggle to make public the report of the K.S. Lodha Commission (also called the Kumher Inquiry Commission). The commission readied its report in 1996. The report, says Mimroth, was never tabled; only an Action Taken Report was submitted by the BJP government in 2006, after a lot of pressure was put through the courts, though the government claimed that it had tabled the actual report. “I asked many legislators. They denied seeing a copy of the Lodha Commission report,” he said.
Mimroth added that he could not obtain a copy of the report until 2006; he got it only after filing a writ petition and a petition under the Right to Information (RTI) Act. In 1992, Mimroth was the general secretary of the Society of Depressed People for Social Justice and had deposed before the Lodha Commission. “I have three gunny bags of affidavits relating to the Kumher case,” says Mimroth, who was entrusted with the task of conducting an inquiry by the National Centre for Human Rights (NCHR), an organisation based in Delhi.
Since 1992, there have been many incidents involving violence and atrocities against Dalits but none evoked the kind of revulsion “Kumher kaand” did. It started with a clash in a cinema hall when some Jatav youth were manhandled. Then the cinema hall was pelted with stones and rumours were spread that the modesty of upper-caste women had been outraged. The frenzy that was built up soon metamorphosed into an organised pogrom against Jatavs. Water supply to the Jatav locality was disconnected and the hutments were set afire.
In Bharatpur that day, Jats of 46 villages held a caste panchayat where aggressive speeches were made. Barring the victims and people representing them, no one else, including those representing the administration, found anything harmful in the aggressive posturing.
It is not surprising that the writ of caste and community panchayats continues to run in the face of administrative apathy and nonchalance in parts of western Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab. As a result the democratic rights of the poor, women and the socially marginalised are violated regularly. With widening economic inequalities and a section desirous of seeking the rights guaranteed under the Constitution, such clashes and tensions are likely to increase.
Most conflicts are related to land. The record of implementing land reforms is very poor in Rajasthan. There are at least 10 atrocity-prone districts but the State government has not declared a single one as such and the administrative infrastructure to deal with them under the provisions of the S.C./S.T. Act are missing. Of the 33 districts, only 17 have special courts to deal with atrocities against Dalits. “The Act provides for all these. It is a stringent and exhaustive piece of legislation provided it is implemented,” said Mimroth.
A Dalit woman who was assaulted twice allegedly by a contractor appointed under the NREGA at Tikel village, 60 km from Jaipur, in June.
Curiously, in 1992, the advent of the Act seemed to have a direct bearing on the events that led to the Kumher incident. Among the many submissions made to the Lodha Commission, there was one, made by the Zila Nyaya Sangharsh Samiti, claiming that following the advent of the Act, Jatavs had trumped up several false cases against upper-caste people and that Congress politicians, with a view to suppress Jats had always appointed Jatavs in key posts in Bharatpur district. It was ironic that even this did little to prevent the carnage. The Sangharsh Samiti concluded that Jatavs were not Dalits, that they were economically sound.
Another organisation to submit a statement of facts was the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, the youth wing of the BJP, which held, among other things, that in Bharatpur district, the relationship between Jatavs and Jats was very cordial and that only political parties such as the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) provided an impetus to the caste conflict. The Lodha Commission rubbished this assertion but averred that there had been indiscriminate use of the S.C./S.T. Act, which fractured “reciprocal relations between Jats and Jatavs at Kumher and its vicinity.”
While the Lodha Commission made broadly progressive recommendations and observations, it noted that the S.C./S.T. Act had become “the prime circumstance for deteriorated (sic) mutual harmony between Jatavs and other upper castes”. It is baffling that a piece of legislation, by its use, should lead to disharmony unless it upset the status quo to a large extent. More surprising is the fact that no government wanted the Lodha Commission report made public.
Eastern Rajasthan borders certain districts of Uttar Pradesh, which in that period had seen the rise of the BSP. Whether this acted as a catalyst is not certain, though clashes between Jatavs and Jats in these areas were reportedly common. The Lodha Commission was critical of the district administration for not carrying out preventive arrests and not issuing prohibitory orders. Instead, the Commission noted, an elaborate exercise was undertaken against Jatavs.
As in most States, the rate of registration of crimes against Dalits in Rajasthan is not very high. All ruling parties have done little to remedy this. A study conducted by the CDR in 2008 found that of the total 1,261 cases of atrocities against Dalits that year, nearly 380 related to the practice of untouchability; 149 related to violence against women; 140 involved land disputes; and 181 pertained to violence during elections.
Vasudev, State secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), explained that eastern Rajasthan was particularly vulnerable to caste violence owing to the benefits of education percolating down. However, he said, the tribal people of southern Rajasthan were in a much worse state.
“Until and unless there is an organised protest, no first information report [FIRs] is registered. We need to bring land reforms centre stage,” he said, adding that the increasing economic deprivation of these sections made them more vulnerable than before. He mentioned the gangrape of a Dalit college student on August 15 at Neem Ka Thana in Sikar district. It was only after the CPI(M) and other organisations made a hue and cry the culprits, all upper-caste youth, were arrested.
The situation of S.Ts was no less different. Barring one dominant section residing in the eastern parts of the State, which benefited most from the reservation policy, the tribal people of southern Rajasthan remain more or less where they were before Independence.
Said Vasudev: “Twenty years ago, at a meeting in Dungarpur, I asked a group of Bhils what their concept of heaven was. An old lady, Mangi Bai, said heaven for her meant a bowl of sweet laapi [wheat porridge], a guthdi [a cover made from old clothes] and a jhompi [hut]. They dream of the same things even today.”
