- Subhash Gatade
..the
world owes much to rebels who would dare to argue in the face of the pontiff
and insist that he is not infallible. I do not care about the credit which
every progressive society must give to its rebels. I shall be satisfied if I
make the Hindus realize that they are the sick men of India, and that their
sickness is causing danger to the health and happiness of other Indians.
B. R. AMBEDKAR, Annihilation of
Caste,
I
Pabnava : Not Just the Name of a
Village
Dalit residents of Pabnava, district Kaithal,
Haryana would never be able to forget this year's birth anniversary of Dr
Babasaheb Ambedkar. The intervening nights of April 13 and 14 would forever remain
itched on their minds. They still shiver when they remember how a four hundred
strong mob of the local landowning community called Ror Marathas, armed with
spears, batons and other sharp edged weapons, attacked the basti and ransacked more than 200 houses and left 6 dalits injured.
It was supposedly to avenge the 'dishonour' wrought on them by a dalit youth
who had dared to marry one of 'their girls'.
To quote Raji, one of the victims, '..they came like
a tornado'.
One could easily notice simmering tension in the
village since a few days, as news had come in that Meena (21) daughter of an
influential Ror Maratha from the village called Pirthi Singh had married a
dalit boy Suryakant s/o Mahendra Pal and had eloped with him. They had married
on 9 th April in the high court of Punjab and Haryna and had sought protection
from the administration. As per the instructions of the court they were staying
in the district protection home, Kaithal. The news that the couple was staying
at Kaithal reached the village on 12 th April. The very next day the Rors held
a community Panchayat to deliberate on the matter.
For the 5,000 strong Ror Marathas, with control over
most of the landholdings in the area, it was 'unpardonable' that one amongst
the 300 Chamar families who mostly depended upon the Rors for their regular
livelihood, had dared to marry one of their daughters. And to avenge this
insult they had given an ultimatum to the dalits to return the girl within two
days or face the consequences. Apart from the Rors and Chamars, the village has
200 Balmiki families, around 200 OBC households and a few Brahmin households.
The attack was organised the very night when the
caste Panchayat(council) realised
that neither Meena would return to her parents house nor would Suryakant is
ready to rethink on the matter. The connivance of a section of the local police
in precipitating violence against Dalits was also noted by the Chairman of the
SC Commission, when he visited the village. He was told how the police had
released a local goon under the pressure from the mob who further helped fuel
violence.
A fact finding team - comprising of members of PUCL,
NCDHR, HRLN and others representing different civil society groups which
visited the village has made several recommendations (http://www.epw.in/web-exclusives/atrocities-against-dalits-pabnava-incident.html)
to ameliorate the situation and punish the guilty. Demanding that relevant
sub-section of SC and ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, be invoked in
the FIR and calling for arrest of the remaining 27 culprits who have been
roaming freely in the village, they have also proposed that the properties of
the accused should be attached under and that the accused should be
excommunicated from the village as per the provisions of the same Act. Apart
from imposing collective fine on them for aiding and abetting the violence,
they have also demanded that the deputy superintendent of police Taken Raj be
booked under section 4 of the SC/ST (POA) Act, 1989 for his willful negligence
in not providing protection to the dalits before the incident.
Close watchers of the unfolding human rights
situation in Haryana would vouch that developments in Pabnava are no exception.
In fact, since one and half decades the state has been always in the news for
growing atrocities against dalits and other marginalised sections of society.
May it be the case of Duleena (Jhajjar) where five
dalits were lynched for the 'crime' of carrying corpse of a dead cow in the
presence of police and other government officials (2002) or the manner in which
dalits in Harsoula (Kaithal) were forced to leave the village by the dominant
caste people (2003) for their growing assertion or the burning of hundreds of
dalit houses in Gohana (Sonepat) supposedly to avenge the death of Jat boy in
scuffle with boys or the gruesome attack on Dalits in Mirchpur -where 17 year
old dalit girl and her sixty year old father - and looting and arson of their
houses, one can record n number of incidents where one can see how perpetrators
keep evading the arms of law - thanks to the active or tacit connivance of law
enforcement authorities
The marriage of Meena and Suryakant - which
precipitated an attack by the dominant Ror Marathas - reminds one of a similar
but rather more organised attack on dalit hamlets deep south, around five
months before Pabnava. The big difference between Pabnava and Natham was not
only in the scale of attack and social-political formations involved in it but
also the fact that it continues to reverberate even today.
