Indian society is paying a heavy price for giving up its battle against social evils sanctioned by tradition and religion. The commonest victims are women and Dalits, and the greatest casualties are freedom and reason.
LAST December, the dusty village of Chakwara in Rajasthan, 50 kilometres from Jaipur, shot into the limelight for the second time in 65 years. The first occasion was in the mid-1930s, when the Bairwas, a Dalit caste, defied the savarnas of the village by cooking desi ghee (clarified butter), which the casteist tradition forbids them from doing. The substance is not only a "luxury" associated with savarna consumption; it involves the cow, with its special status in the Hindu sacred order.
The Bairwas paid heavily for this symbolic revolt. The upper castes sacked their homes and poured dirt and dung into the ghee. The government did nothing to punish them. Large parts of Rajputana of the pre-Independence days were under the rule of Rajput feudal princes who loathed social reform and had a stake in maintaining a rigid caste hierarchy.
On December 14 last, the Bairwas committed another sacrilege when two of them, Babulal and Radheshyam, bathed in the village pond at the common ghats from which they are barred by parampara (tradition). This time, the law was on the Bairwas' side. So was practical reason. Chakwara's Dalits, like its savarnas, have for decades contributed funds to panchayat programmes (financed largely by the state) to build and maintain the common ghats at the pond, as well as the Shiva temple that stands by it. By right, they should have access to this common property resource.
Legally, the Dalits' exclusion from it is prohibited not just by Article 17 of the Constitution that abolished "untouchability", but also by the Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955, and above all, the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 (POA), which was written explicitly to provide exemplary punishment to those who perpetrate abuse and violence upon Dalits, or aid, abet or condone its perpetuation. Abuse is defined comprehensively here, that is, beyond name-calling and banning entry into places of worship or ritual sites; it includes subtler forms of discrimination too.
Despite its vastly enlarged powers and obligations in relation to the 1930s, the state did nothing last December. More accurately, the district authorities and the police tried to gag the Bairwas by preaching to them that they must respect parampara, and not cross the "limits" it sanctifies in other words, give up their demand for access to the pond. They refused to act on the first information report filed by Babulal and Radheshyam Bairwa on December 22 although the preceding eight days had witnessed extremely disturbing events in the village, and although the POA obligates the police to treat anti-Dalit discrimination as a cognisable offence warranting the arrest of the accused.
In those eight days, the Bairwas were subjected to vile abuse, threats of a "bloodbath", a nightly siege of their mohalla, stoning of their homes, and a crippling social boycott. No savarna landowner would employ them; they could not buy vegetables or a cup of tea in the village; the local doctor would refuse to treat them; they would be heckled at the village handpump.
On January 3, terrified, exhausted and subjugated, some of them were forced by the savarnas backed by the administration to sign a rajinama, a "compromise" agreement, which effectively erased their right to bathe in the pond. The agreement produced discontent and resentment which has simmered ever since.
In September, the discontent culminated in another concerted effort by the Bairwas to assert their rights. They planned a rally for September 20-21 from another village, Chaksu, through the tehsil headquarters Phagi, to Chakwara, in collaboration with human rights organisations, including the Centre for Dalit Human Rights, Jaipur, the People's Union for Civil Liberties, and the Dr. Ambedkar Vichar Manch.
The savarnas, led by the Jats who comprise about 200 of Chakwa's 500 households decided to confront the Dalits "physically", that is, violently. A menacing mob of 10,000 to 15,000 men armed with lathis, sticks and gophans (slings which can deliver heavy stones over long distances, often to grievous effect) gathered at Phagi. By 10-30 a.m., it was raring to go, defying the police. The Dalits, sensing big trouble, and not assured of police neutrality, decided to terminate their rally at Madhorajpura, rather than go to Phagi.
A major confrontation ensued. The savarnas attacked the police with a fury driven by raw caste hatred and lust for power, combined with apprehension fuelled by carefully planted rumours that the Dalits were about to "desecrate" the village temple too. The police had to use teargas and open fire. More than 50 people were injured, including 44 policemen, some badly.
Today, the savarna-instigated confrontation has, ironically, pitted the state machinery temporarily against them. The district administration, under a new Collector, is pursuing complaints lodged against the caste Hindus. The change in the power equations has encouraged the Bairwas to bathe in the pond regularly. But the savarnas have kept away from it since September 24 another "boycott" to show their anger.
There has been no dialogue or process of reconciliation between the savarnas and the Dalits in Chakwara or the other 200-odd villages in the vicinity with a significant Bairwa population. No high-level government functionary or politician, nor even any broad-based social organisation, has intervened to break the savarnas' intransigence. The seeming calm on the surface is partly explained by the presence of the police and frequent visits by tehsil-level officials. Once this presence thins it cannot be permanent the calm could give way to turbulence.
Chakwara seethes with tension, fear, apprehension and anger. Unless an initiative is launched for reconciliation, and reliable protection is provided to the Dalits, there could be another explosion of caste-Hindu violence and a bloody carnage.
Rajasthan has witnessed numerous anti-Dalit atrocities, the worst of which in the recent past was the massacre of 17 Jatavs in 1992 at Kumher. The chairman of the State Human Rights Commission, Justice Saghir Ahmed, told this writer that "the caste situation in Rajasthan is extremely bad, the Dalits are terribly insecure". Rajasthan has a dismal record of offences against Dalits, with an annual average of 5,024 crimes registered in the last three years. These include 46 killings, 134 rapes, and 93 cases of grievous injury every year.