A State secretariat member of the CPI(M), Dhuli Chand Meena, who is associated with the Kisan Sabha in southern Rajasthan, said the atrocities against the tribal people were mainly land-related. In those parts, where the remnants of feudalism still persisted along with mixed populations, discrimination existed in the form of denying the tribal people the right to sit on cots or in chairs or even wear proper clothes, he said.
“Whenever cases are registered, they are not followed up and cognisable offences are not registered. The conviction rates for atrocities committed against the tribal people are very low. In fact, what can be said for the S.Cs can be safely extended to the S.Ts as well, the only difference being that all the human development indicators of the S.Ts in southern Rajasthan are very poor when compared with even the rest of the State,” Dhuli Chand Meena said.
If anything, the Act, along with other laws such as the Forest Rights Act, needs to be implemented rigorously. For a social reform measure to succeed one of the basic prerequisites is political will, which seems to be lacking.
CONSTANTVIGIL By Venkitesh Ramakrishnan in Bathani Tola and Patna
“THE senas [militia] are not very active and there have been no big attacks or mass killings. But life is still the same. We are here and they are there, in different parts of the village, with not much communication or contact. And, of course, there is the fear that something may break out unexpectedly. We need to keep vigil all the time.” This was how Lal Chand Chaudhary, 55, described the present situation at Bathani Tola in Bihar’s Bhojpur district.
Thirteen years ago, on July 11, 1996, he, a Dalit, lost his wife, Sancharu Devi, and one-and–a-half-year-old girl child, Baby Sugandhi, when members of the Ranveer Sena, the self-professed militia of the upper-caste Bhumihar community, launched a ferocious attack on the hamlet. Among the 22 people killed were 12 women and eight children. Lal Chand got a compensation of Rs.1 lakh from the government and help to set up a telephone booth, but that did not change social equations. As he says, his community of Dalits and a clutch of Muslims occupy the Tola and the Bhumihars stay a little distance away in the main part called Barki Kharaon.
Lal Chand and many others, including his neighbour Phaguni Chaudhary, whose mother and brother were killed that day, made bold to stay on in Bathani Tola and show that they would not succumb to terror. But not so Naimuddeen, the bangle seller who lost six members of his family in the attack; he moved to Ara, the district headquarters of Bhojpur. He, too, got a compensation for the lives lost and the job of a peon in a government office in Ara.
Lal Chand Chaudhary (sitting) lost his wife and infant daughter in the massacre of Dalits by the Ranveer Sena at Bathani Tola village in Bihar's Bhojpur district in 1996. Twenty-two Dalits were killed in the attack. While many Dalits fled the village, Chaudhary stayed back and now runs a telephone booth at his house along with his son.
Talking to Frontline, Naimuddeen said that though he has a job the governments that came to power since 1996 are yet to fulfil the promises and assurances they gave. “As I lost six of my kin, the then government offered jobs to two survivors in the family. But the promise made to my son is yet to be kept despite our submitting innumerable applications to successive governments over the past decade,” he says.
Naimuddeen adds that the administration has failed to address the security concerns of the family. “As a family that got ravaged in a gruesome caste attack, I had asked for a gun licence to protect myself, but that has been denied systematically. There is the propaganda that the Ranveer Sena is a dead organisation, but that is entirely untrue,” he says. “They are regrouping under a new leadership and have stepped up their activities in many places, including Bhojpur district. The only succour we have is from the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist-Liberation) led by leaders like Dipankar Bhattacharjee.”
The CPI (ML) has been active in the village since the early 1970s and has been winning panchayat elections in and around Bathani Tola since 1978. According to a number of Dalits and Muslims, this political affiliation does help in keeping the balance of power in the village. Still, there are stray attacks and skirmishes. Last year, two young men of the Tola, Dhanesh Kanu and his friend Tarakeshwar Yadav, were killed in the Barki Kharaon area. Kanu, a plus-two student, had gone for a function in his school and had taken a short-cut close to Barki Kharaon. He and Tarakeshwar Yadav were done to death in that part of the village. Kanu’s aunt Kunti Devi said her nephew was killed by members of the upper-caste militia in a clear instance of caste killing. However, the local police and the administration treated this as a case of personal vendetta.
According to activists of the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR), such official apathy is nothing new and is not confined to places like Bathani Tola. They point out that the families of the 10 Dalit victims belonging to the Nat community, who were lynched by upper-caste people on September 13, 2007, in Dhelpruva village in Vaishali district, were also given similar treatment by the administration. However, political mobilisation by different Dalit organisations, including the Ram Vilas Paswan-led Lok Janshakti Party (LJP), the CPI(ML) and the NCDHR, has strengthened the resolve of Dalit communities in many parts of the State to fight for their rights.
Lakshmanpur-Bathe, where 58 Dalits, including women and children, were killed on December 1, 1997, by Ranveer Sena activists, is cited as a case in point by many observers. Dalits of the village have reportedly become more organised after the incident and demand their rights in a collective and effective manner.
This has curtailed the strike power of many upper-caste militias. For 25 years, starting from the mid-1970s, Bihar had a large number of active upper-caste militia groups, making the State synonymous with atrocities against the S.C. Over 80 armed attacks took place against Dalits and other oppressed sections during this period and claimed more than 300 lives. Such rampant attacks have come down in the past five years.
However, as the people of Bathani Tola, including Lal Chand Chaudhary, noted, this by itself has not brought about dramatic changes in the social equations or in the discrimination against Dalits. A fear that things can take a turn for the worse rules large sections of the Dalit population in Bihar even today and the community exists in a state of eternal vigil.