II
As a recap of the events one can underline that it
occurred on November 7, 2012 when three
dalit colonies of Natham, Kondampatti and Annanagar in Naikkankottai, Dharmapuri
district, Tamil Nadu faced organised attack at the hands of Vanniars. Of the
500 houses in the three colonies, over 268 were damaged /burnt. The mob, armed
with deadly weapons and petrol bombs, indulged in a four-hour-long rampage.
They broke cupboards, stole gold jewellery and cash before setting the houses
on fire. It need be noted here as well that it was not a spontaneous outburst
of anger, but a planned attack.
Much like Pabnava tensions had been mounting in the
region for a number of months, and the marriage of Divya, the Vanniar daughter
of G Nagarajan, with E Illavarasan, 23, who belonged to the Natham dalit
colony, became a pretext to ‘teach the dalits a lesson’. A kangaroo court
consisting of members of the Vanniar community instructed the dalits to send
back the girl. Divya firmly refused to return to her parents’ house. Nagarajan
committed suicide over this ‘humiliation’, enraging around 2,000 members of the
said community who then attacked the dalit colonies.
All reports on the mayhem pointed to a single fact. Apart
from giving verbal assurances and holding out promises, the police took no
preventive action.
We know that events have moved in a 'fast forward'
mode during the intervening period.
Vanniar Sangham - caste
organisation of Vanniars coupled with PMK, (Pattali Makkal Katchi
) the political outfit launched by Ramadoss took the
issue of this particular marriage in a big way and tried to weave an anti dalit
coalition of backward castes in the area
claiming how dalit youth are weaning away our 'daughters' . They also demanded
dilution of SC-ST Prevention of Atrocities Act (1989) calling that it is
'misused' by the state. It was their own way of fighting political irrelevance
in the state politics.
Coming under tremendous community pressure Divya -
and perhaps with a guilt feeling that she has been a cause of her father's
suicide - has finally returned to her mother and Ilavarsan who was hoping
against hope that his love would ultimately triumph has died an unnatural death.
His body was found on a railway track few days back
and as of now the focus of the debate is whether it was a 'suicide' as claimed
by the police or a 'murder' which has been dressed up as suicide.
As of now after his cremation which took place after
his second autopsy ordered by the court, one thing can be said with certainty
that the theory about his 'death by suicide' looks more and more unreliable.
While circumstantial evidence pointed towards something 'fishy' in the matter
many related facts about his unnatural death have also come to the fore.
Neither the driver of Kurla Express under which Ilavarsan has supposedly
committed suicide informed the next station about it nor did driver of any
other train which passed on the same route do it. In the railway manual it is
mandatory for the drivers to do it.
It was not for nothing that the first autopsy was
rejected by the high courts itself. A video recording of his first autopsy also
makes it clear that there was deliberate negligence on part of the people who
matter and in this manner crucial evidence has been lost. Although the Tamil
Nadu Forensic Science Laboratory has 'confirmed that the handwriting in the
suicide note is that of Ilavarasan only' the story of the recovery of the said
suicide note is itself unreliable which according to police was 'taken away
from the body by a resident who was at the scene before the Railway Police
could reach there' which was delivered to the police after four days of
Ilavarasan's death. Can anyone believe the story that the said note was found
with a stranger. To believe the police version, we will have to imagine a
resident- with whom the alleged suicide note was found - when sees a dead body
of a stranger, first searches for his pockets, takes out the 'suicide note' and
either 'disappears' or at best 'forgets about it'.
It is a different matter that officially it will
always be maintained - for a long time at least - that he committed suicide.
