Month: May 2018

Discrimi-Nation III: ‘Caste Is A Dormant Volcano’

By LokMarg


For Devashish Jarariya, getting to grips with his caste was a life-changing development. He became a student activist and then joined the Bahujan Samaj Party to fight the caste discrimination he experienced during his school days. His perspective:

I was born in a middle-class family. My father was a government employee. We moved to the city when I was about six years old. I didn’t face any comment on my caste until I came to Class 9, though it’s not like I didn’t know what my caste is. In primary classes, I used only my name without my surname.

My father used the surname Jatav so my teachers added it to my name. It was in Class 8 that I used my family name for the first time. Some people still ask me why I don’t use the surname my father did.

The first instance of discrimination I remember is from Class 9 when a classmate refused to eat with me, saying I was a “low caste” and that his parents would thrash him if they got to know. Some classmates supported me, and I faced that situation. Later on, that classmate became one of my best friends. As one grows older, caste becomes like the air you breathe day in and out. I got by, however, because most of my friends were from the general category both in school and college. We did talk about caste, but it was peaceful: it seems caste has its boundaries, and if nobody crosses them coexistence is pretty much easier.

In my village, every caste has its own cluster of homes. I rarely visited other caste neighbourhoods in my childhood, something I don’t do even now as a matter of fact. I don’t remember going to any wedding in village that was between people outside my caste.

We never questioned this because it was the existing system. I didn’t have the intelligence to understand it then or I didn’t try to. The caste system works in different ways in rural and urban settings. Caste is a dormant volcano; if you work within the limits of the system, it is peaceful but things change rapidly if you start exploring and questioning it.

Caste differences for me were tied in with the issue of reservation; it was the flashpoint. I knew how to defend my position on it but also understood that contrary views on this cannot be harmonised. You can support reservation or you can hate it. The reservation policy doesn’t hurt relationships with people from the unreserved categories because a certain level of acceptance has been reached.

But things changed for me when I started taking a stand on issues as my public life commenced. I start writing about what’s happening in society which the middle class doesn’t bother to look at, or at least as I presumed.

I realised my growing understanding was at odds with the balance of system; the dormant volcano inside began to rumble. The more I wrote on caste atrocities, the more real my own caste identity became. It was like my whole life in the system was made up, and that the foundations of society were rotten.

With my Dalit identity coming to the fore, all those who knew me for years saw and felt the change in my outlook. For them, I am a changed person now. There were no caste problems in their world but I had injected harsh reality into it. When a Dalit was killed in Gujarat for twirling his moustache, I started a campaign #MrDalit #DalitWithMoustache.

My friends asked me what had happened to turn me to caste politics. I have tried to question the system. For instance, during the recent Dalit agitation on the dilution of the SC/ST Act, I confronted media houses to tell them that no Dalits were responsible for the violence. Now, being Dalit is my only identity for my friends and acquaintances; that’s how powerful the embed of caste in our society is. Even writing this piece will only add to my caste identification.

More From Discrimi-Nation 
Part II: The Dalit Life Sentence
Part I: Northeastern Distress

—With editorial assistance from Lokmarg

Discrimi-Nation I: Northeastern Distress

By LokMarg


Our Constitution makes us all equal, but India remains a land of all sorts of discrimination—caste, gender, religion, race. For all its melting pots and cosmopolitan bravado, New Delhi is no different. Thirteen years ago, Alana Golmei, a Ph.D. from Manipur, came to the Capital in search of a better life. Her story:

Every man and woman from the Northeast is distressed with the way they are treated in the capital city. They survive rapes, face sexual advances, brave physical assaults from locals and what have you. The worst-case scenario is for the girls who work late hours, or are employed at spas, massage parlours or other unconventional means to make a living.

My first job here was with a charity organisation in Nehru Place. I would commute from Dwarka to Nehru Place in a jam-packed bus. Men took opportunity whenever there was one to pass lewd comments or touch inappropriately. They would call me names (that I would prefer not to mention here as I still find them demeaning). Some bluntly made jokes about my Mongoloid features.

With poor job opportunities in Manipur and big responsibilities on my shoulders, I had come to Delhi in 2005. That was the time when there was a ban on women employment back home. Despite being a Ph.D in Sociology, I could not find a decent job. No matter how educated you were, in Manipur you would not get more than a ₹4,000-job to begin with.  Like every girl from the Northeast, I stepped out in want of a better financial future. I always wanted to teach. After coming to Delhi, I started applying to colleges. Not being well-versed in Hindi was a major handicap. I would be called for interviews, but the language barrier spoiled my prospects.

Harassment and racial slurs are common. I still believe that men and women from the northeastern part of the country are relatively more stylishly dressed. This is not to do with money or class; it is a cultural thing. And because we have a strong style statement, many people take us to be women of easy virtue.

