Irfan Engineer and Neha Dabhade

Part I

The death of George Floyd and the subsequent protests have triggered a wave of reflection on the social relations, prejudices and hierarchies in the society we are living in. However, there are oppressive structures like caste which requires similar condemnation but there is no outrage India similar to what we see in the US. In a previous article, we have written that the plight of the Muslim community in India is akin to the African-Americans and argued that the police brutalities faced by both the communities are similar if not worse. The Dalits in India too have been historically oppressed, brutalized and marginalized by the caste system, an inhumane structre which has stood resilient in the face of laws and changing times. The brutalities and oppression of the Dalit community has been sustained due to the complicity of the Indian state’s bureaucracy and caste based institutions.

The situation of Dalits in India is akin to the African-Americans in the US in a number of ways. Both are historically suppressed and practically treated as second class citizens in their respective countries. Racial segregation backed by legislations like “Black Codes” and “Jim Crow laws” made segregation in housing, education, public transport, public parks, theaters, pools, cemeteries, asylums, jails and other public spaces legal in the US until only a few decades ago. This resulted in a segregated and hierarchical citizenship. The Manusmriti in India, though not legally enforceable, has been the moral code which guides the upper caste elite in their attitude and behavior towards the Dalits in day to day life and relegate them to second class citizen status. The upper caste control economic assets and social and cultural capital; they are predominant in the bureaucracy and therefore can achieve more than what “Black Codes” and “Jim Crow Laws” achieved. The Dalits were not allowed and are still not allowed in many cases to draw water from public wells and enter temples. The Dalit children were and are made to sit separately in many schools and drink water from separate utensils. Inter-caste marriages between  a Dalit and an upper caste still leads to honor killing of the Dalit spouse.

The African-Americans in the US and the Dalits in India have been exploited for cheap labour, forced to take up hard menial work with less than subsistence wages. Dalits are still forced to engage in manual scavenging or take up menial jobs which are considered “impure” by the upper caste Hindus. This was starkly demonstrated in the Una incident where 4 Dalits were publicly flogged and lynched. Dalits, mostly landless, are forced to work on the agricultural lands of the upper caste Hindus at very low wages. The democratic polity and the Constitution of India, which guarantees equality and abolishes untouchability, have utterly failed in achieving social and economic equality and usher in meaningful equal citizenship. Violence against the Dalits is everyday occurrence unlike episodic violence against the Muslims. The upper castes seek to control the body (through unpaid or lowly paid physical labour and sexual assaults on Dalit women), mind (through imposition of feudal cultural traditions and customs and denial of educational opportunities) and soul (through religious beliefs and Manusmriti) of the Dalits.

Physical violence; age old cultural traditions and religious beliefs are usual weapons of oppression. If these do not work, then village’s upper caste institutions kick in to isolate and suppress the Dalit communities in their villages and make them submit to their will by holding caste panchayats and village panchayats and issuing a call to upper castes to save their ancestral honour and social order and impose a socio-economic boycott on the Dalits. That means not to employ Dalits in their farms or homes, not to sell any provisions from their shops and not to allow them access to transportation allowing them to get out of the village. To further humiliate the community, Dalit women are paraded naked on donkeys in the villages.

Even in the year 2019, two Dalit children, a 10-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl, were beaten to death for defecating in the open in Bhavkhedi village of Shivpuri district in Madhya Pradesh. Most Dalits in the village reportedly have no toilets at home and thus have to go out in open for defecation. Similarly the family had to often wait near the local hand pump before being allowed to take water (Ghatwai, 2019). Again in 2019, Sanjaybhai Ranchhodbhai Parmar from Mota Kothasana village in Mehsana alleged that the caste Hindus gave him death threats and forced him to shave off his moustache, considered as a symbol of manliness, beat him up and made him apologize to them. A video of him apologizing to the youths went viral (Indian Express, 2019). In Jambhe village in Mulshi taluka of Pune district, an owner of a brick kiln allegedly made a Dalit labourer eat human excreta following an argument at the work place (Haygunde, 2019). In February 2020, a Dalit army soldier was attacked in his wedding procession because he was riding a mare – a symbol of prestige and prerogative of the caste Hindus. Despite the police protection, stones were pelted at the Dalit procession demanding equal dignity and rights in Banaskantha district of Gujarat (Indian Express, 2020).