Despite enough indications that there are holes in this theory, an alternate
narrative about his demise would never be told. Powers that be would rather
prefer to appease the 'feelings/emotions' of dominant Vanniars rather than
inviting further trouble from them. Now when Ilavarsan is no more and 'their
girl' back to her mother, they are feeling vindicated and the government would
not like to deprive them of their sense of 'victory'. Sick people.
Undoubtedly, Tamil Nadu, a state which prides itself
on its more than hundred year old history of anti caste struggle and social
reform, and which seemed pioneer in very many ways, today appears a pale shadow
of itself. What happened to its long
history of anti-Brahminical struggle, espousal of atheism by a section of its
leadership and the painstaking efforts put in by a battery of social reformers.
Why the continuing marginalisation of Dalits in a state that has always played
up its social reforms legacy. e.g. The legendary Jyothee Thass, writer,
journalist, social reformer, Buddhist Scholar and Sidha Physician who was born
in 1845 in a Paraiyar family is considered a pioneer of not only the
anti-Brahmin movement but Dravid movement as well. And we have Rettamalai
Srinivasan, who went to Round Table Conference in the early 30s, M.C. Raja,
Periyar Naicker and several others.
One of India's most industrialised states, which had
taken lead in implementation of reservation policy quite earlier, dalits,
accounting for a fifth of the over 7 crore population, still find assimilation
into mainstream society a struggle.
C Lakshmanan, assistant professor at the Madras
Institute of Development Studies, who had recently organised a seminar to look
at the history of various commissions which were set up to look into cases of
dalit atrocities points out a very startling fact. According to him not a single
person has been punished for atrocities against Dalits in the last 70 years,
though a dozen or so enquiry commissions have been set up. To top it all, not
even one member of these commissions has been a Dalit.
One can look at other studies to see ongoing
discrimination in day to day life faced by the dalits.. According to an NGO
Evidence still no entry of dalits in temples in 12 districts, n number of cases
of dalit panchayat leaders not allowed to function or 460 tea shops in Madurai
still following two-tumbler system (one for non-Dalits and another for Dalits).
Perhaps the deep rooted caste prejudices prevalent
in the populace were best underlined at the time of Tsunami when dalits were
discriminated against by the backward castes - while both the communities had
found themselves in similar situation. A newspaper had reported :
‘Tsunami can’t wash this away : hatred for
Dalits : In Ground Zero, Dalits thrown
out of relief camps, cut out of food, water supplies, toilets, …’.The main news
in one of the leading newspapers revealed it all. The centuries old prejudice
against the ‘lower communities’ was perfectly intact despite an unprecedented
tragedy called Tsunami. The report had details of the way Nagapattinam, one of
the worst affected district in Tamilnadu, was coping with the changed
situation. (Indian Express, 7 th January 2005)
III
Pabnava of Haryana and Natham of Tamilnadu,
separated from each other by hundreds of kilometers, peopled by communities
speaking different languages and cultures, is it possible to connect one with
the other. Should one claim that they are examples of India’s much celebrated
‘Unity in Diversity’?
Coming to Haryana, incidents like Pabnava reflecting
growing atrocities on dalits are explained as an outcome of a society which
perpetuates material deprivation of a large section of the dalits and the
structural asymmetries inherent the system. An added explanation is also
offered which underlines the fact that the region does not have a strong
tradition of anti-caste movement or struggle for empowerment of women. To buttress
one's point it is also argued how the state has emerged as a centre of what is
popularly known as 'honour callings' - where parents and other near and dear
ones with due support from the community engage in extreme form of violence
against their own supposedly for exercising their right to choice and choose
their life partner which is understood as an act bringing dishonour to the
family, community. Criminalisation of love happens not only in the case of a
relation between dominant and dominated caste but even within caste or gotra as
well.
If someone were to extend the same logic to
Natham/Dharampuri or Tamil Nadu, this argument about 'absence of any history of
radical egalitarian movement 'does not hold good at all. As already mentioned it has galaxy of leaders - who were engaged in
plethora of activities, campaigns, publications, movements - to awaken the
masses from deep slumber and who were active since later half of 19 th century.
