MITA KAPUR

Date:09/03/2008

URL: http://www.thehindu.com/thehindu/mag/2008/03/09/stories/2008030950240400.htm

There were about 150 of them. Heads covered in flaming reds, burnt oranges, shocking pinks, to hide their faces. Arms raised in the air and fists curled tight. One of them breast-fed her infant, as she shouted in chorus, “Para Devi ko nyaya do, nyaya do. Hosh mein aayo, hosh mein aayo.’ The lady sitting next to me murmured quietly, “There was no such women´s movement when I was raped. I walked 11 km all alone the night I was raped. I didn´t want the organisation I worked for to come under attack. I told my family and friends slowly.’

Reality is known to be stark but this was in the face. But what was more in the face — those 150 odd women from Chandlai, Bir Santoshpura, Rampura, Sikar, in their ghunghats, shouting for Para´s rights at Chaksu Police Thana. They echoed a sense of group and self- identity and sensitivity to another woman´s plight. An awareness that justice was being denied and that they must speak up. A group of men gathered obviously to ‘look´ at so many colourfully-clad women. There was silent sniggering that said “What are you going to get out of all this?’ They listened to a nauseating account of what Para, a Dalit from Santoshpura, faced from June 23 to 26, 2007.

Para, a daily wage labourer, left home for work with her husband, Ranglal. Feeling unwell, she went to the hospital and was offered a ride by her neighbour. There were five others in the car. Promising to drop her soon, they kept driving from village to village, raping her in turn for the next three days. When she protested, they beat her;, when she asked for water, they gave her alcohol mixed in a soft drink.
A struggle all the way

She was dropped off in a wounded, half-conscious condition at the Phagi bus stand with Rs. 20 and a threat of killing her family if she complained. Her husband tried to register a FIR, but the police refused to do so. After the State Women´s Commission intervened, the FIR was registered on June 27. The threats continued. While Para´s statement for the FIR was being written under Section 164 IPC, the policemen at the Chaksu thana abused her, “you ran away with ‘them´; they didn´t abduct you.’ Para sat with her husband and uncles outside the Chaksu thana for six hours before the FIR was registered.

Para belongs to Shivdaspura, a village not far from Chaksu, which has just 20 families. Economically, socially and politically challenged, they don´t have ration cards and don´t know what a voters list is. Of Para´s rapists, only two were arrested but after the dharna outside the Chaksu thana, the police was forced to arrest the others but they are all out on bail. Para and her family face fear of social boycott and no work.

An activist working on Para´s case said, “There are times one feels that Dalits should refuse to be recognised as Dalits themselves. They should stop protesting against atrocities in the name of Dalit crimes and fight for justice on humanitarian grounds. Fighting with the name tag only aggravates the problem.’

For the 260 million Dalits in India, protection against atrocities does not exist because the law is ineffectively implemented. Dalit women make up 16.3 per cent of the Indian female population — one in every 12 Indians. The moment they demand recognition of their rights, they face fresh spate of degradation and cruelty for raising their voices.
At the receiving end

Dalit women are being subjected to layers of violence. The interface of caste, class and gender has created a mechanism where physical assault, verbal abuse, sexual harassment, rape, forced prostitution, violence in public places are rampant. Their vulnerability is enhanced by the severe imbalances in socio-economic and political power equations. Paul Divakar, one of the founders of NCDHR, said, “The 500,000 villages in our country are pregnant with the pain and power of Dalit women. Their stories break the shroud of inhuman violence in our society while confronting us with the challenge to transform caste and gender stereotypes, prejudice and violence that we perpetrate. In partnering their liberation, we liberate ourselves."

Why should a Dalit girl student be slapped for greeting her Brahmin teacher or forced to sit far away from “high caste’ students? Why should a pregnant Dalit woman be denied admission into a hospital? Why can´t all cases of violence be redressed only on humanitarian grounds instead of on caste? Police statistics over the last five years show 13 Dalits are murdered, five homes burnt, six kidnapped/abducted and 13 Dalit women are raped everyday. This is apart from the crimes that are not reported.
Emotional ordeal

Para relives her rape each time she goes to court, each time she is questioned. How many are sympathetic towards her inner turmoil? Her glassy eyes and bruised neck shut me up. We chatted about everything but the rape. Her husband is by her side, and so are the women from her family. Her in-laws hold her hands: is this the only relief she will get? In our society, family support is hard to come by for a woman in her plight. Her husband said, “We will fight and face all pressures.’ If there is such positive evolution in mindsets, why is it not possible to change other systems? How about making police and the courts more humane and faster?

Tracing Nehru´s role in the writing of the Indian Constitution Ramachandra Guha´s India After Gandhi describes the finished product as a liberal, humanist credo that protects numerous basic rights but also provides reservation for “untouchables’. But scholars like Sunil Khilnani argue that by identifying caste as an organising principle in India, Nehru and his allies inadvertently laid the ground for a schismatic political culture and greater discrimination towards the “lower castes’. If in the 60 years since, we have reached a point where crimes against the lower sections are on an ugly incline, isn´t a more futuristic stand required?