Martin Macwan
Hathras is the first case in independent India where the State has deprived the parents of a sexual abuse victim the right to respectfully cremate their child by forcefully burning the body, knowing full well that it is destroying crucial evidence. The right to a respectful burial has been awarded even to dreaded terrorists and those convicted in the heinous rape and murder of Nirbhaya. There is no point in asking the Head of the State to apologise.
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The NDA had scored a double political goal to win over Dalits by allaying apprehensions of the reinforcement of caste rule in the guise of Hindu Rashtra and the marginalisation of the Constitution by ensuring that the first citizen is a Dalit. And thus, they won most of the SC reserved seats of Parliament both in 2014 and 2019. Tragically, today, India is witnessing a caste contradiction at play, one where both the first citizen and the last, the victim of Hathras, are Dalits.
With 591 Dalit MLAs and 89 Dalit Members of Parliament across India, their silence on brutal incidents of caste violence including Hathrasis definitely troubling. Is the power of political reservation hollow, as apprehended by Dr. Ambedkar?
In the case of actor Sushant Singh Rajput, the powers at play were hell bent on proving that it was a case of murder when all the evidence pointed to a case of suicide; whereas in Hathras, the people in power are using all the armament in their arsenal to pass a judgement without trial, decreeing that there was no rape, even when all the evidences prove otherwise. The development is worrisome as the role of the State as reformative is gradually being usurped and replaced with the role of the State as an appeaser of dominant sections of society. The hope for justice dwindles when the minds of people in power are prejudiced. The only ray of hope in the case is the suo motu intervention of the Allahabad High Court.
We are witnessing a new model of governance when it comes to the question of caste. The silence of the political leadership in times of social turmoil and the aggressive defense of the administration as it quells civil dissent and unrest. However, this is not the case when it comes to communal violence, where the State preferentially tilts towards its own larger constituency.
We are also witnessing a new development. Organising of the dominant castes with the connivance of politicians to defend their members, irrespective of these members being charged with heinous crimes of rape or murder. Such attempts promote organised-communal lust as can be seen in the rising number of gang-rapes including the Nirbhaya and the Hathras victim.
Four decades earlier, I witnessed in Gujarat villages a situation where dominant caste men felt they were at liberty to enter any Dalit home and do anything they wished with Dalit women. Since there was no protest, such sexual exploitation did not appear to be counted as ‘rape cases’. The only difference we witness now is that such exploitative practices have become ‘registered offences.
The Manu Smriti justified the vulnerability of women and shudras as subjects. In South Africa, which has among the world’s highest rates of sexual violence, only the rape of white women was prosecuted under an apartheid system, while sexual violence against Black women was accepted as a part of life. With the change in the democratic structure of governance we have the strongest legislations in place to counter such inhumanity but have we won the war over prejudice? We cannot win this war unless we focus on prevention.
With the continuous increase in caste violence: from 3,662 cases in 1971 to 45,935 cases in 2019; and increase in the cases of rape – from 2,487 cases in 1971 to 32,034 in 2019), and the failure of the State and judiciary to prevent such crimes, we need to educate citizens from the school level onwards. With the State consciously restricting the space of voluntary organisations, the only visible road ahead to build a less violent society is voluntarism; which has been the successful strategy of all social movements including that of the Indian Independence struggle.
The writer is an activist and the founder of Navsarjan, a grassroots Dalit organisation fighting for human rights since the 1970s. The Billion Press.