Two Dalit youth were beaten up in Nagaur district of Rajasthan under the pretext that they had committed “theft”. In the video of the incident circulated, a group of men were seen thrashing the youth with rubber belts. One of the victims was stripped and held down, and a screwdriver dipped in petrol was inserted into his anus. The perpetrators of the crime could be heard laughing in the background (Mohammad, 2020). Even the onslaught of Covid-19 pandemic didn’t halt the atrocities. A Dalit family was allegedly attacked by three persons for not switching off the lights at 9 pm on 5th April as announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The victims alleged that the accused used casteist slurs and told them to keep their home lights switched off for the whole night. Besides the complainant, his son and daughter and five other family members sustained injuries (Scroll.in, 2020). Evidence, a Madurai based NGO, conducted a survey during the lockdown period and found that in the month of May 2020, in Tamil Nadu alone, 25 incidents of atrocities against Dalits, including two murders were reported (Times of India , 2020). Most of these cases related to the honor killings wherein, Dalit men were targeted for marrying caste Hindus.

Caste violence has intricate linkages with sexual violence faced by Dalit women routinely in their daily lives. Dalit women remain invisible and their problems are relegated to the periphery in this wider struggle of the Dalit community to gain recognition. They are perceived as “properties” available for sexual gratification for the men of the upper caste Hindus. They are molested and violated with impunity at farms owned by upper caste men where they work and at wells when they go to fill water. The custom wherein the newlywed bride has to spend the first night with the upper caste landlord is not fully eradicated. The Dalit girls in some villages are married off to the village deity (Yellamma in one such case). They are then raped by the priest of the temple and upper caste worshippers of the deity, ultimately forced into flesh trade in the city. The sustenance of the institution of caste in fact depends on the control on the sexuality of women – both Dalit women and upper caste women. But Dalit women have multiple marginalizations owing to caste and patriarchy. This is also a way to establish power over the bodies of Dalit women and in turn the whole community.

Of the 5,775 offences registered in India under the SC/ST Act in the year 2017 wherein Dalits were victims, 3,172 (55%) were related to “intentional insult or intimidation with intent to humiliate”. There were 47 cases of land grabbing related to Dalits; they faced social boycott in 63 cases; and they were prevented from using public spaces in 12 cases (Tiwary, 2019). While the data is three years old, there is no reason for us to believe that the situation has changed for the better. In fact, the upper caste mobilized in large numbers to reverse the meager affirmative action of the state for Dalits like the SC/ST Act and demand reverse affirmative action in their favour like reservations for their caste members in employment and educational institutions. The Marathas in Maharashtra, Jats in Haryana and the Patels in Gujarat are examples of such mobilizations. Their mobilization led to consolidation of their political clout and consequent atrocities on the Dalits.  

Part II

In Part – I, we examined the instances of oppression and marginalization of the Dalits which is similar to the African-Americans in the US if not worse. However there are no protests in India similar to the outrage witnessed in US. There were thousands of protest rallies in 2,000 cities in the US (Burch, Cai, Gianordoli, McCarthy, & Patel, 2020) in every nook and corner of America. George Floyd incident was preceded by shooting down of an unarmed 25 year old African-American Ahmaud Arbery by a white racist resident in Georgia calling him “fucking nigger” in February 2020. Breonna Taylor was shot dead by Louiville Metro Police Department Officers in March 2020. The death of an African-American George Floyd, after an encounter with a white police officer in Minneapolis, who pressed his left knee on his neck triggered off the demonstrations and protests. The protest demonstrations were joined by white Americans as well. The police chief of Houston, Texas, told the President of the US to “keep your mouth shut” when Trump asked the Governor to dominate the protestors. Often police officers marched with the demonstrators. Some would kneel down expressing their shame at the treatment given to George Floyd.

While the violence and oppression of the Dalits and Muslims in India is no less than the African-Americans in the US, why there is no massive outrage among non-Dalits and the wide scale protests witnessed on the issue of custodial death of George Floyd?