LITTLEIMPACT By S. Dorairaj in Chennai
IF the Kizhavenmani carnage of Dalits in 1968 in the then composite Thanjavur district is an indelible blot on the history of Tamil Nadu, there followed many more such crimes, each more heinous than the previous one. The Melavalavu multiple murders, the Tamiraparani massacre, the Kodiyankulam violence, the Nalumoolaikinaru atrocities, the Thinniyam humiliation and the murder of democracy in Pappapatti and three other reserved village panchayats where elections were scuttled for 10 years were the worst among them. The enactment of the S.C./S.T. Act in 1989 and the notification of its Rules in 1995 made no difference to this horrible situation.
According to the State Crime Records Bureau, from 2003 to 2008 a total of 8,209 crimes against Dalits were reported, including 5,047 cases under the S.C./S.T. Act and 3,162 under the IPC. The average conviction rate in both categories was only 24.26 per cent. But Evidence, a Madurai-based NGO, has put the average conviction rate in the cases registered under the S.C./S.T. Act alone at 5 per cent to 7 per cent.
Progressive and secular forces by their concerted efforts have recorded resounding successes in the legal battle against casteist forces in a few cases. In the Melavalavu (Madurai district) case, relating to the gruesome killing of the local panchayat president K. Murugesan and five other Dalits on June 30, 1997, the Supreme Court upheld the life sentence awarded to 17 persons in its order on October 22, 2009.
Uthapuram in Madurai district is another success story where a part of the “wall of untouchability” put up by casteist forces was demolished and the victims of police excesses were paid a total compensation of Rs.15 lakh on the recommendation of the inquiry commission appointed by the Madras High Court in January last. The Dalits’ struggle to end caste oppression in the village had the complete backing of the Tamil Nadu Untouchability Eradication Front (TNUEF), the CPI(M) and the All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA).
Much ahead of these two cases, the apex court gave a landmark judgment in a case relating to police excesses in Nalumoolaikinaru in Tuticorin district in 1992, holding 82 police personnel, including a Deputy Inspector General of Police and the Superintendent of Police, guilty. The court also ordered disbursement of compensation, totalling Rs.23 lakh, to the victims, who were represented by AIDWA.
In several other cases, the perpetrators of violence went scot-free. Notable among these is the Kodiyankulam violence of August 31, 1995, in which the police let loose terror in a Dalit habitation, and the Thamiraparani massacre of July 23, 1999, which claimed 17 lives when the police launched a brutal attack on a rally of estate workers in Tirunelveli town even as they ran towards the river in a bid to escape.
In the Thinniyam torment of May 22, 2002, the accused got away with a mild punishment though they had committed the grave crime of forcing two Dalits to eat each other’s excreta. The issue was brought to the notice of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) and the National S.C.-S.T. Commission by the Tamil Nadu People’s Watch.
One reason why only a small number of cases are registered is that Dalits do not file complaints against the dominant communities fearing reprisal, as they depend mostly on the landholders for their livelihood. The time-consuming nature of litigation also forces them to keep away from police stations, says P. Sampath, TNUEF convener. “Even if they lodge a complaint under the S.C./S.T. Act, the police ask the caste Hindus to lodge a counter complaint so that a criminal case is filed against the Dalits, too. The negligible conviction rate in cases under the S.C./S.T. Act also demoralises the oppressed sections,” he adds.
Senior advocate P. Rathinam, who has fought many cases of atrocities against Dalits, says that most of the crimes against the oppressed sections are not registered under the S.C./S.T. Act. “Even when they are registered, the first information report is diluted deliberately. In certain cases, due compensation, as per an order issued by the State government in 1998, is not disbursed to the victims,” he alleges.
A. Kathir, director of Evidence, has urged the State government to conduct a detailed review of the implementation of the various aspects of the S.C./S.T. Act, such as the registering of cases and the preparation of charge sheets. Of a total of 6.68 lakh cases of cognisable crimes reported in 2008, only 0.24 per cent were under the S.C./S.T. Act.
The special courts set up by the government for quick disposal of cases relating to atrocities against Dalits need better infrastructure to achieve their objective, he says. “A detailed survey on the atrocity-prone villages is the need of the hour,” he added.
As per official data, discriminatory practices against Dalits exist in 28 districts in the State, which has been ruled by the two major Dravidian parties – Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) – since 1967.
Policy note
The government’s policy note on the Adi Dravidar and Tribal Welfare Department for 2009-2010 refers to the “effective implementation” of the Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955, and the S.C./S.T. Act to abolish untouchability and to prevent atrocities against Dalits. It speaks about the role of the human rights and social justice wing of the State police in enforcing the provisions of the two Acts and of the four special sessions courts functioning in Tiruchi, Thanjavur, Madurai and Tirunelveli for the speedy disposal of cases.
One of the Dalit victims of an atrocity in 2002 at Thinniyam village in TamilNadu's Tiruchi district during an inquiry by the then District Collector K.Manivasan. He and another Dalit were forced to eat each other's excreta.
However, the government’s efforts to create awareness against untouchability have had very little impact going by Minister for Adi Dravidar Welfare A. Tamilarasi’s own admission in the policy note, which was tabled in the Assembly on July 3. In it she says the message of the “mass awareness campaign and the social justice tea parties” launched by the government has reached only six lakh people so far. Cosmetic measures will do nothing to bring about any significant change in the prevailing scenario, says P. Sampath. Several other activists who have been working for the welfare of Dalits in a focussed manner also feel that radical socio-economic programmes have to be implemented for the empowerment of Dalits and to end disparities in terms of productive resources such as land, finance, education and employment, besides taking stringent measures against the perpetrators of atrocities against them.
