The Precarity of Dalit Lives in India

 

Atrocities on Dalits are never a singular instance, they are part of a larger narrative of caste vengeance and a reflection of a hurt savarna pride.

On September 30, in the dark of night, a young Dalit girl was cremated in an undignified manner by the Uttar Pradesh police. The police did not allow the family and relatives of the girl to attend the funeral. In the development of the case up to now, the focus has primarily remained on the perpetrators of violence. We contend that in addition to the four alleged perpetrators, the investigation agencies must not ignore the complicity of the police and the state administration in the process. The UP administration, it is becoming clear, is an accomplice to the crime and has openly violated due process, both legal and moral.

The 19-year-old girl from Valmiki community, it is alleged, died of rape and torture at the hands of four upper-caste men who belonged to the Thakur community. She went to cut grass in the fields in Boolagarhi village of Hathras, when the upper caste men found her and allegedly raped her on September 14.

The narrative of savagery that appeared in the reports following the incident highlights that the assault did not merely exhibit the desire for a feminine body but used to display caste dominance. According to the latest Crime in India Report, six Scheduled Caste women are raped in India every day. The Haters case is distinct because of the vulgar display of state collusion with the perpetrators of caste violence.

The brutal assault on the girl in Hathras indicates that though the punishments have got harsher for caste atrocities and sexual assault, the perpetrators now not only rape and assault but aim to kill or maim the victim to avoid any indictment later. The condition in which the girl was found in the fields by her mother points out that the assaulters had left her for dead. Second, had the girl not been brought and later died in a top medical institute in the national capital, the case would not have become common knowledge and remained just another case of forgotten caste and sexual violence. Third, despite parallel narratives created to discredit the allegation of rape on the accused, the victim had made a video statement before her death which was widely circulated on the internet. Fourth, a midnight cremation of the victim’s body raised new questions and exposed various loopholes in the entire story.

The police administration of the state, particularly the ADGP, peddled a misinformed narrative that the victim was not even raped because there was no semen found in the medical report. However, later it came to light that the sample sent for examination was eleven days old and the victim had told the doctor that complete penetration had taken place during the sexual assault. The ADGP wilfully ignored that in 2013 after the horrific Nirbhaya case, IPC section 375 had ruled out ‘no sperm-no rape’ argument and stated that penetration is sufficient to constitute the sexual intercourse necessary to the offence of rape. The initial report of gang rape that caused multiple life-threatening injuries to the victim is also now being questioned. However, the ‘burden of proof’ in the cases related to the absence of consent in rape now lies upon the accused and not the victim.

The force of Brahmanical patriarchy appears to be more powerful than that of the state. It is the parallel rules and laws of caste that decide the fate of the marginalised Scheduled Castes. As per various news reports, Thakurs of nearby villages had held a caste panchayat vowing protection to the accused and threats to the Dalit community in the village. Brahmanical patriarchy emerges as a counter-sovereign that neither recognises nor respects the rule of law or constitutional rights. It only concerns itself with the predatory power of caste dharma. In this case, the state government supplemented the dominant upper castes with the power of the state machinery.

Rape is used as an instrument of stamping the authority of men over women. If patriarchy operates through various socio-cultural norms, then rape is a weapon of the humiliation of the body and self. Dalit women, due to their caste and gender identity, witness a frequent violation of their sammaan (dignity) by the Brahmanical patriarchy. Rape and other forms of sexual violence reproduce upper-caste male privilege where upper-caste men do not conceive rape as a crime but rather as their right to make exemplary punishment. According to Crime in India data published by National Crimes Record Bureau (NCRB), there were 45,935 crimes committed against Scheduled Castes in India and Uttar Pradesh has the highest atrocities cases against Scheduled Castes with 11,829 followed by Rajasthan (6,794) and Bihar (6,544). There were 13,449 sexual assault-related crimes committed on Scheduled Caste women under assault on women, assault on women with the intention to outrage her modesty (IPC 354), sexual harassment (IPC 354A), assault or use of criminal force to disrobe (IPC 354B), voyeurism (IPC 354 C), Stalking (IPC 354D), insult to the modesty of women (IPC 509), rape (IPC 376) and attempt to rape (IPC 376/511). In 2019, around 3,486 Scheduled Caste women were raped. Rajasthan (554) has the highest reported rape cases against SC women followed by Uttar Pradesh (537). Many such cases are not registered due to social stigma, the issue of “honour” attached to women, distrust in the investigation and judicial process, and also fear of revenge from the upper castes who often enjoy support from administration.