On the rare occasions that I approached police, I could notice them jeering and sharing jokes about me with other colleagues right in front of me, for I didn’t know Hindi. Such experiences on a daily basis could break any aspiring youth. But the need for a better life and opportunity kept me going.  Two years after moving to Delhi, I met a group of boys and girls who shared their experiences of sexual abuse and racial slurs in Delhi. We decided to form a support group so that others from Northeast do not have to suffer what we did. Or at least, they have someone to approach for redressal of their issues. I soon realised the magnitude of the challenge before the group.   

Our support group would constantly face threats from the locals for approaching police. The local community would even resist our intervention and help. People would not give us accommodation on rent; those who did would charge us more than water and electricity bills. Indecent advances were common even at the time of negotiations for housing or work.  

Dealing with the police initially proved a huge challenge. They would not take our complaints seriously and more often found fault in our conduct. We often needed to pull strings to push the police take us seriously.

But I find satisfaction in what I am doing now. Our foundation helps the community in distress and also assists them in the tiresome process at court or police station to get them justice. Apart from my job as a researcher, my regular day includes holding sensitization workshops with the locals and the police.  Political statements are one thing but we have to make people realise that the Northeast is a part of India and we are Indians, just like them.

 

(Alana Golmei, 42, is a researcher and the founder of the North East Support Centre & Helpline)

More from Discrimi-Nation
Part II: The Dalit life sentence
Part III: ‘Caste is a dormant volcano’

 

—With editorial assistance from Lokmarg

 

Slaughterhouse Diary III: Blossoms of Hope

By LokMarg


, a 55-year-old mango-grower from Dhanaura village in Amroha, Uttar Pradesh, saw his trees go barren because of effluents from a nearby abattoir. His annual income dwindled from a few lakhs of rupees to nothing. Today, with the closure of the slaughterhouse, he looks forward to revived fortunes.

It was almost a decade ago, in 2009, when we first saw this slaughterhouse coming up in our village. Behanji (Bahujan Samaj Party leader Mayawati) was the chief minister then I remember, and many of us felt it would create jobs for the local youth and improve the roads linking our village to the highway. Our optimism was shortlived, for we soon realized the slaughterhouse had only brought misfortune.

It was not just my mango orchard but all the farmland falling within a radius of 3 km of the slaughterhouse was affected. Grain crops, fruits and vegetables: all suffered in quality and yield. The following season, my trees stopped flowering and bearing fruit. We sought help and were told that the chimney of the ‘butcherkhana’ spewed toxic and chemical-laden fumes.

This had a disastrous effect on the crops. We also ran from pillar to post, raising the alarm on this environmental disaster in our lives, but nobody cared. The owner of the slaughterhouse had deep pockets and high reach in the establishment. My income dried up. I left the orchard to the mercy of Allah and diverted my focus to our fields that were far away from the factory.

I managed to keep the kitchen going at home. With a change of guard in 2012 (when Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Government came to power), we saw hope as the Yadav family had roots in farming. We went to Lucknow several times but all we got were false assurances. Apparently, an ex-minister and SP leader was a partner in the factory.

The problems only grew from there, affecting not just the air but the groundwater as well. Our water pumps started pulling up dirty- foul-smelling water. It had become quite unbearable. In August 2014, we organised a huge panchayat in Dhanaura where hundreds of farmers gathered. Our protest continued for 95 days, and the authorities finally woke up and took note.

The factory was sealed by the administration. It didn’t last. The owners of the slaughterhouse approached the High Court and the closure notice was stayed. I have three children and during this time, all were studying in Meerut. My children would often advise me to sell all the land we had and move out. But I am a firm believer in Allah, and decided to wait.

A farmer will sell his land only when all options run out. The Yogi government was an answer to our prayers. In less than two months of his assuming power, district officials sealed this house of evil. The problems have not gone immediately, but did we didn’t expect them to.

In time, the land would heal itself, I knew. Then, one day, for the first time in the last eight years, I saw blossoms on some of my mango trees. I cried. I am thankful to Allah and confident now that my good fortune will return.

More From the Slaughterhouse Diary

Part I: ‘Yogi govt butchered my job’

Part II: A School Reborn

-With editorial assistance from Lokmarg

‘Our society hasn't changed after Nirbhaya’

By LokMarg


By Asha Devi

Six years after my daughter was raped and murdered in a moving bus in the national capital on a cold December night, our society has not changed a bit. In fact, the situation has deteriorated as rapists have become more brutal now.

They are worse than animals. They crush a five-year-old girl with a boulder after raping her; not even an animal does that. More worrying is the fact that such rapists are being defended by people in government, politicians, lawyers and even cops. In the Kathua case, a cop was involved. Where we will go when the protector becomes the predator?

It is so disheartening that to divert attention from the gruesome crime they are also trying to give a communal colour to a five-year-old’s murder. Rape can never be communal. I can’t believe that a rape victim can be identified by her religion. That comes from politics. We have no options left. Our system has made us helpless; we have nowhere to go but to hit the streets for justice. In our country, a father goes to a chief minister’s residence seeking justice for his raped daughter but he gets beaten to death.

