Azoulay called for a “thorough and transparent investigation” into Chandrakar’s death, urging authorities to ensure that those responsible are held accountable. “Investigative journalists take great risks to inform society of wrongdoing, and their safety is therefore crucial in empowering populations to safeguard the public good,” she stated.

“I condemn the killing of Mukesh Chandrakar and call for a thorough and transparent investigation to ensure that the perpetrators are brought to justice. Investigative journalists take great risks to inform society of wrongdoing, and their safety is therefore crucial in empowering populations to safeguard the public good.”

• Audrey Azoulay, UNESCO Director-General

Who is Mukesh Chandrakar?

Mukesh Chandrakar, a 32-year-old investigative journalist from Chhattisgarh, was found dead in a septic tank on January 3, 2025, in Bijapur, after being missing since New Year’s Day. Known for his fearless reporting on corruption in road construction projects and the Maoist conflict in the Bastar region, Mukesh’s tragic death is suspected to be linked to his exposure of a corruption scandal. His body was discovered in the compound of Suresh Chandrakar, a contractor involved in road projects, under fresh concrete slabs.

Mukesh’s rise to prominence was marked by his unique path to journalism, transitioning from selling mahua liquor and working as a mechanic to creating the popular YouTube channel Bastar Junction, which gained 1.66 lakh subscribers. His reports on poorly maintained roads, particularly in Bijapur, led to official inquiries. His cousin, contractor Suresh Chandrakar, allegedly orchestrated the murder after being angered by Mukesh’s reporting. Mukesh’s brother, Yukesh, revealed in a heartfelt video on the channel that Mukesh had been receiving threats prior to his death.

Days after a Chhattisgarh-based journalist was found murdered, the key suspect in the murder of Bastar journalist and YouTuber Mukesh Chandrakar, Suresh Chandrakar, was arrested by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the Bijapur police from Hyderabad on the night of January 5, 2025. Police confirmed the arrest after the body of Mukesh was discovered on January 3, hidden in a septic tank at a property owned by Suresh in Chattanpara Basti, Bijapur. Three others involved in the crime—Ritesh Chandrakar, Dinesh Chandrakar, and supervisor Mahendra Ramteke—have already been arrested in connection with the case and remanded to police custody by the Court.

The incident sparked widespread protests and seeking justice for Chandrakar. The Editors Guild and the Press Club of India also condemned the murder, concerning the dangers faced by journalists in conflict zones.

Chandrakar’s Postmortem: fractures to head, heart ripped out, broken neck

The Postpartum report of Mukesh Chandrakar revealed the shocking details in the killing of journalist. Chandrakar had 15 fractures to his head and his heart being ripped out. Chandrakar’s neck was also broken, reported the Free Press Journal. As per report, doctors also found pieces of liver and five broken ribs. After the postmortem, the doctors believed that there must have been two people involved in killing the 28-year-old journalist.

Prime suspect in Chandrakar’s murder withdraws ‘big amount’ from bank, SIT reveals

The SIT, in its statement, said that during the investigation and based on information from the banks, the prime accused, Suresh Chandrakar, had withdrawn a large sum of money from his account on December 27, four days before the incident. This matter is currently under investigation, SIT said.

However, when asked about the amount of money withdrawn from Suresh’s bank account, a senior police officer stated that it was a subject of investigation. ““Revealing the amount would hamper our investigation at this stage but money trail is being investigated,” he said, according to the Indian Express.

Asthi Kalash (urn with ashes) shattered and lying spread on the ground

In a disturbing turn of events, the disintegrated ‘Asthi Kalash’ (urn containing ashes) of journalist Mukesh Chandrakar was found scattered near the cremation ground in Bijapur district, Chhattisgarh, about 50 meters from its original location.

On January 19, when Chandrakar’s family arrived at Muktidham, they discovered that the ‘Asthi Kalash’ had gone missing from its designated spot. A subsequent search in the vicinity led them to the shattered urn, with ashes scattered across the ground. Police confirmed the discovery, though no immediate explanation has been given for the urn’s disintegration, reported Indian Express.

Mukesh Chandrakar’s cousin, Yukesh Chandrakar, took to his X handle @youareYukesh to express his anguish. He said that, “We had kept Mukesh’s ashes, someone broke the urn and scattered the ashes. Today the ritual of immersion of Mukesh’s ashes is to be completed. I came to know from somewhere that my brother was beaten to death and a bulldozer was used on him.