According to the most recent India Justice Report published in 2019, 68 per cent police officer level posts in the reserved category are lying vacant in the state of Uttar Pradesh. Furthermore, UP also received the worst police ranking in a Tata Trusts Study with a score of 2.98 out of 10. The data points out some serious gaps in the issues of representation of marginalised castes within the police department. Hence, it also raises concerns about the nature of the investigation by the police.

In Uttar Pradesh, the formation of state government by BSP in the past provided an opportunity to Dalits to assert equality and dignity in the society. However, a counter-assertion of the upper castes also followed. Savarna Hindus, in parallel, began asserting themselves to maintain their traditional position. While the Dalit assertion is for upward mobility from the “historically lowly placed position”, the upper caste assertion is to secure and maintain “historically highly placed position”. Furthermore, there is an effort to maintain existing the social order where atrocities against Dalits are used as a means of control, a symbolic tool of threat and act of coercion against Dalit assertion.

If we look at the broader narrative of caste violence on the bodies of Dalits, the four accused are merely a symptomatic expression of the broader Brahmanical mentality that legitimises and defends such barbaric acts. It is no secret that caste panchayats often intervene between the accused and the perpetrator and favours negotiation. This is one of the major reason for the lower conviction rate of atrocity cases under SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act. The conviction rate in caste atrocity cases was 25.7 per cent in 2016, 23.2 per cent in 2017, 29.8 per cent in 2018 and 32.6 per cent in 2019. Upper caste men compel the victim and its family to compromise rather than witnessing court proceedings.

From struggling to register the case by the police to the filing of the charge-sheet, from the arrest of the perpetrator to a long drawn trial in the court, the process torments the spirit of the victim and their family. As a result, the process becomes another punishment. Witnesses are threatened, communities are forced to withdraw the cases or to give a false statement. On average, in 80 per cent of the cases, charge-sheets are filed each year. As per available NCRB data, there is 89.6 per cent pendency of such cases in 2016, 97.2 in 2017, 92.7 in 2018 and 91.4 in 2019. It raises questions about the speedy justice mentioned in the Act and rules of SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act. Even the creation of special courts has not helped the cause. A high pendency rate in court induces the Scheduled Caste families to compromise. Compromise is expected to be the “normal” behaviour of the dispossessed and marginalised.

Challenging the status quo often results in a cycle of atrocities that go beyond the initial incident. Atrocities on Dalits are never a singular instance, they are part of a larger narrative of caste vengeance and a reflection of a hurt savarna pride. We contend that the nature of civil society in India is primarily casteist. The manner in which an upper-caste narrative blaming the victim and her family are peddled points out that caste affinity is stronger than civic sense or a principle of equal dignified citizenship.

With the recent Dalit assertion in the public sphere and the availability of social media to voice their opinions, Brahmanical patriarchy is easily rattled. The existence of caste panchayats reminds us that constitutional equality will remain a distant dream as long as caste inequality thrives in various forms. As a result, caste pride overrides justice in an unequal society like India.

Written by Javed Iqbal Wani and L David Lal

Wani is Assistant Professor at Ambedkar University, Delhi and Lal is Assistant Professor, Indian Institute of Information Technology-Guwahati

Source: Indian Express, 27/10/20

Economic & Political Weekly: Table of Contents

 

Vol. 55, Issue No. 43, 24 Oct, 2020

Editorials

India’s Hunger Pangs

A Letter from a Governor

From the Editor's Desk

How Modern Are the Public Institutions in India?

