generalspeaking

Caste, Class, Violent Dehumanizing in India

"You may talk about India being a world power, a global power, sending satellites into space."
"But the outside world has an image of India they don't know. As long as Hinduism is strong, caste will be strong, and as long as there is caste, there will be lower caste."
Avatthi Ramaiah, sociology professor, Mumbai, India

"Such incidents [as a Dalit man killed by higher-caste men for riding a horse] would not have happened in my childhood."
"In my childhood, a Dalit would not ride a horse. Before 1990, most Dalits worked for someone. Now they are paying a price for their freedom."
Chandra Bhan Prasad, Dalit commentator

There is a long-standing history of conversion of Hindu Dalits to other religions in various states of India [Reuters]

Today in India it is illegal to discriminate on the basis of caste. When in the later 1940s the Constitution was being composed specific protection for Dalits, historically called 'untouchables', making up around 15 to 20 percent of the 1.3-billion Indian population was written into it. Since then affirmative action programs have lifted some Dalits from poverty to the point where today in India there are Dalit poets, doctors, civil service officers, engineers.

But the caste system is deeply ingrained in the culture. Moreover, it is part of the Hindu religious tradition. Experts point out that 95 percent of Indians marry within their caste and recent studies indicate income and education levels tend to correlate closely with caste. Dalits still suffer from caste discrimination. National statistics point to the number of caste-based crimes increasing 25 percent since 2010, with 41,000 cases registered in 2016.

Analysts point the finger at the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party where Hindu supremacist roots embolden supporters to act out violently at minorities in the name of Hinduism. People are being beaten or killed for the Hindu crime of slaughtering cows, seen to be revered in Hinduism. Cow vigilante squads target Muslims or Dalits. Occupations were designated by caste in traditional Indian society where untouchables performed work no one else would touch.

At the very bottom of India's Hindu society for centuries the Dalits are estimated at over 300 million people who have suffered rank abuse through Indian history. And at a time when enlightenment and growing national prosperity should be reducing such crimes they are instead growing in prevalence. When women and girls are abused, violated and killed they are often the victims of higher caste men who view them with contempt by caste; in rural India Dalit women and girls are seen as easy prey.

A recent incident in Thati, India, in the rural community village, a Dalit man, Sardar Singh Jatav, had the audacity to speak with his son's employers to ask them to pay his son the back pay they owed him for work done. The 55-year-old Mr. Jatay was attacked by the high-caste men who punched him, broke his arm, pinned him down, stuffed a rag in his mouth while one tried to scalp him with a razor and nearly succeeded carving off his skin. "Take that! Tell everyone we scalped you!", they jeered.

They were of the Gujjar caste, inferior to the highest-ranking Brahmins, but ranking well above Mr. Jatav, a Dalit, so they felt entitled to chasten him for his arrogance in daring to suggest they pay his son what he was entitled to. Several of the men involved in the attack have been arrested by police who say that caste played "no role" in the crime that has left Mr. Sardar humiliated and with a scar that will remind him as long as he lives, that higher caste men can control his life.

Dalits took to the streets in protests across the northern Hindi-speaking heartland, where caste-based discrimination is still widespread © Reuters

Labels: Caste, India, Violence

posted by Pieface @ Monday, November 26, 2018