This becomes particularly important in a State where Dalits are numerically a significant section. As per the 2001 Census, Dalits form 19 per cent and the S.Ts 1.04 per cent, of the total population of 6.24 crore. Of the 385 blocks in the State, 153 have more than 25 per cent Dalit population and around 3,550 villages have more than 40 per cent Dalit population. S.Cs and S.Ts constitute more than 20 per cent of the population in six of the 30 districts (as of 2008). Among them, in Tiruvarur they form 32.35 per cent, Nilgris 31.23 per cent, Perambalur 30.21 per cent, Cuddalore 27.76 per cent and Villupuram 27.39 per cent.
Official data for 2008 indicate that curbing atrocities against the oppressed sections is a formidable task. There are 186 villages classified as “atrocity prone” and 230 that are “dormant atrocity prone”. Among them, 166 villages have been described as “highly sensitive”.
Various social indicators make it amply clear that the State has a poor record of empowerment of Dalits. According to official sources, 31.2 per cent of the Dalit population in rural areas and 40.2 per cent in urban areas are among the below-poverty-line social groups. Official documents also point out that the literacy level of Dalits is much lower than the general literacy rate. According to the 2001 Census, as against the State’s general literacy rate of 76.2 per cent, only 63.2 per cent of Dalits and 41.5 per cent of members of the S.Ts are literate. The lack of political will for radical land reforms and redistribution of surplus land to landless Dalits has contributed to conflicts in the rural areas. Even official sources point out that though 83.08 lakh Dalits live in villages, only 10 per cent of them are cultivators. Around 90 per cent of these cultivators have less than one hectare of land. As per the 2001 Census, 58.5 per cent of Dalits are agricultural workers and 29 per cent fall in the “other workers” category.
Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi’s statement on November 11 that surplus land has been distributed to 61,985 landless Dalits under the Tamil Nadu Land Reforms (Reduction of Ceiling on Land) Act, 1970, only shows the yawning gap between the Dalits’ quest for land and the government’s response, a veteran leader of the All India Kisan Sabha points out.
Demanding a holistic approach to the issue, the TNUEF, an umbrella organisation of 45 State-level class and mass outfits and 15 Dalit and human rights associations, took out a rally in Chennai on October 27. Besides calling for the strict implementation of the S.C./S.T. Act and the Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955, it called for steps to redeem the 2.5 lakh acres (one lakh hectares) of “panchami” lands grabbed from Dalits. Setting up of a State Commission for S.C.-S.T. welfare; the formation of district-level panels with due representation to Dalit organisations and secular forces to monitor the implementation of these two Acts; and the raising of the percentage of reservation for S.Cs to 19, commensurate with their population, are among the other demands of the front.
COURTSNEEDED By Vikhar Ahmed Sayeed in Bangalore
ON August 2, 1987, in Bendigere village of Belgaum district in northern Karnataka, four S.C. youth were forced to eat human excreta by caste Hindus who accused them of stealing maize. According to excerpts from a report of the Karnataka Legislature Committee for the Welfare of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes for the year 1987-88, the upper-caste men abused the Dalit youth using their caste name and threatened them: “You bloody fellows, go and bring human shit and eat it, otherwise you will have to face severe consequences.”
Several days went by before this gross act was even reported, but the incident (along with other such instances across the country) was responsible for the inclusion of Section 3(1)(i) in the S.C./S.T. Act. However, the Act has not led to any significant reduction in atrocities reported against Dalits in the State.
According to the 2001 Census, the S.Cs constituted slightly over 16 per cent of the State’s population and the S.Ts around 6.5 per cent. According to National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) statistics for 2007, there were 205 incidents of crime against members of the S.Cs and 1,844 incidents against members of the S.Ts. This is partly because Dalits, more than Adivasis, have fixed roles in the political economy of a populated area.
According to the Directorate of Civil Rights Enforcement, a State-level body that looks into complaints regarding atrocities against members of the S.Cs and the S.Ts, the number of convictions under the Act is insignificant. The majority of the cases are either pending trial or are classified as “B reports” (meaning that the complaint itself has been proved wrong or false).
According to the NCRB’s statistics, Karnataka ranks sixth in the country in the number of crimes against S.Cs and eighth in crimes against S.Ts. (By population, Karnataka ranks ninth in the country.)
According to S. Japhet, Director of the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy at the National Law School of India University, part of the reason why the Act has failed to deter atrocities against Dalits is that Karnataka has some of the lowest conviction rates for complaints made under it. Japhet was the coordinator for a research that led to a report in 2005 evaluating the performance of special courts that were set up for dealing with cases of atrocities under the S.C./S.T. Act.
According to Japhet, this is one of the most serious drawbacks in the implementation of the Act. “In the majority of districts in the country, there are no special courts as mandated by the provisions of this Act,” he said. Between 1997 and 2000, only four districts in Karnataka had the special courts compared with 12 in Andhra Pradesh, 10 in Gujarat, 35 in Madhya Pradesh, 17 in Rajasthan and 40 in Uttar Pradesh.
According to K.L. Chandrashekhar Aijoor, research assistant at the same centre where Japhet works, the number of special courts in Karnataka has only gone up to seven now, but considering that every district is supposed to have a special court, Karnataka should have 29 such courts. (These are usually sessions courts that are briefly designated as special courts to deal with cases under the Act.)
FAILURE OF THE ACT
One of the most glaring examples of the failure of the Act in Karnataka was the acquittal of all the accused in the March 2000 massacre of seven Dalits at Kambalapalli village in Kolar district, around 80 kilometres from Bangalore. The massacre took place after a skirmish between Vokkaligas and Dalits. The gruesome killings were the result of a cumulative build-up of tension between the Vokkaliga and the increasingly aware Dalit communities in the region.
The immediate provocation was an altercation between two Dalit youth and a Reddy (Vokkaliga) man over the use of a certain stretch of road. Following this a mob of Vokkaligas attacked a group of Dalits who had returned after filing a police complaint. The houses of a Dalit and his neighbour were burnt. Among the seven Dalits who died were a woman and her two sons and daughter.