There is extensive discrimination against, and abuse of, Dalits in all parts of Rajasthan. These abuses include name-calling and practices such as prohibiting Dalit women from using footwear in the village, denial of services like the barber's, segregation of schoolchildren, forcing Dalits to sit at the back of the classroom, prohibition of rituals such as riding a horse during weddings, and gross inequality in access to water and other common resources such as village pastures and wasteland. There is systematic discrimination in state-run employment-generation and drought-relief programmes.
The situation stands aggravated by the drought in Rajasthan, which has all but destroyed the kharif crop in the rain-fed areas. Many Dalits complain of biases in relief work allocation and payment of wages to women at rates that are well under the statutory minimum.
The religiously sanctified discrimination and violence are calculated to perpetuate the hierarchical Hindu social order, freeze inequalities, including inequality of opportunity, and preserve conditions for upper caste-upper class exploitation of the lower orders. None of this social bondage and servitude would have been possible, even conceivable, without the mediation of "religion" and "tradition".
IT might be argued that "tradition" is often invented, distorted, and tailored to suit contemporary power calculations. Equally, "religion" can be self-servingly interpreted, for instance, to legitimise the varna system or practices that are grossly anti-women and male-supremacist, or simply inhuman for example, the chopping off of limbs as "Quranic" or Sharia-based punishment, or the pouring of molten lead into the ears of shudras who might chance to hear Vedic chants, as supposedly prescribed by the Manusmriti. This may well be true up to a point (although perhaps also largely false, except on a very charitable view). It is also valid to argue against a literal interpretation of the scriptures torn out of their social context in antiquity or the Middle Ages.
However, invoking tradition is a poor way of arguing for any practice or idea, however worthy, or defending or apologising for one that is not. Arguments about what is right and wrong, and socially acceptable or worthy, have to be derived from contemporary ethics, constitutional principles and modern law themselves linked to what may be called a social compact or contract based on the universal values of freedom, equality and justice. In the last instance, vicious inequalities such as those involved in the varna or caste system, or in the devadasi system, violate these values. Their rationalisation is always indeed has to be premised upon tradition, custom, or norms of conduct sanctified by religion.
No humane and just society can possibly evolve without a critical attitude to tradition and faith. It may not reject tradition per se, but it can only accept that part of it which meets elementary criteria derived from today's standards, from modern ethics and ideas of justice. This premise is at the very core of India's great movement for social reform, which was an integral part of the Freedom Movement, indeed in some respects preceded it and infused social content into its political goals.
One of India's greatest tragedies is that social reform has been put on the back burner not just by the political leadership, but even by progressive social forces, including the liberal intelligentsia, since the 1940s. With the eclipse of the Nehruvian consensus, the vacuum has been increasingly filled by ultra-conservative and reactionary ideologies and movements, which invoke "tradition" (usually its worst, most intolerant and illiberal aspects) to oppose the values of equality, justice and social emancipation.
HINDUTVA is the most pernicious manifestation of this trend. But there are other expressions too: the explosion of superstition all around us, the growth of irrationalism, mumbo-jumbo methods of healing, snake-oil remedies, and rising interest in the occult, and spread of horribly obscurantist notions such as the one that the Vedas had it all, and that Indian ("Aryan") civilisation is "eternal" the greatest in history, indeed the only great one.
Increasingly, these views and practices intrude into the public space through examples set by people in high places. Thus, Vice-President B.S. Shekhawat thinks it is "normal" that he should delay moving into his designated official residence till the present shraddha month (according to one of many calendars) ends; that he must bring his favourite cows into the compound, for which it is being redesigned at public expense; and that he should have been weighed in blood. This last episode occurred, according to The Hindustan Times, in Sriganganagar in Rajasthan on September 12, when 150 sachets of frozen blood were brought in from blood banks by Shekhawat's admirers. The story has not been convincingly denied. Local sources independently confirm it.
Earlier, L.K. Advani condoned gory blood-based rituals during his infamous rath yatra. And as for Murli Manohar Joshi, too much has been written of his wildly obscurantist views to bear repetition. The plain truth is that thoroughly irrational ideas like Vedic mathematics and astrology, derived from blind faith in sanctified tradition, now enjoy a respectability they have never before had certainly not in Modern India's public discourse.
Each time a caste panchayat burns a couple alive for violating "customs", each time an unspeakably barbaric punishment such as gang rape is imposed upon a woman suspected of having an extramarital affair (and it is always the women who is singled out for Neanderthal-level retribution), each time a Dalit bridegroom is set upon for having had the audacity to mount a horse, each time there is Sati, the rationalisation always comes from zealous proponents of "tradition", often offered as a cure for "modern" society. These proponents now include even the higher judiciary witness the 1996 Hindutva-as-a-way-of-life Supreme Court judgment, the NCERT textbook case, or the Rajasthan High Court's recent order more or less permitting Sati worship.
Such retrograde trends have gathered great momentum under the rule of the Sangh Parivar and the wicked ideas of hierarchy and inequality it canvasses. Unless they are spiritedly combated, they bid fair to turn India into the world's cultural and intellectual backwater a dark region where the majority of the people will never be allowed to break out of social bondage and the stranglehold of ignorance and superstition and hence to develop their true human potential and become arbiters of their own fate.
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