Although there have been some protests against the atrocities on Dalits, they have been localized, smaller in scale and with absence of any significant participation of non-Dalits. Here we recall three instances which triggered off protests against Dalit atrocities in recent past. First was the Khairlanji massacre in 2006. All the members of the Bhootmange family, except one, were brutally murdered by upper castes belonging to Kunbi caste. Mother and daughter were raped before killing them. The massacre was triggered off by the refusal of the Bhootmanges to part with their life resource – agricultural land for construction of a road that would have benefitted the upper caste. Enraged by a police complaint lodged the previous day by Surekha over the land dispute, the perpetrators of the massacre dragged out Surekha Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange and two of her sons and daughter, paraded naked in the village, sexually abused them and then hacked them to death.  This triggered off the protests in Vidarbha and other regions of Maharashtra – to begin with at local level. This was followed by a series of local protests in small towns wherever Dalit organizations, inspired by Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar’s writings, existed. Series of localized protests refused to die down, spreading to other regions of Maharashtra and even outside Maharashtra. There was a demonstration in Mumbai as well.

Worried that the protests would spread like a wild fire and present an opportunity to Dalit organizations to mobilize on larger scale, the state intervened and registered FIR to pacify the Dalits. However, unlike in the George Floyd case, the participation of non-Dalits in the demonstrations was very marginal at best if not entirely absent. Even Muslims who face similar violence and marginalization chose to stay aloof.

In order to diffuse and pre-empt the Dalit mobilization, the state undertook an improper investigation, appointed a special prosecutor for the trial which affected the case adversely. The final conviction of the accused was secured under ordinary law and not under the stringent Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 as if it were like any other routine murder without any caste angle (The Hindu, 2016). The Bombay High Court commuted the death sentence to a sentence of 25 years of rigorous imprisonment.

There was another round of protests by Dalits in March 2018 when the Supreme Court of India read down the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, requiring a mandatory preliminary enquiry before registering an FIR under the Act. It also ruled that public servants would not be prosecuted without the approval of the appointing authority. Once again there was large number of scattered protests worrying the Dalit political leaders supporting the Government. The Supreme Court reconsidered and overturned its earlier verdict.

The third protest in Pune was massive mobilization of the Dalit organizations against their oppression in general and not a reaction to any particular incident. The meeting, called ‘Elgar Parishad’ was strategically timed just a day before 1st January 2018 when Dalits gather in large numbers at the Memorial in Bhima Koregaon to the Mahar (Dalit caste) Regiment of British army which defeated the army of Peshwa (Brahmin rulers) in the year 1818. Dalits in Maharashtra gather in large numbers every year on 1st January to draw inspiration from the Memorial and pay respects to the soldiers of Mahar Regiment who fought valiantly. 2018 was 2nd centenary year and large numbers of Dalits were expected to gather at the Memorial. Elgar Parishad in which about 35,000 people gathered in Pune, highlighted the oppression of Dalits on 31st December 2017. Blaming the riots in Vadhu Budruk village near Bhima Koregaon, in which members of upper caste attacked the Dalits, on the Elgar Parishad, massive repression was mounted on those who had addressed the Parishad. Alleging that the Parishad was organized by banned Maoist Party, police indiscriminately arrested leading intellectuals and civil liberties activists of the country who were critical of the government and its authoritarian policies like Anand Teltumbde, Gautam Navlakha, Sudha and others. The aforesaid had not even attended the Elgar Parishad but they were unbelievably linked to the banned Maoist Party. The public intellectuals gave voice to the social consciousness of the society and were ruthlessly silenced by implicating them in false cases and invoking stringent charges against them. In this atmosphere of fear, suppression and terror, the sane voice of protest and justice, quite literally and figuratively can’t breath like George Floyd couldn’t under the weight of the knee of the ‘state’ on his neck. Dissent is crushed with a heavy hand.  However, there was no outrage against the implication of public intellectuals in false cases.

No outrage

Why there is less awareness in India that injustice anywhere is threat to justice everywhere, and denial of rights to any section is a threat to democratic rights of every citizen? We offer only a loud thinking and tentative reasons why there is no outrage against the atrocities of Dalits and Muslims in India among the non-Dalits, non-Muslims.

