So much for our socialist secular democratic republic!!!

Turn a blind eye, shove it under the carpet..keep it under wraps...Doesn't help. You cant escape this ugly reality of our fragmented society - CASTE.Caste is generally invisible from the point of view of the bourgeoisie upper castes but the more we are insensitive to this reality...with greater duress it lashes back...

The desecration of the statue of Ambedkar and the aftermath…is one of those commonplace incidents for us…. It’s a torment that subsides when we are no longer inconvenienced by it. We miss the larger social context… Our mainstream media never tires of reminding us that India is the next superpower in the making. In the midst of such euphoria, it is time we pause and reflect on – away from the glamour often almost invisible – how ordinary citizens are faring, how democratic the largest ‘democratic state’ in the world is for its ordinary, largely poor, citizens who constitute this nation.

In 1989, the Government of India passed the Prevention of Atrocities Act, which delineates specific crimes against Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes as “atrocities,” which include the systemic violence still faced by many Dalits, especially in rural areas. Such systemic violence includes forced labor, denial of access to water and other public amenities, and sexual abuse of Dalit women. This Act is a tacit acknowledgement by the government that caste relations are defined by violence, both incidental and systemic. Although it is a powerful and precise weapon on paper, in practice the Act has suffered from a near-complete failure in implementation - upper caste policemen are reluctant to file cases against fellow caste-members because of the severity of the penalties imposed by the Act (most offences are non-bailable and the minimum punishment is five years); cases are subject to delay and there are abysmal rates of conviction.

FACTS

The four persons killed in the massacre that took place recently in the village of Khairlanji in Maharashtra’s Bhandara district would have remained one cold statistic had it not been for the street protests that brought it to centrestage in the state’s political scenario.

Four members of the family of a dalit farmer, Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange -- his wife Surekha (45), his daughter Priyanka (17), his sons Roshan (21) and Sudhir (23) -- were paraded naked, then tortured and killed. The two women were raped before being killed. When the sons refused to sexually assault their mother and sister, they were castrated and then killed. Only Bhaiyyalal, who was away working in the fields at the time, escaped this horrible fate.


What was the Bhotmanges’ crime?
The village of Khairlanji has a population of about 800 people, most of whom belong to the Kunbi and Kalar castes, designated as OBC in Maharashtra. There are a few Adivasi families and only three dalit families, including the Bhotmanges. Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange moved to this village about 18 years ago and bought five and a half acres of land here, but the upper caste dominated panchayat consistently refused to enter his name in the revenue records, thereby preventing him from building a pucca house. On the two occasions that he tried to build it, the construction was forcibly demolished and he was threatened with dire consequences if he ever attempted to do so again. As a result, the Bhotmanges have always lived in a thatched hut.

In 2002, they found another reason to harass him : the upper caste families who owned land surrounding his fields wanted an approach road through his land. Bhaiyyalal’s wife’s cousin, one Siddharth Gajbhiye, a police patil of a nearby village, intervened and helped Bhaiyyalal to negotiate in the matter and avoid further tension. As a result, Bhaiyalal sacrificed half an acre and allowed a 10 feet wide road to be built on his land.

As expected, the harassment did not stop at this. The Bhotmanges were not allowed to draw water from the irrigation canal during day time. When an upper caste woman hit Surekha on the head with a sickle and she went to complain to the beat constable, he took no action. The harassment was not restricted to the Bhotmanges, but extended also to Siddarth Gajbhiye, since he was seen as the protector of the family and one who helped them in crisis situations. The most annoying aspect for the upper castes was the self-reliance of these two dalit families and the assertion of their dignity. They refused to live like supplicants of the upper castes in the village. Bhotmange’s daughter, Priyanka, was a bright student, had stood first in the village in her class X examination and had ambitions to join the army. Roshan Bhotmange was a graduate and had acquired computer skills. Sudhir was unfortunately partially visually impaired and could not continue his education.

In this background, there was repeated friction between the upper castes on one side and the Bhotmanges and Gajbhiyes on the other. On September 3, Gajbhiye was attacked by a group of people from Khairlanji while he was returning home on his motorcycle. Surekha and Priyanka were witness to this incident and bravely named the attackers to the police, hoping some action would be taken against them. But instead of taking any action, the beat constable leaked the information to the very people named by them. Between September 3rd and the day of the massacre, there were a number of incidents of threatening and assaulting Gajbhiye and his family members. In one such instance, a case was filed against some of the attackers who were summoned to court on September 29th. They got themselves bailed out promptly and gathered at the Bhotmange’s hut with sticks, axes and other such weapons. They attacked the four family members, stripped them and then paraded them naked through the village. Bhaiyyalal was working in his field at the time, but on hearing their cries he ran towards his hut and saw his family being paraded naked. He ran to Gajbhiye’s house and they reported the matter to the police station over the phone within 15 minutes. However, even though the police station is only 15 kms away from the village, the police reached the scene only at night, several hours after the incident took place. The four family members were missing but it was only Bhaiyyalal and the Gajbhiyes who went around looking for them. Only on the next day did the police inform Bhaiyyalal that Priyanka’s body had been found near the canal. The other bodies were found on October 1st.