Gopal Guru

From 50 Years Ago

From 50 Years Ago: Education in Two Worlds

Law and Society

Appointment of Judges to the Higher Judiciary during the Pandemic—II

Alok Prasanna Kumar

H T Parekh Finance Column

Stopping the Health Crisis from Becoming a Debt Crisis

Avinash Persaud

Commentary

The Making of a Masked Mandate - Contours of Alliance Politics in Bihar

Ravi Ranjan

Agricultural Market Operations across the Lockdown in J&K - An Assessment

Jabir Ali, Waseem Khan

Spectre of Election Day Meltdown in the United States

Satyendra Ranjan

Book Reviews

Bringing Economic History Back into Curriculums

Amol Agrawal

Pioneer of Marxist Social History

Pavel Tomar

Special Articles

Progressiveness of Finance Commission - A Critical Review of Bihar

Barna Ganguli, Bakshi Amit Kumar Sinha

Multiple Vulnerabilities in Utilising Maternal and Child Health Services in Uttar Pradesh, India

Prem Shankar Mishra, T S Syamala

Perspectives

Suffering in Silence - Information Asymmetry and Status Quo Bias in Menstrual Hygiene Market

Muskan Soni, Padmini Ram

Notes

Jammu and Kashmir’s Open Defecation Free Status - The Ground Reality

Sapna K Sangra

Discussion

Sex Workers and Misrepresentations

Sweta Dash, Barathi Nakkeeran

Postscript

​The Circle of Reason in a Post-COVID-19 World

Anil Fakira Kshirsagar

Classical Music and the Pandemic

Radhika Joshi

Lived Experience and the US Election

Lorraine de Souza

Last Lines

Letters

India in GHI 2020

N Rajagopal

Right to Protest

K Sivananda Kumar

Current Statistics

Current Statistics

Quote of the Day October 27, 2020

 “A ship in harbor is safe . . . but that is not what ships are for.”

‐ Thomas Aquinas

“बंदरगाह में खड़ा जलयान सुरक्षित होता है। जलयान वहां खड़े रहने के लिए नहीं बने होते हैं।”

‐ थामस एक्किनास

India ranks 6th most positive about teachers in 35-country survey

 

India was sixth when it comes to people's implicit, unconscious and automatic views on the status of teachers in the country. India's expenditure on education as a percentage of government spending is 14 per cent.

India ranks among the world’s top 10 countries when it comes to valuing its teaching workforce, according to a new 35-country global survey-based report.

Reading Between The Lines: What The World Really Thinks of Teachers’, released by the UK-based Varkey Foundation last week, found that India was sixth when it comes to people’s implicit, unconscious and automatic views on the status of teachers in the country.

The Implicit Teacher Status analysis, which finds China, Ghana, Singapore, Canada, and Malaysia ahead of India, ranks countries by respondents’ automatic impressions of teachers when asked to indicate as quickly as possible whether, for example, they think teachers are trusted or untrusted, inspiring or uninspiring, caring or uncaring, intelligent or unintelligent, among other word associations.

This report proves that respecting teachers isn’t only an important moral duty it’s essential for a country’s educational outcomes, said Sunny Varkey, Founder of the Varkey Foundation and the Global Teacher Prize.

Since the coronavirus pandemic first emerged, we have seen 1.5 billion learners across the world impacted by school and university closures. In these unprecedented times, now more than ever it is necessary to do all we can to ensure young people throughout the world have access to a good teacher, he said.

The report, which builds on the data gathered by the Global Teacher Status Index (GTSI) 2018 a 35-country survey conducted from 1,000 representative respondents in each of the countries confirms the link between teacher status and pupil attainment.

The new report seeks to explain for the first time why Implicit Teacher Status varies between countries.

It finds that teachers generally enjoy higher status in richer countries, and in countries which allot a greater fraction of public funds to education.

For instance, India’s expenditure on education as a percentage of government spending is 14 per cent. In Italy, which ranks 24th for Implicit Teacher Status, by comparison, it is only 8.1 per cent, whereas in Ghana, which ranks second, it is 22.1 per cent.