Unlike the US, there is graded inequality in India as analyzed by Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar. There are four hierarchically structured varnas and hundreds of hierarchically structured castes within each varna. Even within the Dalits, one caste considers itself above another Dalit caste. The oppressed are also deeply divided. There is a psychological solace that s/he is Dalit but above some other caste. The pride of being higher than some other caste blunts the feeling of absolute marginalization, and makes their sufferings a wee bit more bearable. This graded inequality also triggers off a struggle to claim a higher position in the caste hierarchy rather than seek complete liberation of from the yoke of caste system itself. The secular state of India has also further divided the OBCs and the Dalits into most backward and extremely backward and sub-divided the SC and the OBC quotas accordingly.

Again, unlike the US, the inequalities are sanctioned by religion. The Brahmanical notion of religion and graded inequalities is based on the notion of purity and pollution. More the labour involved in the caste based division of work, lesser the privilege s/he enjoys. The caste required to plough the land, the potters, the carpenters, the weavers and other manual labourers only have duties towards the privileged upper castes to render services. Certain work is considered impure like the manual scavenging, sweeping and cleaning, skinning dead cow and extracting leather, disposing off dead animals etc. and they are considered untouchables as they do impure work.

The whole religious notion of rebirth into higher or lower castes depending on how well the person served his caste based duties well is antithetical to any notion of equality, human rights, citizenship and democracy. The oppressed themselves start accepting their position, status and oppression under the weight of the religion.

The Hindutva political ideology has further introduced the concept of “foreign religions”. Those religions that accept the concept of equality at least in their theology are termed as foreign religions on the criteria that their holy land is outside India. The adherents of Islam and Christianity are termed as foreigners and called “mlechhas” or impure people. The Dalit caste which may be lowliest in the caste hierarchy is made to feel superior to the “mlechhas”. There are enough studies that have underscored the participation of Dalits in communal riots targeting the Muslims.

The followers of Hindutva have long been working among Dalits and propagating that the Muslims rulers were their oppressors and not the upper castes. They distribute literature and pamphlets lucidly written for the less educated and school dropouts with appropriate images and illustrations with imagined history wherein the Muslim rulers are shown as those who demolished their temples and outraged modesty of the Dalit women. These pamphlets are distributed alongside some minor facility they might be providing to make initial contact – funding their cultural activity, running a gymnasium for them or some such minor help. The hatred against the Muslim community is thus internalised. We have met Dalit youth who were influenced by such pamphlets and were in contact with Hindutva workers. The Muslims are portrayed as the “common enemies” who brought the downfall of the golden era of ancient India, covering up the fact that the ancient India was replete with a strong caste ridden oppression of the Dalits. Over the years, the Hindutva supremacist organizations have displayed tokenism towards the Dalits by attempting to appropriate Ambedkar and make him and object of worship sans his life mission. The Dalits are co-opted into the same discriminating institution of religion which kept them at the margins for centuries by creating a smokescreen of inclusion and equality. Dalits are mobilized to join the Hindutva organizations and also in communal violence by convincing them that the Muslims are anti-national, terrorists and the larger threat to Dalits and the Hindu society of which they are a part.

The caste system has followed into the Muslim and Christian community. The social hierarchy of caste is retained within these communities. The Ashraf or upper caste convert to Muslim community feel that they are superior and nurture same feelings towards the Dalits among their community as well as Hindu community. In a Dalit-Muslim dialogue organized by the Centre for Study of Society and Secularism in Ahmedabad after the 2002 riots in Gujarat in which one of us was present, one Dalit activist pointed out the fact that even Muslim businessmen and households treat the Dalits in the same way as the Hindu upper caste do.

This graded segregation and inequality then divides all the oppressed. Horizontal unity of the oppressed and marginalized then seems to be a distant possibility. Dalits do no protest on streets when there is mob lynching of Muslims and communal riots, and Muslims do not join the protests when the Dalits are treated the way they are treated.

