[Reader-list] No candlelight protest for Lalli Devi

[asit das]

THE HINDU

Published: December 30, 2012
No candlelight protest for Lalli Devi

Badri Narayan



*The Hindu*  Dalit women are always at the receiving end of societal
oppression which takes many forms

*The Sunday Story**While voices were rasied against the brutal gang-rape of
the 23 year-old woman who tragically died on Saturday, what about the daily
occurrences of rape and assault in the lives of Dalit women?*

Who will listen to the voices of the margins? Margins mean those who are
not in the capital, those who are not part of the urban middle-class, and
those who are not in the gaze of the TV camera. Margins mean those who are
silent because they have no one to tell their stories to.

Delhi citizens rightly raised their voices against the brutal gang-rape of
the 23 year-old woman who tragically died on Saturday morning. But what
about the other statistically established truth? That rape and assault are
daily occurrences in the lives of Dalit women? Most crimes committed
against Dalits remain unrecorded because the police, the village councils,
and government officials reflect the biases of the Hindu caste system.
Crimes against them also go unreported because of fears of reprisals,
intimidation by the police and their inability to pay bribes.

A report released by the Amnesty International in 2001 found an “extremely
high” number of sexual assaults on Dalit women perpetrated by the powerful
combine of landlords, upper-caste villagers, and police officers. The study
estimates that only about 5 per cent of the attacks are registered, with 30
per cent of the rape complaints dismissed as false. The study also found
that the police routinely demand bribes, intimidate witnesses, cover up
evidence, and beat up the women's husbands. Even where rape victims are
murdered, the culprits go unpunished.

Often rape and assault happen as part of caste warfare with militia-like
vigilante groups, assisted by the local police, conducting raids on
villages, burning Dalit homes and raping the women. Legal records, media
reportage and personal testimonies reveal that upper-caste men claim sexual
access to Dalit and lower-caste women as a matter of caste privilege.
Consider this recent incident at Sheetalpur Tikari village under Tharwai
police station, around 30 kilometers from Allahabad. Lalli Devi, 45, was
constructing a house allotted to her under the Indira Awas Yojna when a
local money-lender arrived there with other influential people and
demolished the house. As Lalli tried to reason with the man, she, her
husband Gulab and her son aged 12 years were beaten mercilessly by the
goons. Her hut, where she used to sleep and cook, was razed to the ground.
Even today marks of the Brahminical violence are visible on Lalli's body.
And yet, the police kept her in the *thana** *for 24 hours and denied that
any violence had occurred.
Worst victims

Dalit women are the worst victims of sexual violence because they face
oppression at three levels — caste, class and gender. Indeed she faces
atrocities as a Dalit, as a woman and as a member of the working class.
Dalit women undergo sexual oppression, economic exploitation and
socio-cultural subjugation. But the judicial system routinely fails them.

Immediately after V.P. Singh became Prime Minister in 1989, his
constituency, Fatehpur in Uttar Pradesh, was rocked by the news of the
gruesome murder of Dhanraj, a Dalit, by some Thakurs in whose fields he
worked. Dhanraj had been ordered by the landlords to let his wife spend a
night with them. When he defied the diktat, he was dragged out and burnt
alive. Singh, who projected himself as a messiah of the oppressed classes,
rushed to the spot and offered the widow Rs. 1,000 from his welfare fund
and some land as compensation. However the land that was allotted lay
within the boundaries of the land of the Thakurs, making it totally
inaccessible to her. In the court case that followed all the Thakurs were
acquitted of the crime.

In another case that occurred in village Dauna near Allahabad on January
21, 1994, Shivpatia, an old Dalit woman was paraded naked in the village
because her son had objected to her vegetable field being plundered by some
boys from the dominant Kurmi (OBC) caste. This incident happened when
Mulayam Singh Yadav and Kanshi Ram were in an alliance and had formed a
government in U.P.. The incident hit the national headlines, prompting both
men to rush together to the spot. The victim was offered land and money as
compensation and the culprits arrested.

Seventeen years have passed since the incident but the case is still
pending in the sessions court even as Mayawati became Chief Minister of the
State four times. The irony is that the case was on fast track. In reality,
the harassment has increased for Shivpatia and her relatives who are forced
to visit the court for their ‘*sunwai*’, thereby reliving the incident over
and over. Today all that they want is that the case should come to an end
so that they do not need to forgo their daily wages in order to answer
summons from the court.

Dalit women are invisible not just for the media and the police but also
seemingly for the judiciary, considering the glaring lack of genuine
efforts to resolve their cases. For the public outrage against the Delhi
gang rape to have real significance, it must also lead to the victimised
Dalit women also getting justice.

*(Badri Narayan teaches political science at Allahabad University)*





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