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?Women will not mind about the age of the person if she wants to have sex.?[1]
??She is only loves ornaments, money and clothes, full of sexual desire, betrayer, egoistic.?[2]
These are the famous ciphers encoded in the sacred text of Indian order that governed lives of millions throughout India.
Introduction
Recent protests across the capital and elsewhere amounted to gender consciousness in the paradoxical Indian society. Strikes and dharnas (sit-ins) are adopted quite often by the unprivileged citizens of the world?s largest democracy. Apart from women activists, schoolgirls along with their parents, human rights activists and political parties took to the streets to express solidarity with women. The situation of harassed women in the cities and working women in their offices facing sexual violence are often reported and get nationwide media attention. But this time, the reporting was quite influential: it united women all across India and with organisations overseas.[3] International media reported India?s pitiful situation for weeks, interviewing the young protestors who came to voice their grievances. The Congress member of Parliament and son of the President of the Republic was condemned in the media for his ?dented and painted? remarks. Some Opposition parliamentarians showed their understanding of rape by asking girls to abandon skirts and follow strict hours. Some Right-wingers like Mohan Bhagwat got into controversy by relating the incident to ?India? and not??Bharat? (rural India) to which their ideologue conforms. Some religious organisations demanded an end to co-education[4] and some Hindu gurus like Asaram[5] held the girl equally responsible for the rape.?
Glamour
The participants in the protest had their personal agenda of trying to grab media attention and political parties took to talk shows and visiting the rape victim?s family. Religious leaders propagated conservatism. Bollywood participated with black ribbons and placards. Among the several million participants around the country, the young students were the only innocent ones who marched in frustration blaming the government. Sadly these groups of protestors were misled by personal gains.
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Presence of religious heads
The question is why did the religious leaders try to pacify the victim?s family by participating in protest or giving statements in solidarity? Are not these Hindu leaders clever enough to sneak into their religious texts the codified laws for centuries which governed India? One such reference, Manusmriti, Chapter IX verse 5, reads, ?Women must particularly be guarded against evil inclinations, however trifling they may appear; for, if they are not guarded, they will bring sorrow on two families.?[6] Chapter VII verse 299 reads, ?Animals, illiterates, Shudras* ?and women need to be beaten like a drum? Chapter IX verse 18 says, ?As a falsification is impure, similarly women are impure. Which means women have no right of reading, teaching or reciting verses.? Chapter 36 verse 37 says, ?Women are way to hell?. Islam too is not untouched in demeaning the status of women, and when it comes to the sub-continent, it resorts to rigidity to mark its differences from fellow religions. One of the Islamic organizations, Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, among many others, recommended continuing with the old social order of male domination. When it comes to practising their religion, these leaders cannot claim any right to protest against the Delhi rape. They should first express an apology to the public for the historical violence against women by religions. The defenceless Dalit women are the most vulnerable group of Indian society which the protestors are unaware of. They face triple discrimination; no other group is as discriminated as Dalit women. Ruth Manorma argues, ?Dalit women in India are the Dalits among Dalits and suffer from three-fold oppression ? on account of gender as a result of patriarchy, caste ?the untouchable', and class ? as they hail from the poorest and most marginalised communities.?[7]Plight of Dalit women
While the protest around Delhi was going on, a pregnant Dalit woman was gang raped in Bhopal, a Dalit rape victim was killed by the rapist in daylight in Kanpur and a Dalit girl committed suicide in Punjab. In October 2012, some 19 Dalit women were raped in Haryana. But the country and the media had no coverage. Rape of Dalit women is not new to the country; various reports of national and as well as international agencies highlight the plight of Dalit women in present-day India. Various agencies such as United Nations Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, U.N. Human Rights Council, U.N.?Mandate on Racism, U.N.?Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), U.N.?Special Rapporteur on violence against women, Special Rapporteur?s report on discrimination based on work and descent, Human Rights Watch, International Dalit Solidarity Network, Dalit Solidarity Networks, Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, U.K., NACDOR, etc. highlight the violence towards Dalit women. Most rapes happen in villages and among the rapes in villages almost 80% are against Dalit women. A recent documentary by the United Nations office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on the importance of human rights educations records the testimony of a young school-going Dalit girl in Tamil Nadu where she lives in the fear of violence, being maligned as a Dalit. Sexual abuse and violence against a Dalit woman starts from childhood when she is made aware of her caste and from then on starts her humiliating journey of life. No Dalit girl child can easily access the social space of society; neither can she fetch water[8] from the general tap in most cases because of her caste; she cannot attend school; she cannot study for long hours as she has to work part-time assisting her parents. She is discriminated for her caste in every vocation except one: having forced sex. Caste boundaries don?t bother rapists. Even before attaining maturity she is being sexually abused and raped and often these incidents remain unnoticed. She is filmed during the rape and the clips are sold on to the market; she is forced to have sex with landlords, village heads and government officials. All her life she is treated as a sex slave like in the Devadasi* system wherein she is appointed to act as a sexual partner for famished temple priests.?
