As the country is witnessing a surge in crimes against minorities yet another incident was reported in Rajasthan. Two Dalit were beaten up by a mob for attending a birthday party with a female friend.
Image Courtesy: ANI
The incident took place on 24th June in Bundi, a town in Rajasthan, where the two men were asked to take off their clothes and then thrashed by the villagers. Satnam Singh Assistant Superintendent of Police of Bundi talking about the crime said “A man had filed a complaint about the same yesterday. A case has been registered against accused Shishupal, Surajmal and others for thrashing and insulting the men”.
Only in the last week another crime against Dalits was reported where an eight year old boy was forced to sit down on hot tile over suspicion of theft from a temple in Maharashtra.
In May a group of 200-300 upper caste attacked the house of Dalit couple in Vadodara, Gujarat, after the husband allegedly put up a Facebook post saying that the government does not permit the village temple to be used for Dalit wedding ceremonies. Despite of the provisions, to uphold the rights of Dalits, laid out in the Constitution of India crime against them are still on the rise.
In a study conducted by Debashis Chakraborty, D Shyam Babu and Manashi Chakravorty in 2006 found that high prevalence of atrocities against Dalits is a unique factor, different from other ways of deprivations, which affects the social mobility of Dalits. Looking at those incidents from this perspective would help us understand the situation better. In an environment of constant violence or threat of violence hinders the social mobility of Dalits as in the aforementioned cases, thrashing Dalit men while attending a birthday party would incite fear inside them to do the sam act again. The same happened with the Dalit couple as the husband tried to raise his voice on the atrocities done against their community and he is silenced using force. And important factor to be noted is that both state and society are complicit in the crimes against Dalit community and thus helps in the process of keeping them marginalised.
Narendra Modi, two days after the Bharatiya Janata Party led NDA came into power for the second term, after being appointed as Prime Minister said that the minorities have been cheated by the Opposition for generations and now it is time to win them over. He also asked MPs win the minorities trust as they have been living in an “imaginary fear” and it is the duty of the government to break this “deception”.
Whilst this being said, the attack on minorities still continued rise since the BJP won the Lok Sabha election. It seems the government has not taken any action to curb such violences as they said they would. The fear with which the minority communities live is very real that their fundamental right of freedom of speech and expression is curtailed in the society.
A nationwide protest is being held on mob lynching of Tabrez Ansari who was killed for being a muslim and forced him to chant “Jai Sree Ram”. Such initiatives must be taken to fight against such crimes rather than keeping silence on such issues.
References
CHAKRABORTY, DEBASHIS, D SHYAM BABU, and MANASHI CHAKRAVORTY. 2006. “Atrocities On Dalits What The District Level Data Say On Society-State Complicity”. Economic And Political Weekly.