The report coincides with the announcement of the finalists for the 2020 Global Teacher Prize, which includes Ranjitsinh Disale a teacher from a village in Maharashtra who is in the running for the USD 1-million annual prize, to be unveiled later this year.

We created the Global Teacher Prize, which shines a light on the extraordinary work that teachers do around the world, to inspire people to talk about the great work of teachers. We have seen teachers go above and beyond to keep young people learning all over the world amid the Covid pandemic, added Varkey.As part of the new report’s analysis, Professor Peter Dolton of the University of Sussex and Doctor Robert De Vries of the University of Kent reassessed the GTSI data to find a remarkably strong positive correlation between Implicit Teacher Status and the Organisation for

Economic Cooperation and Development’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results. PISA scores are significantly higher in countries where people implicitly view teachers more positively.

Source: Indian Express, 26/10/20

One cannot be a feminist in India if you are not fighting the Manusmriti

 

The movement against ‘Manusmriti’ must be robustly feminist and unconditionally assert women’s autonomy.

In a webinar on “Periyar and feminism”, Thol. Thirumavalavan, president of the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK), quoted Periyar on the Manusmriti, to say that the “Manu Dharma” demeans women, holding them to be prostitutes by nature. In her newfound avatar as a BJP acolyte, actor Khushbu Sundar claimed Thirumavalavan’s words insulted women. On cue, a case was filed against the VCK leader in Chennai.

It is the Manusmriti that insults women: Thirumavalavan merely quoted from it. What Khushbu and her party know, but cannot admit, is that they are outraged on behalf of the Manusmriti and not on behalf of women. That is why Khushbu claims that the Manusmriti has “not a single word that demeans women.”

At public functions in India, it is common to hear people sententiously cite the Manusmriti to say, “The deities delight in places where women are revered, but where women are not revered all rites are fruitless” (The Laws of Manu, 3:58, Doniger and Smith, Penguin Books, 1991). The same Manusmriti says, “It is the very nature of women to corrupt men here on earth; for that reason, circumspect men do not get careless and wanton among wanton women.” The idea of women as sexual tempters, corrupters or gateways to hell is not unique to Manu. The Christian, Islamic and Buddhist texts also warn against women, portraying them as sexually promiscuous, secretive, sly and out to entrap men.

Saying that the Manusmriti “treats women as prostitutes” is misleading. Such a description of the Manusmriti implies that the harm it causes is because it refers to women as sexually “loose” and, thus, insults women. But, in fact, the harm of the Manusmriti lies in its prescriptions of tight control of women’s autonomy. Manu says, “A girl, a young woman, or even an old woman should not do anything independently, even in (her own) house. In childhood a woman should be under her father’s control, in youth under her husband’s, and when her husband is dead, under her sons.”

Our critique of the Manusmriti should take care to challenge rather than reinforce the notion that the worst thing one can say of a woman is that she is sexually “loose” or a “prostitute”. It is important to recognise that the harm of the Manusmriti lies, not in the fact that it asks us to treat women as “prostitutes”, but that it asks us to treat women as daughters, wives, mothers who must be tightly controlled by fathers, husbands, sons. In fact, Manu encourages us to see this control as “reverence” and “protection” rather than as repression and oppression.

This obsessive control over women is needed to prevent a breakdown of caste hierarchies and caste apartheid. The Manusmriti lays down the law that a woman who makes love to a man of a higher caste incurs no punishment; a woman who makes love to a man of a “lower” caste than hers must be isolated and kept in confinement. If a man from a subordinate caste makes love to a woman of the highest caste, he must be put to death.

But, some ask, does anyone really read the Manusmriti in India, let alone obey it? The facts show that the spirit of Manu’s laws continue to inform and shape modern society, as well as modern politics in India. The National Family Health survey 2015–16 (NFHS-4) found that just 41 per cent of Indian women aged between 15 and 49 are allowed to go alone to the market, to the health centre, and outside the community (NFHS-4, table 15.13). Startlingly, 40 per cent of “what is classified as rape …is actually parental criminalisation of consensual sexual relationships, often when it comes to inter-caste and inter-religious couples” (Rukmini S., ‘The many shades of rape cases in Delhi’, The Hindu, July 29, 2014.)

