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After years of systematic data collection and campaigning the Dalit
issue has finally arrived on the global stage
BY TEESTA SETALVAD
When over 160 Dalit activists
from different parts of the country converged at Durban in South
Africa and made their presence felt at the UN’s World Conference Against
Racism, Xenophobia and Related Intolerances in August-September,
the exuberance of the occasion could be felt in the rhythmic beat of Masterji’s
drums and the dynamic dance-dramas performed by the cultural troupe trained
by the Sakhti Centre, Karnataka.
For a good one third of the
Dalit delegates from India, this was the first time ever that they were
coming out of the confines of their village. A village, moreover, that
despite the glorious homilies paid to it in the past and even now remains
in most cases, structured rigidly by cruel hierarchies and divisions. Where
clean air and water is decreed only for the born-again, the powerful few.
Where entrance to the school and the local panchayat is violently prevented.
Where women and men continue to be subjected to crude cultural and economic
abuse, in the matter of human dignity and wages. And where the smallest,
the slightest attempt at self-assertion and self-alleviation, the refusal
to put up with indignities any longer, is met with killing finality.
The Dalits made a date with
Durban. Determinedly and with dignity. And despite the few slips and faux
pas that undoubtedly reflect a need for gender sensitivity in the leadership.
(Is the story very different in the case of very many non-Dalit men, however?)
At the non-governmental forum the caste issue dominated the deliberations,
the visibility of the Dalit contingent was envied and their discipline
and sense of purpose applauded.
“Listen to the Untouchables”
was the front-page headline in a South African national daily on August
29, 01. The first week saw dozens of Dalit activists being interviewed
by the international media — print, television and radio. There is no denying
that the issue has come to be firmly lodged in the global consciousness.
The plight of almost a fourth
of our one billion people, in fact, has become the subject of common knowledge
and debate since 1999 and particularly in the last few months, thanks to
the diligent campaign by many Dalit groups and individuals in the build-up
to Durban. But the sheer weight and volume of the data that ought to have
educated us all, on the continued shame and segregation legitimized by
holy scripture, was sought to be sidelined by the hows, whys and wherefores
of the Durban discourse. The result speaks of the callous disregard with
which we have dealt with the stark facts and figures thrown up by the campaign,
leaving much of it unabsorbed and unattended.
Any observer of the Indian
media over the past 18 months would easily notice a quantum leap in the
coverage of Dalit issues and concerns. From the gruesome headlines that
told us how a woman sarpanch was disrobed and paraded naked in a village
in MP, because, as an elected local representative, she dared hoist the
national tricolour on Republic Day, to the story of three young Dalit
men being hacked to pieces simply because they dared to defy the caste
edict of beating temple drums, to serious editorial musings and sermons.
The Dalit issue has finally arrived.
If that alone is not a measure
of huge success, considering that the mass media can boast of a mere handful
of Dalit journalists and a lone columnist, add to it the countless seminars,
consultations, Parliamentary debates, TV Talk Shows on the issue. Plus
the fact that this mobilization has raised some soul-searching questions
before other social and political movements that had consciously or unconsciously
ignored the ticklish issue of caste. In turn, Dalit groups got to face
some equally relevant questions. All this was a direct result of the Dalits’
date with Durban.
For these reasons alone,
the campaign for Dalit human rights must be voted an unequivocal success.
Never in the history of pre- or post-Independence India has public discourse,
governed and distorted by a variety of interests and concerns, reflected
so sharply the Dalit condition. What happened to this discourse especially
towards the end, when the Indian government succeeded in pulling
rank with other countries and preventing the direct inclusion of “work
and descent based discrimination” in the official document was a swift
erasure of the issue of exclusion, segregation and violence from discussions
and the injection, in it’s place, of clever distractions. Distractions
that, allowed us to turn away from our shame.
What instead became part
of a far more salacious debate was the Dalit motive for going to Durban,
the character of the leadership, the sources of funding and finally, the
cruellest cut of them all, Dalit behaviour overseas. Typically, few addressed
the critical issue at hand because doing so would grant the Dalits their
most vital claim — the claim that they are victims of a hidden apartheid.