According to media reports, the witnesses turned hostile when the case came up for hearing in the local court. All the accused were acquitted. The matter is waiting to be heard in the Karnataka High Court.
Such prolonged delay demonstrates that the twofold purpose of the Act – to prevent atrocities and to provide compensation and rehabilitation to victims after a speedy trial – has not been fulfilled.
More than 25 per cent of the population in Kolar is Dalit and the district has a history of caste violence. In the decades before the massacre, there was resentment over the establishment of a Dalit Sangharsh Samiti (DSS) chapter in the district. Part of the discord between upper and lower castes stems from the seemingly upward mobility of Dalits.
Karnataka has an active Dalit movement, which started in the 1970s. As its effects began to filter down, the consciousness among Dalits about their constitutional rights increased. This has led to a change in their attitude towards caste. The upper castes have resented this change. Even trivial things like the way a Dalit dressed annoyed upper-caste members. In Kambalapalli, for example, one of the victims used to tuck in his shirt.
A report on the Kambalapalli carnage published by the People’s Democratic Forum in April 2000 said: “The tucked-in shirt is like a red rag for caste Hindus, for it symbolised the growing arrogance of Dalits and their modernisation.”
While the conscious identity of Dalits has led to resentment from the upper castes in rural areas, even urban areas like Bangalore are not immune to caste discrimination. “Over the past two years, two Dalit students committed suicide in Bangalore – one was a student of the Indian Institute of Science, while the other was a student of the University of Agricultural Sciences. The prejudiced mindset of caste-Hindu society led to creating a situation where these students committed suicide,” said Lolaksha, a social activist who follows closely the instances of discrimination against Dalits in the State.
MANYHURDLES By Aparna Alluri in Hyderabad
LALITHA (name changed on request), 25, is awaiting her court summons. A member of the women’s wing of the Madiga Reservation Porata Samithi (MRPS), she was active in her local community until she became a victim herself.
As part of community initiatives, she often visited the local police station. When a new circle inspector was appointed in March 2008, she had a minor altercation with him. She says his immediate response was, “You are a Madiga and you are wearing sunglasses, driving a bike and walking around so confidently. Who do you think you are?”
“For nearly eight months, every time I met him, he repeated the same thing. He abused me by my caste name several times.” The verbal taunts soon escalated to sexual overtures. When she questioned him about complaints she had received against him, things became worse. “In November, I was arrested and detained for one night. He threatened me, shoved me against a wall and warned me against confronting him again. I was shifted to the women’s police station only at 1-30 a.m.,” she says.
Her case is pending with the State Human Rights Commission. She is yet to file an FIR against the officer for fear of further harassment. “I don’t know what else to do,” she says. “He expects me to cower in fear, but why should I?” she says. “I am educated, I know right from wrong and I know my rights. In what way am I lesser than he?”
Lalitha’s case is more the rule than the exception. Counter-cases have become an easy recourse to delaying and eventually denying justice to historically disadvantaged groups. “For every case filed by a Dalit there is a counter case against him/her by the accused,” says M. Chalapathi, High Court advocate and Dalit rights coordinator, Human Rights Law Network (HRLN).
“The police register the second complaint and arrest the Dalit victim, compelling him/her to withdraw the case. Or, they keep both cases pending and use the case as ammunition when the victim pressures them to act,” says Bojja Tarakam, eminent lawyer and Dalit rights activist.
This remains the situation, even after 12 of the State’s 23 districts have been identified as atrocity-prone by the government. Attack is the most common form of atrocity, accounting for 27 per cent of the crimes.
Of the State’s population of 7,62,10,007 (2004-05), the S.Cs constitute 1,23,39,496 and the S.Ts 50,24,104. Dalits belong mainly to two castes – Mala and Madiga – and are agricultural labourers. The land-owning, politically dominant groups are Reddys, Kammas, Rajus and Kapus. This social and economic polarisation has had significant political implications. The 1980s marked the advent of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and the rise of the Dalit movement. N.T. Rama Rao’s rise to power is often seen as the political ascendancy of coastal Andhra’s rich Kamma farmers. The atrocities against Dalits in Karamchedu (1985), Neerukonda (1987) and Chundur (1991) were seen as manifestations of a conflict caused by the shift in political power at the top and the rising consciousness below.
More than two decades later, the State’s record in checking atrocities against Dalits remains poor. According to figures with the Department of Social Welfare, 4,157 cases were registered in 2008 under the S.C./S.T. Act. Of these, 1,783 cases were closed as false and 1,004 are pending completion of investigation. For the same period, out of 3,661 cases brought to court, only 128 resulted in convictions. Interestingly, only in eight cases appeals were filed on the acquittals.
As for visits by the Vigilance and Monitoring Committees prescribed under the Act, only 45 visits were recorded for 19 districts in 2008. Information was cited as unavailable for the remaining four districts.
Currently, there is a writ petition pending in the Andhra Pradesh High Court demanding the effective implementation of the S.C./S.T. Act, 1989, and Rules 1995.
The counter-affidavits filed by the police in response to the petition speak for themselves. Police records in the period from 1995 to 2006 show that 21,000 cases were registered under the Act. Of these, more than 14,000 are pending without a charge sheet being filed, even though the Act stipulates that investigation must be completed within 30 days of the FIR being filed. “This is a clear violation of Section 4 of the Act, which deals with dereliction of duty,” says Chalapathi.
The petition demands that criminal proceedings be initiated against those police officers who fail to discharge their duties as prescribed under the Act. “The Act insists on special courts and special public prosecutors to enable speedy trial. But cases have been pending for nearly 10 years in the investigation stage itself,” says Bojja Tarakam. “Yet not a single police officer has been prosecuted for negligence.”
