The horrific gang-rape and murder of a Dalit woman in Hathras in Uttar Pradesh by upper caste Thakur men, rooted to an old dispute between the Dalit family and the Thakur family, is condemned across the nation and there is considerable outrage also. But eyebrows are raised when it is called a Dalit atrocity. The other view is: aren’t non-Dalits raped and murdered? What caste has to do with it? But the fact on ground remains caste has played a dominant role in this case as it does with almost every offence against Dalit women in rural India.
Talking about the instant case, the Dalit family to which the victim belonged and Thakur family to which the men accused of rape belonged are neighbours. And the two families have disputes for over 20 years now. As per reports, the Dalit family owns some agricultural land and almost 20 years ago.
The Thakur family would bring their buffaloes to graze on the crops the Dalit family was growing and the victim’s grandfather had then asked the Thakurs to take the buffaloes away. This has since turned into a caste dispute as the Thakur family was aggrieved of the fact that a Dalit man had the guts to retort to a Thakur.
This started the story of violence, threats, litigation and, ultimately, culminated in the gangrape and murder of the poor woman.The savage reality of rural, semi-urban India is many still practise untouchability in its most aboriginal form like walking past Dalit households still lowers the dignity of upper caste Hindus.
Still, many from the Dalit communities stand up if anyone of upper caste Hindus passes by. The ancestors of the present day Dalits used to serve the upper caste Hindu households in many ways like cleaning, sweeping, etc., in exchange for some paltry sum of money or food. Today, the grim reality is many upper caste Hindus like Thakurs in this case are outraged because the present day Dalits refuse to serve them, neither do they wish to give respect to them simply because of their caste status.
At such a time, the Facebook post of former Supreme Court judge Markandey Katju which attributes the reason of rape incidents like Hathras to the un-satiated ‘natural urge to indulge in sex’ of the unemployed and, therefore, unmarried young men in India, is both infantile and irresponsible.
There is no doubt that in this case, it is an aggravated form of Dalit atrocity. Rape is, and was, never about sexual urges, neither has ever to do anything about what any woman does or wears, but it is always about the power of the aggressor to dominate and control the victim and the confidence to manipulate the consequences, be it social or legal.
And here, caste has played a pivotal role in asserting that power, dominance and control to the accused aggressors over the victim, her family and the system at large.
One can visit almost any rural pocket and discover that various caste-based communities live in distinct geographical habitations.
And wherever homes or landholdings are adjacent to each other, there is mostly a dispute. And any conversation with the upper castes about Dalits of the same locality would culminate with their resentment that Dalits don’t heed to what they say anymore.
And when Dalits tend to resist such oppressions, be it land grab, forced labour, they are often retaliated with violence or sexual assault on their women. In many such cases, the Dalit resistance is marred by sabotaging the ‘honour’ of the women of the Dalit family, which is the last weapon to beckon them as to where their place is in the caste, social and feudal hierarchy.
This is exactly so in this case as regrettably and most despicably the cremation of the Hathras Dalit woman was carried out by the UP police in the intervening night of September 29 and 30, that also in the absence of her family.
This too was executed by the police in a horrible way that is by locking up her family. Why? Because to muzzle the voice of the family in effectively raising the issue. Was that any different from what the rapists did, that is raping and then strangulating her? This indeed is upper caste hegemony and an irrefutable proof of lethal- ‘upper caste power’, which has unravelled the nature of State police as a ‘feudal force’ having the immunity to act with ‘impunity’ and displayed the ‘upper caste masculinity’. It is important to note here that previously the UP police hadn’t even registered the FIR for 10 hours.
If the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data are to be believed, about four Dalit women are raped every day in India. And what is further disheartening is that in most of the cases, there isn’t any conviction.
The Hathras episode is not an isolated incident, but it has exposed the shameful behaviour of the UP police and the latent caste-driven hatred in India and has also highlighted the nexus between politicians, police and the upper caste force. Most significantly, the fact that the victim Dalit woman’s family wasn’t given the basic opportunity to make it to her cremation is a naked example of such nexus.
We cannot pretend and be in perpetual denial that caste atrocities don’t lead to such disgraceful incidents. It is time that we took recourse to effective legal and policy interventions to end atrocity both on Dalits and women and meaningfully uplift them in the best interest of the nation.
(The writer is a legal and public policy expert and a Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Law & Media Studies at School of Mass Communication, KIIT University. He can be reached at sjyotiranjan3@gmail.com.)