What can we do now? It is sad to see that the ones who gave the ‘Beti Bachao Beti Padhao (Save our daughters, educate our daughters)’ slogan are now defending their own legislator in an alleged gang-rape case of a minor girl and her father’s custodial death. People now see hope in us but I can’t help thinking how little I can do for them when I have failed to get justice for my own daughter.

Nirbhaya died in 2012 and after six years, we are still clueless when the accused will be hanged. Our pain and trauma is their politics, no matter which political party is in power. If they are serious, they should hold a one-day session in Parliament to discuss such brutal rape cases and find a solution. Even these politicians have daughters, mothers, and wives at home. Not even women politicians take up such issues; even they are quiet. TV debates are just more political blame-games.

When there is a solution to everything, then why there is no solution for rape? After my daughter was brutalised, the politicians who were in the Opposition then had organised candlelight vigils and marches and had forced the government to make the law more stringent. How many daughters must we lose to get a stringent law that works? I demand that these criminals should be hanged. And, of course, there’s a Nirbhaya Fund.

But who is using it and how is it being used? Who’s been benefited? I have got no response from the government so far. It is so shameful that people are questioning rape victims. I feel all these things are being done to divert attention.

If they continue to ignore it, more such cases will happen. People in power are sleeping as poor people are getting raped but if they continue to stay quite sooner or later their own daughters will have to pay the price as these rapists are only getting bolder.

(Asha Devi is the mother of the December 16, 2012 Delhi gang-rape victim Nirbhaya, a horror that sparked a nationwide outrage then and led to a strengthening of the Indian Penal Code section on rape) — with editorial assistance from Lokmarg

‘A Harsh Rape Law Is Only The Beginning’

By LokMarg


By Sanjeev Jain

It was a gut-wrenching experience the first time I was part of the prosecution in a case relating to the rape of a minor. An eight-year-old girl visiting her grandmother in one of the Capital’s suburbs had been raped by a neighbour. It shocked everybody.

Now it seems to have become one of the usual crimes. It’s an epidemic out there. It just doesn’t stop, having mutated into several common forms now. One such horrible development is more cases of rape of minors, like the Kathua case.

The ordinance okayed by the Cabinet recently is a step in the right direction. Following the outcry after the Nirbhaya rape case of 2012, the law was strengthened to enlarge the definition of rape, bring juveniles above the age of 16 into the pale of the law for such cases, and fast track courts came up. I fully support the introduction of capital punishment where brutality or unnatural offences, especially in case of a minor’s rape, is established.

In cases where brutality is not established, punishment must still be severe, if not death. That did not really address the issue of police investigation, and more importantly, the appeal process. Even if trial courts ensure speedy trial, the appeal process becomes long-winded.

Look at the Nirbhaya case; this is the one that brought these legal issues to the foreground, but there’s still no closure yet. Now police probes and the trial have been set time limits, as has the appeal process. The higher quantum of sentence in cases of rape where the victim is of tender age, plus the fact that judges are to have a free hand to sentence convicts to prison for life in cases where the victim is below 12 are, in my view, long overdue corrections of the law.

It must be noted that making penal provisions harsher does not directly translate into reducing instances of rape. What it does is to empower the victim and society at large, raising the issue in the national consciousness and sending out the message that the law in the books is in step with the reality in the street. Of course, implementing the changed law will put the police and courts to the test.

Investigation and prosecution will have to rise to a whole new level, and that I chose to remain sceptical about, simply because such things are easier said than done in the creaky-giant systems of our country. And all this will require governments to spend large sums. A couple of things I want to draw attention to is what we lawyers have observed. First, the explosion in rape cases between former live-in partners and between people with active sexual relationships, including those who elope and those indulging in extra-marital sex.

Some lawyers even call these cases Facebook rape because social media is the new source for the growing number of rape cases. In my view, for rape cases figuring people with access and activity on social media, no less than half would be a ballpark figure for relationships gone wrong or where the family of the victim converts elopement into rape to avoid the stigma. I’m no sociologist, but maybe our society at large is not mature enough to handle the power and vitality of social media.

My point is that these cases do not reflect growing criminalisation of society; rather they are a symptom of a social change, a sexual ferment that is muddling to and fro across the lines of the law. With time and clear judgments, this is bound to be minimised. My other point is about rape of minors.

While sexual abuse of minors by family members or known persons is rampant across income levels, almost all of the brutal cases of minors being raped come from lower-income groups. A little child being raped by a neighbour in a slum is the most common kind. Read the papers and this will become evident. This high correlation needs to be addressed.

I would also add the growing amount of substance abuse, alcohol included, to the study of this problem. Most social scientists say there is little or no correlation between porn and rape, but I differ—the combination of poverty, drug abuse and easy availability of porn on mobile devices is an unholy mix. It’s time to cut through the political correctness and address the problems we see on a daily basis.

(Sanjeev Jain is a noted criminal lawyer in the southern part of the National Capital Region who has practiced for over three decades in four districts of Haryana) — with editorial assistance from Lokmarg