Collusion between the police and the attackers
Several gaps have been left by the police that will hamper proper investigation procedures by destroying crucial evidence so as to weaken the case against the accused. The medical officer who conducted the post mortem appears to be equally hand in glove with the perpetrators : the mandatory procedure of taking a vaginal swab of women victims of rape has not been followed in this case, as a result of which it will be difficult to prove charges of rape. No videographic record has been maintained. It is most shocking that while the photographs of Priyanka’s body show that not an inch on her body is without marks of physical torture, they are not reflected in the post mortem report! Little wonder then that the Inspector General of Police for that area, Pankaj Gupta, has claimed that the women were not subjected to rape. Now about 44 of the attackers are in jail but no one is coming forward to speak up as a witness in the case. On the contrary, rumours are being spread that the Bhotmange family was selling liquor and into prostitution. The media too has irresponsibly reported that the family was attacked due to an illicit relationship between Surekha and Siddarth Gajbhiye. Tarnishing the reputation of women victims is an age old psychological weapon use by retrograde forces to justify their heinous crimes. And anyways, illicit relationships or selling liquor can be no justification for such a murderous attack.

Response of politicians and the state
In order to pre-empt any mass protest the Congress-NCP ruling alliance brought pressure to bear on the Dalit parliamentary leaders to ignore the issue. In fact, on October 2nd and 14th at functions to mark the Golden Jubilee of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar’s conversion to Buddhism (Dhamma Deeksha), the Khairlanji massacre was not even mentioned by the Dalit leaders who spoke on the occasion before lakhs of Dalits. With the announcement of the financial compensation and registering a case under the Prevention of Atrocities Act, the government thought it has succeeded in suppressing mass outrage at the incident.

Both the local MLA and the MP are from the BJP and the village has always been known to vote for BJP in the elections. None of the BJP leaders have visited the victims’ family to date, nor did they intervene at any point before the massacre to peacefully settle the conflict. Independent fact finding reports have pointed out that the Police delayed action on the fateful day under pressure from the BJP MLA.

A big mob of upper caste persons could commit this murder and rape in broad daylight in full public view. Where did they get this confidence that they could get away with such crimes? They knew that the state administrative machinery would act in their favour under direction from the BJP MLA and other leaders. The anti-Muslim pogroms in Gujarat and the state collusion with the perpetrators of that violence followed by the absence of any significant punishment to the guilty has gone a long way in creating this confidence.

Street protests force government to act
On its part, the state failed to respond to this issue until people took to the streets and protested in Bhandara and Nagpur. People dared lathis of the police, teargas shells, arrests. A bandh was called on 9th and 10th November in Bhandara and Nagpur cities respectively. The people, dalits in the main, organised to demand justice without the help of their established leaders. Hundreds were arrested. Rallies were banned, curfew was imposed, preventive arrests continue. The Chief Minister, the State Home Minister and the media continued to label the protests as an action by Naxalites and failed to acknowledge the public anger. A group of young dalit women staged a surprise protest inside Mantralaya in Mumbai. As a damage control exercise, the CM airdashed to Khairlanji to meet Bhhaiyalal Bhotmange and hand over an appointment letter for a job, compensation of Rs 12.5 lakhs, and an assurance of housing and land (3 acres). Bhhaiyalal rejected the offer and said that the only thing he wanted was that the guilty should be punished. Fearing continuation of mass protests in other parts of the state over the increasing number of caste atrocities and fearing loss of its dalit vote bank, the government also announced setting up of a committee to specifically look into atrocities committed against the Dalit community, a CBI probe and a fast-track court to ensure swift justice.

Compiled from fact finding reports on the incident prepared by the following organisations: report by Sanober Keshwaar, the AIDWA team of Brinda Karat and Kalindi Deshpande; the Samata Sainik Dal; the Committee Against Violence o Women (CAVOW); the Manuski Advocacy Centre, Pune and the National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights.

What hit me really hard was what one of the villagers said about Surekha : "This happened to her because she did not know how to live by the rules..."