In caste lies the key to understanding India’s obsession with controlling and curbing women’s autonomy — and in the Manusmriti lies the key to understanding the codes of caste and gender that are hardwired into our societies and selves. In every household where women are surveilled, their movements restricted; in every opposition to inter-caste, inter-faith marriage; in every attack on Dalits’ villages after a Dalit man has married a non-Dalit woman, in the Sangh’s campaign to brand love between Hindu women and Muslim men as “love jihad” — it is the Manusmriti that you see in action.

Today, Khushbu Sundar on behalf of the BJP is leading the pack in attacking Thirumavalavan for his remarks on the Manusmriti, which they construe as an insult to Indian womanhood. In 2005, Khushbu herself had been at the receiving end of similar patriarchal moral outrage. She had remarked that pre-marital sex was cool as long as it was safe sex — for this, 22 cases were filed against her accusing her of “defaming Tamil womanhood and chastity”. The attack on Khushbu was led by the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK), a party now known for its violent campaign against marriages between Dalit men and women of intermediate castes. And at the time, Thol. Thirumavalavan and his organisation, too, had joined the fray, with Thirumavalavan saying that her remarks were “against public order”. It would strengthen the movement against the Manusmriti today, if he were to acknowledge how his 2005 remarks reinforced the same Brahminical patriarchal notions of female purity and chastity that he, and we, are fighting today.

One cannot be a feminist in India if you are not fighting the Manusmriti — and one cannot fight the Manusmriti without being robustly feminist, and asserting women’s unconditional autonomy.

This article first appeared in the print edition on October 27, 2020 under the title “Book of Unfreedom”. The writer is secretary, All India Progressive Women’s Association and politburo member, CPI(ML)

Source: Indian Express, 27/10/20

How to improve learning outcomes

 

The most challenging task would be to ensure teachers believe that every child can learn, and teach children at the right level. This may sound simple, but my work with government schools and teachers has convinced me that this will not be easy to achieve.

The recent National Sample Survey Office (75th Round) data and the learning outcomes study of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (National Achievement Survey, 2017) show that India’s children are not learning at the primary stage, and as they move to higher levels, they are struggling to cope with the curriculum. This means that children who complete eight, 10 or 12 years of schooling are not equipped with the requisite knowledge and skills — be it formal skills (reading and writing), cognitive skills, technological skills or higher-order thinking skills.The National Achievement Survey (NAS) also reveals a decline in learning levels as children move up the ladder. This, among other reasons, could explain the high drop-out rate at the secondary level, and higher at the higher secondary level. The 2017 NAS shows that a Class 3 student can correctly answer 66% of learning outcomes assessed; this drops to about 39% by the time the child reaches Class 10.

The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 rightly focuses on the learning challenge in the classrooms. However, in order to attain universal foundational literacy and numeracy, which the NEP proposes, we have to work simultaneously on three fronts: Change the structure of the curriculum and assessment so that it moves away from rote-learning; work with primary teachers intensively to enhance their capacities and pedagogic practices; and make sure there are no dysfunctional, single-teacher/ two-teacher/ teacher-less schools in the country.

Now that the first stage recommended by NEP of five years foundational learning goes up to Class 2 (three years pre-primary and two years primary), the government can seriously consider consolidating small upper primary schools into one viable school at a cluster level. Then a student will not need to travel long distances if she can attend Class 3-12 in one cluster school. There is enough qualitative evidence to show that composite secondary schools retain more children. When children have to shift schools — especially girls — the problem of transport and the safety of transport/cycling acquires a momentum of its own — pushing more children out of the school system. The next challenge is upgrading/merging schools to make each school resource-rich in library/laboratories/sports/vocational education; and ensure there is a teacher for every class and every subject.

The most challenging task would be to ensure teachers believe that every child can learn, and teach children at the right level. This may sound simple, but my work with government schools and teachers has convinced me that this will not be easy to achieve.