The Civil Society of the other marginalised sections

Indian metropolitan cities have a fairly strong trade union movement with its usual ups and downs. Mumbai once had a very strong left trade union movement since the Biritish colonial period in the textile, pharmaceutical, automobile and other industries and service sectors like banking and insurance sector. However, Dalits were by and large excluded from the organized industrial sector. Their presence was marginal and that too in low paid jobs like sweeping etc. The union leaders of the leftist trade unions did not personally treat them as untouchables and they were welcome in the office. However the demands of Dalits were not voiced as powerfully and they rarely made to the leadership of the Union. The left unions did not address cultural issues like caste and communalism, which according to them was part of the superstructure. They believed that culture would change after the socialist revolution. As a result there was very little engagement with the existing feudal culture. There was very little ideological war against the caste system and there was no education of the upper caste workers on the necessity to struggle against caste system. The workers would hold the red flag inside the factories but when they returned to their neighbourhoods, they would be members and activists of Hindutva parties. After the 1992-93 anti-Muslim communal riots, Hindu workers stopped the Muslim workers at the factory gates from resuming their work. Trade unions were reluctant to mobilize all their members and run a campaign against communalism and Hindutva ideology.

Similarly, feminists from the Dalit and minority community felt that the main stream feminist movement did not address their issues. They formed their own feminist organisations and were accused of splitting the feminist movement. The Dalits and minorities are nowhere in the civil society and their issues and voices are consequently ignored.

The upper caste leadership of the civil society which struggles on democratic issues like the trade unions, professional unions, human rights organisations, feminist orgnisations feel that raising issues of caste and communalism will weaken their movement and the unity of the sections they are organizing. On the other hand when the Dalits and minorities form their civil society organisations to address their issues, it is seen as splitting the movement. As a result the empathies of the upper caste leadership for these causes is much less than what it should be. This may be one factor why the outrage in India is not what it should be.

A section of Dalit movement has also become extremely sectarian and sees everything through the prism of caste. Exclusive emphasis on their caste identity produces feeling of victimhood and leads to strong exclusive caste based networks which make them feel secure within their cocoons but does not address other issues. Dr. Babasaheb becomes their exclusive “property” and their answer for all their problems, almost deifying him. For all practical purposes, they see the world as Dalits v/s the rest. They want more share for Dalits within the existing structure and have no vision of an alternative egalitarian system that would include all sections and serve the cause of social justice. They are militant and confrontationist for a short duration but often get co-opted within the system by the ruling elite. Ramdas Athavale, Udit Raj, Ram Vilas Paswan and Mayawati are some examples. While the upper caste ruling elite control the entire budget, these co-opted leaders get some crumbs of SC/ST welfare budget. Co-option is one weapon in the hands of the ruling elite to blunt the consciousness for an alternative egalitarian system.

Finally we would humbly submit that what we need is all the civil society movements for egalitarian and democratic culture and politics to come together and engage with each other on a regular basis to develop a larger and comprehensive alternative vision that will be all inclusive, adhere to social justice; is deeply democratic, with accountable governance and allows space for participation of all citizens; embracing diversity and non-negotiable gender equality, against perpetuation of caste based identities and one that drastically brings down class inequalities. Such a vision will have to be based on values of humanism, empathy and love for all human beings and also environment. We need to build a horizontal unity of all the oppressed and marginalized sections of the society. We would have to build bridges between the organisations that represent the interests or workers, peasants feminists and organizations that stand for cultural diversity. The organisations that struggle for democratic causes will have to undertake massive awareness and educational campaigns for a democratic culture and attitudes respecting diversity, equality, human dignity and freedoms.

We have ample cultural and ideological resources to undertake this educational and awareness building campaigns along with struggles for equality and inclusive society. We have cultural resources from non-Brahmanical or Shramanic traditions – the Lokayat philosophy, Buddhism, Sikhism, Jain philosophy, Islam, Christianity, Sarna and adivasi world views. We have a history of peaceful co-existence for over 20 centuries and rich interaction between various cultures which have enriched the diversity. We have the Bhakti Saints like Tukaram, Janabai, Muktabai, Rai Dass, Tulsi Das, Meera, Basvanna, Narayan Guru and many others. We have Sufi saints like Bulle Shah, Baba Farid and Nizamuddin Auliya. We have political thinkers and leaders right from Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, Gandhiji, Ram Manohar Lohia, Madhu Limaye, Jaiprakash Narayan. We have experience of working class movements, feminist movements, social justice movements and environmental movements. We do not lack resources; we lack the will and the wisdom to build this horizontal unity for a democratic India.
(Irfan Engineer and Neha Dabhade are with Centre for Study of Society and Secularism, Mumbai.)