Are we human?”

मुकेश की अस्थियां उठाकर रखी थीं हमने, किसी ने अस्थि कलश को फोड़कर अस्थियां बिखेर डालीं ! आज मुकेश के अस्थि विसर्जन की रस्म पूरी की जानी है । मुझे कहीं से पता चला था कि भाई को अधमरा होने तक मारकर उस पर बुलडोजर चलाई गई थी !
हम इंसान हैं ?@PMOIndia @ChhattisgarhCMO@vijaysharmacg… pic.twitter.com/sbkVuBcMAN

— Yukesh Chandrakar (@youareYukesh) January 13, 2025

The urn was intended for the sacred Asthi Visarjan ritual in Kaleshwaram, Telangana, where the ashes of the deceased are immersed in holy waters.

Chhattisgarh CM announces Rs 10 Lakh aid to Chandrakar’s family

On January 14, Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai announced an aid of Rs 10 lakh to the kin of murdered journalist Mukesh Chandrakar. Speaking to reporters at the helipad in Police Lines, Sai said, “The family of the deceased journalist will be given ₹10 lakh assistance. A building will be constructed for journalists, and it will be named after him” as Hindustan Times reported

The CM’s announcement that the construction of a dedicated building for journalists in Chandrakar’s name is seen as a tribute to his work and legacy.

Related:

Investigative Journalist Mukesh Chandrakar killed for exposing corruption

Gauri Lankesh assassination: 6 years down, no closure for family and friends, justice elusive

Gauri Lankesh Assassination: Accused denied bail by Aurangabad HC

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The Rani Sipri Mosque in Ahmedabad: Wikimedia Commons

Today, Gujarat chief minister celebrates Ahmedabad being declared India's first heritage city. It was mob rule, under his party's leadership that allowed 270 such symbols of Gujarat, and India's religious syncretism to be destroyed in a few days in 2002.

The  Hindu reports, on July 8 this year, that, one of the reasons Ahmedabad received wide support was the “peaceful co-existence of dominant Hindu, Islamic and Jain communities in the Walled City area”.In the speech after the announcement, Livemint quoted  India’s permanent representative to UNESCO Ruchira Kamboj as saying, “For over 600 years, Ahmedabad has stood for peace, as a landmark city where Mahatma Gandhi began India’s freedom struggle. It has stood for unity with its elegant carvings in its Hindu and Jain temples as well as standing as one of the finest examples of Indo-Islamic architecture and Hindu Muslim art. And beyond this, it epitomises the United Nation’s objective of sustainable development as it accelerates in its development, chosen to be one of India’s first smart cities, while preserving its ancient heritage.”

Has the BJP, before or after 2002, been always so been keen to preserve the ancient Indo-Islamic architecture of the Walled City ?

Communalism Combat had been the first to collate in its March April 20002 issue under Religious and Cultural Desecration that 270 places of religious and cultural symbolism and significance had been destroyed during the genocidal carnage of 2002. On February 8, 2012, the Gujarat High Court, in a stinging order that pulled up the then Modi-led government for its stubborn refusal to re-build, or help restore these, called it 'Constitutional abdication of duty.'. In CC's issue we had reported that,

"By 4 p.m. on March 8, 02, a tarred road replaced the shrine of the grandfather of Urdu poetry, Wali Gujarati, located not more than 10 metres from the Ahmedabad Commissioner of Police PC Pandey’s headquarters. The shrine was torn down by marauding mobs allegedly under the directions of Gujarat revenue minister Haren Pandya on the night of March 1. That day, a saffron flag was embedded into the site where the shrine once stood. This flag was removed on the night of March 2. However, a callous government and an unprincipled administration participated in the utter obliteration of this cultural monument when they allowed a tarred road to be constructed over it. On the night of March 3, the 400-year-old mosque owned by the Wakf board and located at Anjali Cinema, was broken down in the presence of state ministers Haren Pandya and Amit Shah. With delibrate cynicism, in many such locations, the Hulladiya Hanuman (riot Hanuman) idol has been installed there; darshans and artis have also been held.