He says one reason for such high pendency is the many attempts to quash cases by claiming that they are false. “When the High Court receives such a petition, it stays all further proceedings, including investigation, though the Supreme Court has directed the High Court not to interfere in investigations.”
However, the reasons for delay cited in the counter-affidavits are far more incredulous. The reasons include “for want of accused”, “for want of examination of witness”, “no post-mortem report”, “no FSL [forensic science laboratory] certificate”, even for cases pending since 1995. Even VIP duty is submitted as a reason for numerous investigations pending since 1996.
“Whose fault is that?” asks Chalapathi. “Is this not negligence of duty?”
The delay itself seems to have become the reason in many instances. “Case Diary not available and as such unable to furnish the exact reason for delay,” or “as the case was registered in 1998, reasons not known to present Investigating Officer,” reads one entry in the register. “Close to 105 reasons have been furnished and not one is legally substantial,” says Chalapathi.
“I have personally told police officers that they may be technically right in closing certain cases, but the matter doesn’t end there. If witnesses turn hostile, they need to ask why that has happened,” says A. Vidyasagar, former Commissioner of Social Welfare. He agrees that special courts do exist, but says “the progress they have made seems to suggest that cases under the S.C./S.T. Act are only one of the things they address rather than their priority”. He says a review at the Chief Minister’s level in 2008 led to a suggestion that a Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) must be made to supervise the inquiries in every district. “The idea was accepted,” he says. “The only solution is continuous review.”
Trial is a far cry for many because registering a case is often a struggle by itself. Getting a case registered under the S.C./S.T. Act is a bigger hurdle. Whether the accused abused the victim by his caste name is often seen as the grounds for registering cases under the Act. However, the Act only stipulates that the victim must belong to the S.C./S.T. community and the accused to another community. If the victim or his/her family has a Christian name, or is known to go to church, they are told they cannot register the case under the Act. “This is sufficient to file a petition quashing the case as false. The court gives the victims 15 days to file an objection, failing which the case is closed. Given that most of these people are poor and uneducated, they may not respond in time,” says Chalapathi.
Curiously, caste certificates are often demanded not just to register a case but also for the investigation to proceed. In numerous cases, this was cited as the reason for the delay in the investigation.
The hurdles are many and victories have been few and far between. Even as hundreds wait for justice, police records and trials only present a part of the picture. “Untouchability is still rampant. Dalits are still not treated as humans. Where is the question of human rights?” asks Chalapathi.
VENKITESH RAMAKRISHNAN AND AJOY ASHIRWAD MAHAPRASHASTA
An innocent survivor amidst scattered bodies, a scene after the Ranveer Sena's carnage of Dalits at Shankarbigha in Jehanabad district of Bihar on the eve of Republic Day in 1999. Dalit rights activists say the Ranveer Sena, a private militia of Bhumihar landlords which terrorised Dalits in the 1990s, is regrouping.
THE ascent of the Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) to power in Uttar Pradesh on May 13, 2007, was seen as a defining moment in the politics of Dalit empowerment in the country. The Scheduled Caste (S.C.) leader of an avowedly “Dalit assertive” party had been Chief Minister earlier too, but the difference this time was that her party came to power on its own, without needing the support of other parties and independent members.
Thousands of Dalits who gathered in the State capital, Lucknow, on that day expressed the hope that atrocities against the S.Cs would decline drastically under the new “single-party” regime. Many social activists and observers who spoke to Frontline then also hoped that a single-party government under a Dalit Chief Minister in the country’s most populous State would have a salutary effect on Dalits’ condition elsewhere in the country too.
Approximately a year later, papers and documents presented at a two-day international seminar on Uttar Pradesh, organised by the Observer Research Foundation (ORF), a Delhi-based think tank, provided an indication of the situation on the ground. The papers documented that “within a month of the [Mayawati] government’s assumption of office, seven Dalits were killed in Muzaffarnagar, while three Dalit women were raped in the same district”. The papers also revealed that reports from areas such as Rae Bareli, Mohanlalganj, Lakhimpur Kheri and Mahoba were of a similar nature and that atrocities against Dalits continued in spite of the political gains made by the BSP.
The presentations at the seminar pointed out that the political leadership found it difficult to implement what was perhaps its most important Dalit empowerment programme – the allotment of patta land to Dalits – on account of strong anti-Dalit sentiments within the administration.
A field study presented at the seminar revealed that in scores of villages in western Uttar Pradesh, in districts such as Baghpat, Muzaffarnagar and Meerut, Dalits were unable to occupy patta land allotted to them because of intimidation and in some cases even physical prevention by upper-caste groups. Not surprisingly, sections of the police and the administration were hand in glove with the upper-caste elements. Such was their allegiance to the caste interests that even repeated orders from the Chief Minister’s Office to the District Magistrates failed to have any effect in a number of cases.
The National Crime Record Bureau’s (NCRB) statistics for 2007 for crimes against members of the S.Cs and the Scheduled Tribes (S.Ts) corroborated the presentations made at the seminar. The figures showed that Uttar Pradesh topped the list on atrocities against the S.Cs and the S.Ts, with 2,113 cases out of a total of 9,819. The data also indicated a 10.2 per cent increase in crimes against the S.Cs and the S.Ts at the national level. Uttar Pradesh accounted for 20.5 per cent of all cases in India. The BSP’s argument was that under the “friendly” Mayawati regime more S.C. members made bold to register cases against their oppressors.
There was merit in this argument, but the fact remained that Dalits were at the receiving end in large parts of Uttar Pradesh, where the politics of empowerment of the S.Cs and the S.Ts, the protection of their interests, their physical safety and the assertion of their constitutional rights had acquired, in comparative terms, the highest political and electoral acceptability.