If Haryana without a strong tradition of social-cultural movements or Tamil
Nadu with a enviable tradition of radical movements challenging caste,
patriarchy and even religion seem to imitate each other as regards situation of
dalits or when it comes to the issue of choice exercised by a girl in choosing
her life partner, we definitely need to go beyond the existing explanations.
Just
when the issue of Vanniar girl Divya's marriage to a Paraiyar boy Ilavarsan was
discussed and the vehement reaction by the dominant Vanniars was making
headlines, came the news about a Paraiyar girls's Gokila's marriage to a
Arundhatiyar boy Karthikeyan. Incensed over this marriage by a Paraiyar girl to
a 'lower' caste, parents of Gokila tried to convince her but when she refused
to do so, she was herself brutally killed by her parents. It may be mentioned
here that paraiyars are those who beat drum and Arunthahtiyars
are leather workers, who are also sweepers/scavengers in Tamil Nadu, Kerala,
Karnataka. Pallars and Paraiyars
in Tamil Nadu look down upon Arunthathiyars. It
was worth noting that none of the Dalit formations - apart from those
representing the interests of the Arunthathiyars raised questions about this
death or condemned the act. The village where this incident said to have
happened has a strong presence of Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK) cadres
and they kept silence over the issue.
In a comment
on a blog a writer while condemning the death of Illavarsan ( Paraiyar) posed
questions about this :
In
Tamil Nadu there are so many places, where there are untouchability between
dalit castes, and since arunthathiyar’s are sweepers/scavengers, they are even
more treated badly by the dalit castes, Paraiyar and Pallars.
My
entire point here, is to ask, if people say its a caste violence, then why they
are not seeing Gokila’s murder as caste murder. Sadly arunthathiyar’s issue
never get into any debates.
How
much different Paraiyars are, comparing with caste hindus, ..sincerely if all
of you support inter-caste marriage then come forward and say we will not
oppose or at least we would support paraiyar girls marrying arunthathiyars.
Deliberating on the issue Ravi Chandran adds “Dalit movement and intellectuals keep on saying that Dharmapuri is
an example of caste violence, but they fail to see the gender violence behind the tragedy which had transformed
into caste violence. Certainly every community
seems to want to control its population numbers and they see women (marrying
outside the community) as a threat and also as easy targets for their male
chauvinism.There are many such incidents where Arunthathiyar men marrying
Paraiyar women were murdered or their sisters were sexually assaulted.
The manner in which dalits 'copy' their
oppressor/dominant castes is visible also from areas which are infamous for
medieval sounding decisions of the caste/community councils. Take Haryana
again, which remains in the news for its Khap Panchayats of the Jats, has also
witnessed 'judgements' by the community councils of the dalit castes (Balmiki,
Ravidas etc.) which have 'punished' couples marrying of their own will with
other dalit castes..
While organisations like Vanniar Sangham or PMK
should be condemned for the frenzy they created in the state and appropriate
action be taken against them, it is also a time for introspection for the dalit
formations as well as over the state of affairs. One feels that it is time they
revisit their approach which is key to usher us into a casteless society.
In
its editorial 'Fighting Caste Fighting Patriarchy' Economic and Political
Weekly, (Vol
- XLVIII No. 29, July 20, 2013)
has raised two important points. According to it "The limiting of social
justice to identity assertion has seen the continuation of age-old caste
antagonisms, rather than their gradual erosion. It is tragic and ironic to
witness the revival of such fatal casteism in a state which pioneered powerful
anti-caste movements in south Asia." Secondly "Ilavarasan’s tragic
death is an indication that progressive forces need to come out more forcefully
against the intermeshing of caste and patriarchy. Whether it is the middle class
families of India are growing cities, or the Khap panchayats of rural north
India or criminal politicians, it is becoming clear that caste cannot be fought
without fighting patriarchy."
One
feels that while fighting for justice for Ilavarsan and for justice in Pabnava
case, it is high time that we deliberate on all these and related issues which
are of key importance for the further evolution of the dalit movement
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