"Are you to deny that these are not children of my God?"
That question raised by bapu comes to mind as I read of an eight-year-old Dalit girl set on fire in a Mathura village for crossing a road used by the upper castes. Or the 600-metre wall that segregates Dalits in a Madurai village. Or the horrors inflicted on a Delhi University M Phil student and her siblings. The list, shaming the image of Shining India, goes on.
In 1975 Britain's Minority Rights Group wrote, "India is one of the few countries today where a section of the society is regarded by others to be so inherently inferior that it is polluting to other humans: untouchable." Very little seems to have changed since then. Here I would like to mention a very sad incident I happened to encounter day before yesterday. I had hired a boat and gone for fishing with my family. Boat driver was a very nice man from Tamilnadu. We caught lots of fish with his tips. After coming back we found boat owner ( an Egyptian) was waiting for us. As soon as the driver parked the boat, owner started abusing and pushing him. Surprised by this shocking welcome I tried to know the reason behind his outrage. Driver told me that he was suppose to water owner’s garden in the morning but due to his very busy day he had planned to do it in the evening. That’s why owner is so angry. I went to the owner and showed my press card to him then only he will calm down. Later I asked the driver why doesn’t he protest to his owner’s behavior specially now when he can get equally and sometime better paid job back in India very easily. He nodded his head and said, “ I know but will I get better treatment. I am a dalit, still untouchable in my village...” I am a proud Indian and could have debated this till the end had someone else said it, but here when a fellow Indian was telling me the truth I was just ashamed…ashamed to be born in forward cast.
What is the way out? For last 60 years government is trying to uplift the dalits by pushing them with reservation. Conventional wisdom holds that affluence is bound to dilute and eventually wash away the degrading rigors of the caste system. That money will eradicate a pernicious relic of the dark ages. The justification is that once the Scheduled Castes are sufficiently uplifted to rank with the supposedly higher castes, there will be no further occasion for discrimination. But though India might be booming, prosperity does not seem to have had the civilising effect that politicians had expected in 1950. Why? One obvious explanation is that life cannot be viewed only through an economic telescope in a land where, as somebody said, people don't cast their votes, they vote their caste.
Clearly, culture ranks high among the other factors that account for a person's responses and actions. And that leads to a second dimension that is usually ignored. All the reams of literature on the subject, the reports of committees and commissions, concentrate on the victim. They consider ways and means of improving the status of the underprivileged. Better education is expected to mean better employment, which, in turn, will ensure social acceptance.
But it doesn't happen that way because the formula ignores the pride and prejudice of the person who does the accepting. Kanaklata Rani is very likely better educated than the Grovers. That does not make her more acceptable to them. So, it's the Grovers of India at whom attention must be directed even more than at the Kanaklatas. Awareness and education is the only weapon through which we can eradicate this old age stigma on Indian society.
Though well-conceived to start with, in practice, reservation has encouraged political exploitation, victimised meritorious students and invited allegations of a 'creamy layer' and 'vested interest in backwardness'. Meanwhile, the Thakurs, Pandits and Yadavs of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, and the Brahmins of the south continue to wallow in brutal ignorance. Until this stops we will keep having useless leaders like lalu, mayawati, mulayam and many more elected to take our country closer to hell. Because atleast these useless show their sympathy towards dalits during election time.