Social and political observers hark back to an observation made by B.R. Ambedkar to explain this context. Ambedkar had said: “History shows that where ethics and economics come in conflict, victory is always with economics. Vested interests have never been known to have willingly divested themselves unless there was sufficient force to compel them.”
Long-standing apartheid
Twenty years after the passage of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, the vociferous advocacy of the same by almost all political parties and even the rise of the politics of S.C.-S.T. empowerment across the country, it seems that the quantum of “sufficient force” visualised by Ambedkar would have been colossal. As the case of Uttar Pradesh indicates, the effective implementation of the Act would take a lot more than electoral victories and increasing political space.
The gaps in the implementation of the Act stand in stark contrast to the convictions that underlay its enactment. In simple terms, the legislation aims to prevent the various forms of offences by persons other than members of the S.C. and the S.T. against members of these communities. But studies have shown that it has systematically been prevented from achieving its goal. A number of factors have contributed to this, but the most important is the caste and class prejudices in society. These prejudices have got institutionalised, through religious and social practices, into a unique system of long-standing apartheid. That they have a class character is also evident; the Dalit and Adivasi communities that are discriminated against constitute almost 80 per cent of India’s poor.
The S.C./S.T. Act is seen to be empowering as it is the first legislation to use and define the term “atrocities” committed against the S.Cs and the S.Ts. Introducing the Bill, the then Union Law Minister, B. Shankaranand, said the normal provisions of the existing laws, such as the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Protection of Civil Rights Act (PCRA), 1955, had been found inadequate to check the atrocities, gross indignities and offences against the S.Cs and the S.Ts. Therefore, the Act prescribes harsher punishments than the punitive measures detailed in the IPC and the PCRA, which used only the term “offences” vis-À-vis caste-related crimes.
The Act also introduced an executive system specifically to govern justice for the S.Cs and the S.Ts in cases of 22 broad types of atrocities relating to socio-economic discriminatory practices, which are listed in it. This system should comprise special courts, a special public prosecutor, nodal officers in each State, an S.C. and S.T. protection cell, and State-level and district-level monitoring and vigilance committees to identify atrocity-prone areas, and a special officer appointed by the district head to look after each case of atrocity. In actuality, in most States the full system has either not been constituted or has been functioning ineffectively.
Gaps in implementation
Activists of the Dalit Sena staging a demonstration in New Delhi on July 21 demanding action from the Bihar government to check atrocities on Dalits.
The gaps in its implementation could be studied at two levels – the executive and the judiciary. The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) noted in its 2002 report: “Under-reporting is a very common phenomenon and the police resort to various machinations to discourage S.C./S.T. [persons] from registering their cases, to dilute the seriousness of the violence, to shield the accused persons from arrests and prosecution.”
A study done by National Dalit Movement for Justice (NDMJ), part of the National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR), showed that between 1992 and 2007 only 33 per cent of the atrocity cases were registered under the S.C./S.T. Act. The majority of the cases were registered under IPC sections and 1 per cent under the PCRA. It also showed that the conviction rate of cases under the S.C./S.T. Act was just 3.3 per cent for the country as a whole.
The figures at the level of the judiciary are equally pathetic. Between 1992 and 2007, as many as 80 per cent of the cases heard by the special courts (created under Section 14 of the Act) were not registered under the Act. In 95.1 per cent of the cases charge sheets had not been filed. The monitoring advisories set up in States on an ad hoc basis by the Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment (MSJE) and the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) noted that in many cases the police wilfully neglected the S.C./S.T. Act and did not register first information reports (FIRs). Among the recommendations made were the setting up of special police stations and the launching of awareness campaigns about the Act.
The Ahmedabad-based Council for Social Justice (CSJ) has collected documents of 400 cases pertaining to 2004 filed under the S.C./S.T. Act in Gujarat. There are some startling revelations in them. Despite Section 18 of the Act restricting anticipatory bail in atrocity cases, anticipatory bail had been granted in 320 of the 400 cases.
Valjibhai Patel, secretary CSJ, told Frontline: “Rule 4(1) of the Act says that there should be two panels of advocates in atrocity cases – a state-appointed public prosecutor and a panel created by the district head. In most of the cases, we see no such panels. The Act states that an officer below the rank of DSP [Deputy Superintendent of Police] cannot investigate the case. Many of the accused have been acquitted by courts just because the case was investigated by officers below the rank of DSP. I have seen in Gujarat rape cases of Dalits being sent to Lok Adalats meant for only compoundable offences.”
Plight of women
Dalit women face the worst atrocities as both women and Dalits. A seminal study conducted by the NCDHR (“Dalit Women Speak Out”, 2006) enumerating the experiences of 500 Dalit women from Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh presents a shocking picture of the conditions they live in. The study records the violence – physical, sexual and mental – inflicted on Dalit women. The study reinforces calls for comprehensive preventive measures to be put in place to eradicate caste discrimination and violence against Dalit women, in conjunction with measures to help Dalit women achieve their rights.
Valjibhai Patel says that though the Act mentions punitive measures against negligence, to date not a single official in India has been punished despite serious violations of the Act all over the country. He says the judiciary should also be made accountable, not just the police and the district administration. “There are many cases of atrocities where the accused has been punished under the IPC but has been acquitted under the S.C./S.T. Act. In Gujarat, one of the professors who raped his Dalit student got life imprisonment but was acquitted under the S.C./S.T. Act. The Khairlanji case is a big example where the people now serving the death penalty were acquitted under the S.C./S.T. Act. How is this possible? This means there is some problem in investigation and pursuance of the Act,” he says. The CSJ has filed a petition in the Supreme Court regarding the violation of the Act, the first hearing of which will be on December 3.