You may argue that in rape it is absurd to discriminate the victim on caste or religious lines. Which is, in fact, true because rape affects women generally. But most rapes are against a particular section of society that is sadly under-reported and no protestor ever has marched in the capital in protest against the rape of Dalit women with the same intensity.?The rape in Haryana where a girl was raped brutally and her father committed suicide in humiliation ?was there any national protest? The rape in Maharashtra of a mother and her teenage daughter ? was there any national protest? The sexual assault in Satara by upper caste males of a middle-aged Dalit women ? was there any national protest? Rape and arson of Dalits in Tamil Nadu ? was there any national protest?
Statistics of rape against Dalit women
?There were 35 reported cases of rape against Dalit women in Maharashtra, 21 in Tamil Nadu and 20 in Gujarat. ?On the other hand violence on Dalit women by the community itself (including family) saw 15 women being murdered in three states (eight in Tamil Nadu, four in Gujarat and three in Maharashtra), and 37 cases of rape or gang rape (19 in Tamil Nadu, 12 in Gujarat, 6 in Maharashtra) were reported.?[9] According to the study of Navsarjan trust (reported in the daily Hindu) on atrocity data obtained for Maharashtra, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu between December 2004 and November 2009, ?only 0.79 per cent of cases were convicted (three cases) of violence. In Gujarat there were no convictions at all.? According to the organisation?s study there were 379 cases of violence against Dalit women by non-Dalits between December 2004 and November 2009 across the three states. However, the outcome of only 101 cases (26.6 per cent) was known to have been decided when the data was analysed in the beginning of 2011.[10] Off the total 117 cases (30.9 per cent) remained pending in the courts and the status of 161 cases (42.5 per cent) was unknown. The U.N. Special Rapporteur on violence against women noted, ?Dalit women face targeted violence, even rape and murder, by the state actors and powerful members of dominant castes ? inflict political lessons and crush dissent with the community.?[11] The appalling situation of the Dalits in villages is borne out by the Khap Panchayat which is another arbitrary tale of sadist India. The continuous cases of honour killings and denial of the freedom to choose their future partners marks Indian society. Who gave the right to Mohan Bhagwat to comment on the situation of women in India when he himself lives by the principles of Vedic discrimination that treat women inferior than men, and denigrates them to animals? During his visit to one of the training camps for the outcastes (tribals who were exiled to remote forests) he asked tribal women to wash his feet.[12]Lack of interest by international players
Whenever an atrocity happens against Dalits in India, it is only Dalit groups or Dalit social organisations that take up the matter for justice. There is seldom any mainstream figure who raises the voice against injustice. The film industry has never dared to show the plight of Dalits except for a Dalit director who dug up old texts and presented the conditions of Shudras in his 2012 movie. No one showed any sympathy to the victims of Khairlanji massacre* ?in the very state of Maharashtra where the Bollywood film industry is situated. Issues of caste in the cinema are marginally touched upon. We see the slaughter of Dalits being sold in the international market by the well-established NGOs and development agencies. No international NGO from India has ever voiced concern on the rape of Dalit/tribal women of Orissa or Maharashtra. It has been international Dalit solidarity that has worked on these lines. To my personal experience no Indian NGO working on the international stage has ever protested against the barbaric scenario and only some international NGOs with Dalit ties have voiced their concern. It was sad to see Indian NGOs governed by their own prejudices as these belong to the so-called elite sections of societies who have never cared about the true plight of 160 million Indians, and even if they did, have never expressed it. When questioned about the situation of Dalits, an Indian U.N. expert in London took the side of the perpetrators.?The plight of Dalit women are sadly not addressed at the international level due to the lack of Dalit women leadership, although a few academics and students are now raising their voice and demanding their rights to be heard. And blessed is the Dalit Diaspora that is sensitising foreign parliaments to the human rights of 160 million Indians. The recent protests will at least educate unaware Indians about the daily happenings of society.