To really understand the notion, we need to, difficult as it is and repetitious
as it may seem, remember the difficult facts that the campaign had raised
and put before the nation.
The fact that a ‘high’ caste
judge in Uttar Pradesh got his chamber washed with the holy water from
the river Ganges to purify the seat since the earlier occupant was a Dalit.
Or the fact that a public prosecutor from Gujarat justified the thrashing
of a Dalit youth to death, arguing that “the law differs from person to
person” and proceeded despite this public statement to be appointed a Judge
on oath to the Indian Constitution. Or the fact that seats reserved for
Dalits — a major bone of contention for the middle and upper class — are
deliberately left vacant.
What were these difficult
facts that got easily relegated to ‘atrocities’ within the wider debate?
The fact that despite the
existence of state mechanisms for affirmative action that have been statutorily
created by the Indian Constitution, like the SC/ST Commission, it’s reports
remain unread in Parliament and recommendations unimplemented. Despite
the enactment of two laws — with criminal provisions to contain and punish
prejudicial acts of insult, segregation and violence to SCs and STs—systematic
non prosecution and poor rate of hearings and convictions reveal severe
caste bias among the prosecutors and the judiciary.
The fact that even while
the scourge of untouchability and rigid segregation may be invisible in
urban slums and high-rise apartments, the continued existence, despite
being legally banned, of manual scavenging (carrying human excreta
on the head and entering manholes) in our cities permits our treatment
of a section of human beings as less than human, animals even.
All these issues were left
unattended and unabsorbed .
Even as the pro-and anti-Durban
debate raged, and the WCAR was underway, two Dalit women, one in North
and the other in South India, were disrobed and publicly humiliated for
stepping out of the confines of caste-driven behaviour.
These facts, were, for the
first time in decades, in a systematic and dignified way, portrayed before
the nation through the Black Paper generated by the Dalit campaign. Given
the magnitude of rights’ denials and violence compiled in the document,
do we honestly believe that governmental sources, or institutions or corporate
houses would have backed Dalit presence at Durban? Without the support
and solidarity of groups worldwide, Blacks may never have got liberated
from apartheid in South Africa. Even after that liberation, much of the
land and economic resources even today remain in the clutches of the Whites.
So it may well be with India’s Dalits.
So, back to the Dalits’ date
with Durban. Three issues dominated the non- governmental forum at Durban
before the start of the official proceedings. The condition of the Palestinians
under Israeli occupation, the issue of apology and reparation for years
of slavery (a demand from the African nations) and the issue of Dalits
and caste discrimination worldwide. From the start, it was clear that those
who hold the reigns of power related to all three issues were reluctant
and even threatening in their posturing, determined not to allow them to
be raised.
The issue at the WCAR never
was a mere question of Dalits’ success or failure at Durban. It was rather
the question of the WCAR’s success or failure in acknowledging the substantive
issues raised by people oppressed and discriminated against in different
parts of the world. Issues that their own governments and combatants, through
bullying or through inter-governmental compromise, succeeded in excluding.
If the United States
threatened and finally did withdraw along with Israel from the official
proceedings; if the African nations had to modify their demands on reparation;
and, if the Dalits, had to accept that an innocuous para on
‘work and descent based discrimination’ is too much of a thorn in the flesh
for establishment India; what is this but a reflection that official world
politics is more a tale told by the powerful but which contains little
of the truth?
“We shall break the silences,
we will ask inconvenient questions. We will speak about the Palestinian
issue, the Reparation issue, the issue of caste, the issue of embargo against
Cuba,” the NGO Forum’s chairperson, Mercia Andrews had declared at the
inauguration. The official proceedings at the WCAR did not do that. The
fact that the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), a statutory body
under the Indian Constitution, was commended by none less than Mary Robinson,
UN Commissioner for Human Rights, for taking an honest stand and opposing
the Indian government at the official forum was, however, no mean achievement.
The fact that many independent
voices from the world and India spoke out against their governments and
combatants from the NGO platform, demanding that issues that were being
silenced get raised was a beginning. Small and feeble as yet, maybe. But
a commendable attempt nonetheless to claim spaces and hearing within international
fora like the UN, hitherto completely dominated by pre-set agendas. |