Budget and policy
The MJSE is responsible for the implementation of the S.C./S.T. Act. To implement the Act effectively, the MSJE has to provide for special courts for the trial of offences and for the relief and rehabilitation of victims of such offences. The Ministry provides financial resources for the implementation of the Act through the Special Central Assistance (SCA) from the Union government, which is 50 per cent of the total expenditure of the States and the total expenditure of the UnionTerritories.
However, the allocation of funds every year under the SCA has seen a steady decline. Under the Act taluk- and mandal-level officers are responsible for disbursing compensation and this work has to be monitored by the District Magistrate/Collector and the district monitoring and vigilance committee. Separate funds have to be given to police stations/courts towards travelling allowance/dearness allowance (T.A./D.A.) of victims and witnesses on FIR investigation and it has to be monitored by the Superintendent of Police (S.P.) and the District Judge (D.J.). There is also clear direction in the Act that arrangements should be made for maintenance expenses and reimbursement of medical costs of victims of atrocity.
In 2008, the Dalit Arthik Adhikar Andolan, also a part of the NCDHR, looked into the actual budget for the S.C./S.T. Act in each State and estimated the amount every State actually needed for its proper implementation. Its calculations have been done on the basis of the number of compensation cases in each State, the average cost of running the present number of special courts and special police stations, and relief and rehabilitation measures for victims specified in the Act.
The results in all the States reveal that the actual budget allocated for the Act is much less than what is required. This is despite the fact that both the Central government and the State governments share the amount made available for the programme under the special component plan. Uttar Pradesh ranks the highest in terms of this deficit, and its figure stands at a staggering Rs.1,640 crore. Rajasthan, also a State with one of the highest rates of caste crimes, is second with Rs.1,157 crore, and Bihar follows with Rs.1,085 crore.
According to the actual budget allocated, as shown in the MJSE annual report, Uttar Pradesh, since 2007, ranks the highest in the allocation of funds for the Act, with around Rs.950 crore, followed closely by Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. Among the big States, the lowest allocation is in Bihar, with just Rs.27 crore. Chhattisgarh’s allocation is Rs.40 crore. In Haryana, which has one of the largest numbers of caste crimes, the allocation is only Rs.60 crore. In the South, Tamil Nadu ranks the lowest, granting around Rs.235 crore.
An NCDHR analysis of the qualitative investments of the Central government shows that in this year’s Budget the amount spent on wage labour, school education, basic health, shelter, nutrition and primary necessaries involving Dalits is 62.44 per cent of the total special assistance funds. In sectors where the upper classes dominate, such as higher education, entrepreneurial development, and land and asset building, the allocation is 37.56 per cent. State budgets present a similar trend. Most of the funds still go to the traditional occupation of Dalits, such as cleaning, agricultural labour, leather works, and so on, which is in contrast to the theme of the SCP of systematic empowerment of Dalits in all sectors of production. It therefore does not surprise when the S.C./S.T. Act, a tool for legal empowerment of Dalits, lacks funds for its implementation.
The aggressive pursuit of neoliberal economic policies by governments at the Centre and in many States over the past decade has also resulted in an increase in atrocities against the S.Cs and the S.Ts. Ironically, even the Uttar Pradesh government is not free from such ventures. The government’s ambitious 1,047-kilometre-long Ganga Expressway project, connecting Greater Noida near Delhi and Ballia in eastern Uttar Pradesh, was expected to acquire 64,000 hectares of land, 70 per cent of which is agricultural land. A number of observers and social analysts pointed out that this acquisition would militate against the basic livelihood of a large section of Dalits who were into share-cropping with upper-caste, land-owning farmers.
According to NCRB data since 2005, Uttar Pradesh ranks the highest in the number of cases of caste atrocities, followed closely by Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and Gujarat. “Acts like these empower and help organise Dalits. With greater awareness about the Act, we have seen a rise in caste atrocities every year,” said Sirivella Prasad of the NDMJ.
The trend clearly shows that caste atrocities have increased with greater social and economic mobility of the S.Cs and the S.Ts which disrupts the exploitative status quo of a feudal society.
Many activists note that atrocity cases happen when Dalits try to avail themselves of legal resources; assert their right over land, water, and livelihood; assert their right to choose their occupation; attempt to participate in the cultural life of the community; assert their right to vote; and are victimised to satisfy the superstitions of dominant castes (witchcraft, human sacrifice). With respect to the S.Ts, activists say most of the atrocities happen when they try to organise themselves politically against the combined exploitation of government officials and industrial goons in the hinterland.
However, the Act is not clear about the rules with respect to social and economic boycott of the S.Cs and the S.Ts and there is an ongoing advocacy campaign among Dalit groups to seek amendments to certain provisions of the Act to make it stronger. Said Colin Gonsalves of Human Rights Law Network: “Unless the institutional caste bias is systematically done away with at the policy level and proper action is taken against negligent officials, violations will continue to happen. The legal system has failed the S.Cs and the S.Ts. The Act is a clear instance of wonderful legislation but useless implementation. Our judiciary needs at least 15 per cent reservation for the S.Cs right from the lower courts to the Supreme Court. The Rajasthan High Court has not had a single Dalit judge since Independence – absurd for a State that ranks very high in caste crimes.”
To put it simply, caste is a combined social system of occupation, endogamy, culture, social class and political power, which has historically been exploitative for Dalits and Adivasis. In this context, the S.C./S.T. Act and its status echo Ambedkar’s words: “This condition obtains even where there is no slavery in the legal sense. It is found where, as in caste system, some persons are forced to carry on the prescribed callings which are not their choice.”