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When a rape takes place, it is a woman that is hurt, Dalit or not. Then why are the rapes against Dalit women under-reported with no protest from the other sections of society apart from Dalits themselves? Only if women stand in solidarity with every other woman in India, rejecting any bias, will a strong force emerge to fight sexism and the scourge of rape.
?Resources:
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European Parliament resolution on the human rights situation of the Dalits in India, ?Human rights of the Dalits in India? , February 01, 2007, Brussels National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, National Crime Records Bureau (M.H.A.), Statement Showing Cases Registered with the Police Under Different Nature of Crimes and Atrocities on Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes from 1994 to 1996 (New Delhi: Government of India, 1997). |
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Tlaxcala's notes
*Manusm?ti, also known as M?nava-Dharma??stra?is one metrical work of the Dharma??stra textual tradition of ancient Vedic Sanatana Dharma, presently called Hinduism. Generally known in English as the Laws of Manu, or Dharmic discourse to vedic Rishis, on 'how to lead the life' or 'way of living' by various classes of society. The text presents itself as a discourse given by the sage Manu, to a congregation of seers, or rishis, who beseeched him, after the great floods, in the vedic state of 'Brahmavarta', in India, some 10,000 years ago, to tell them on, how to face such calamities in future by organising themselves and lead an organized life with the "guidelines for all the social classes". Veteran sages Manu and Bhrigu gave them a discourse in some 2685 shlokas, compilation of which is called 'Manusmriti'.
*Shudra (labor caste) is the fourth Varna, as prescribed in the Purusha Sukta of the Rig veda, which constitutes society into four varnas or Chaturvarna. The other three varnas are Brahmans, priests; Kshatriya, those with governing functions; and Vaishya, agriculturalists, cattle rearers and traders.
*The Kherlanji massacre (or Khairlanji massacre) refers to the 2006 lynching-style murders of a Mahar Dalit family by members of the politically dominant, but backward Kunbi caste. The killings took place in a small village in India named Kherlanji, located in the Bhandara district of the state of Maharashtra. On 29 September 2006, four members of the Bhotmange family belonging to the Dalit underclass were slaughtered. The women of the family, Surekha and Priyanka, were paraded naked in public, before being murdered. The Indian media did not cover this incident until the Nagpur riots by the Dalits and then uniformly and wrongly ascribed the killings to "upper castes", a claim picked up by Human Rights organisations and the international media, reinforcing the stereotype of "upper castes" versus "lower castes". Later it was discovered that the criminal act was carried out by assailants from the politically powerful Kunbi caste (classified as Other Backward Castes by Government of India) for "opposing" the requisition of their field to have a road built over it. Initial reports suggested that the women were allegedly gang-raped before being murdered. Though CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) investigations revealed that the women were not raped, there are allegations of bribery of doctors who performed the post-mortem, and of corruption.
*Devadasi ("servant of god"): traditional Hindu practice of religious prostitution, outlawed in all of India in 1988, but still existing in India today.
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Source: http://www.tlaxcala-int.org/article.asp?reference=8993
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