Teachers need greater autonomy inside the classroom and they should not be tied down to curriculum-related time-tables. At the same time, they need to unlearn rote-learning practices and teach every child to understand and internalise basic concepts in mathematics and reading with comprehension. What a teacher believes in influences her attitude towards students, the pedagogy, and how she manages time to reach out to every child. A teacher’s prejudices, biases and attitudes can be a barrier to learning.

If a teacher believes that some children cannot learn, she is most likely to ignore them and focus on others. If a teacher believes that girls cannot learn mathematics, she will communicate it to the students, and girl students may feel afraid to ask questions. .

To improve the learning levels, India has to ensure that the education system focuses on what and how much our children are learning, and how we can support, encourage, and facilitate new teaching methods.

Vimala Ramachandran is an educational researcher and retired professor of teacher management, National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration 

Source: Hindustan Times, 24/10/20

Domestic Violence Act: The Supreme Court took a progressive turn, writes Gautam Bhatia

 

The court refrains from treating the entitlements under the DV Act as paternalistic gifts to protect the “weaker” party, but expressly frames them in the language of rights

In 2005, Parliament enacted the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence (DV) Act. The DV Act was a critically important law that recognised and codified a set of rights intended to protect women from domestic violence and domestic abuse. The Act recognised that domestic violence is triggered — and enabled — by the vast differences of power that exist within our family structures. Long-standing norms that operate to make the husband’s family home as the default matrimonial home, or create and sustain disparate earning capacities between the spouses, ensure that, in many cases, women lack the social and economic support structures that would enable them to effectively resist domestic violence, or to leave abusive relationships.

To mitigate this situation, the DV Act prescribed a set of remedies that women could avail of in situations where they were faced with domestic violence. One of these remedies is the right to residence, codified under Section 17 of the DV Act. The right to residence is based on the recognition that in a significant number of relationships, the marital household will either be under the legal control of the husband, or of his parents, and the woman will not always be in a position to return to her own family home. In such a situation, the threat — or the potential social shame — of homelessness creates a situation of “no exit” from the abusive relationship. To prevent this, the DV Act specifically provides that “every woman in a domestic relationship shall have the right to reside in the shared household”, and that she cannot be excluded or evicted from it, except through legal process.

Soon after the passage of the DV Act, in 2007, the Supreme Court (SC) provided a narrow and restrictive meaning to the right of residence. The court held it would apply only where the “shared household” either legally belonged to the husband, or where it was joint family property. In cases where — for example — the married couple was living with the husband’s parents, in a house that legally belonged to the parents, there would be no right of residence. The judgment based its interpretation on a strained reading of the phrase “shared household” under the DV Act, and by raising the spectre of the “chaos” that would ensue if every place the married couple had ever stayed in could be treated as a “shared household”, where the wife could claim residence rights.Needless to say, this interpretation defeated the very purpose of the DV Act, which was based upon a recognition of the structural vulnerabilities faced by women within the social institution of marriage. By drawing a line around the cases in which residence rights could be claimed, the court effectively deprived a large number of women, subjected to domestic violence, of the very remedy that had been designed for their protection.

However, after 13 long years, in 2020, the SC has now finally corrected its error. In Satish Chander Ahuja v Sneha Ahuja, the court acknowledged that its old reading was wrong, and the specific purpose of the DV Act — which was to protect the rights of women subjected to domestic violence, within the Indian social context — required a broad reading of “shared household” and residence rights. The SC, therefore, held that residence rights were not limited to situations where the shared household was joint family property, or belonged to the husband. As for the “chaos” that would seemingly ensue, the court pragmatically noted that only the last household in which the parties had lived together — and access to which was sought to be deprived — would count, a judgment that could be made on a case-to-case basis.The court’s judgment is important not just for its progressive outcome, but also for its reasoning: The court refrains from treating the entitlements under the DV Act as paternalistic gifts to protect the “weaker” party, but expressly frames them in the language of rights.

It is, therefore, an important step forward in making the DV Act an effective rights-legislation.

Gautam Bhatia is a Delhi-based advocate

The views expressed are personal

Source: Hindustan Times, 26/10/20