The mosque of Malik Asin (Asas, Imadul Mulk) at Ahmedabad, built in the reign of Sultan Mahmud Begada (1458-1511) has been destroyed. A protected monument built in stone, this structure was destroyed within hours and with military precision, in an operation involving the use of a crane and bulldozers. At around the same time, the mosque of Muhafiz Khan at Ahmedabad was also badly damaged.

The Hague Convention of 1954 (or the Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict) recognised that the preservation of "cultural heritage is of great importance for all peoples of the world" and that "damage to cultural property belonging to any people whatsoever means damage to the cultural heritage of all mankind." India is a signatory to this convention.In 1972, a protocol to this Convention was adopted, which identified "cultural heritage" as, among other things, "monuments, architectural works, works of monumental sculpture and painting, elements or structures of an archaeological nature, inscriptions, cave dwellings and combinations of features, which are of outstanding universal value from the point of view of history, art or science". Every State that had acceded to the Hague Convention, it held, recognised that "the duty of ensuring the identification, protection, conservation, presentation and transmission to future generations of the cultural and natural heritage situated on its territory, belongs primarily to that State."

At its General Conference meeting in 2001, UNESCO adopted a resolution that sought to define the circumstances under which an act could be construed as a "crime against the common heritage of humanity." It reiterated the need for all member-states to accede to and observe the various conventions it had evolved over the years. And it authorised the Director-General of the organisation to formulate for the next session of the General Conference, a "Draft Declaration" which would define the circumstances under which the "Intentional Destruction of Cultural Heritage" could be deemed to have taken place."

In 2006-07, the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) under the BJP wanted to demolish sections of two Islamic monuments, both of which were over 400 years old – for road expansion. One of the mosques, the Rani Sipri mosque built in 1514, was already an Architectural Survey of India (ASI) protected monument, while the other, the Siraji Saiyed Mosque and the adjoined Dargah at Khajurivali Masjid did not figure on that list. The ASI had, however, been in contact with the AMC and the state government, asking them not to demolish the monument as it was historically significant.

The Sunni Waqf Board, represented by the late activist and lawyer Mukul Sinha, filed a public interest litigation on the matter in the Gujarat high court. The petitioners asked that the court put a stay on the government’s plans. The high court agreed that the monuments were an important part of the city’s heritage and told the AMC to refrain from making any changes to the buildings or their compounds. Judges M.S. Shah and D.H. Waghela ruled in August 2008 that no decision to change the structures could be taken without the ASI’s permission:

“The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation shall not demolish or destroy any part of Siraji Saiyed Mosque and Dargah also known as Khajurivali Masjid and the Rani Sipri Mosque. No part of the compound wall shall also be demolished or destroyed. However, it is clarified that the commercial shops constructed or put up around the mosques are not protected by this interim order.
Having regard to the fact that the Rani Sipri Mosque is already a protected monument and that the other mosque i.e. Siraji Saiyed Mosque and Dargah known as Khajurivali Masjid, which is also stated to have been about more than 400 years old, we are of the view that it would be in the fitness of things if, upon the petitioner making an application, within one month from today, to the Director General of Archaeological Survey of India for notifying the Siraji Saiyed Mosque and Dargah @ Khajurivali Masjid also a protected monument under the ASI Act, the Director General of Archaeological Survey of India shall consider such application expeditiously and preferably within four months from the date of receipt of the application. After the application is decided by the Director General, Archaeological Survey of India, it will be open to the parties to move this Court.
It is directed accordingly.
It is also directed that the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation shall, for removing any structure adjoining either of the Mosques or their compound wall, act in consultation with the Superintending Archaeologist, Archaeological Survey of India, Vadodara Circle.”

During the 2002 Gujarat riots, rampaging Hindutva activists damaged or destroyed several Indo-Islamic monuments of great historical significance, including the tomb of the great Sufi saint Wali Gujarati and Malik Asin’s 16th century mosque in Ahmedabad. In Vadodara, the tomb of the celebrated Hindustani classical singer Faiyaz Khan was also vandalised.

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Ibrahim Mosque. Photo courtesy: Wikimedia)

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Organised and systematic rape as reprisal for her community’s cries for justice or simply as an expression of caste arrogance and custom; sexual humiliation and molestation at the workplace, be it on the agricultural fields of a landlord or the construction site by the contractor and his middlemen; less than equal wages for her work that includes dehumanised jobs like manual scavenging and garbage picking; severe controls and violence in the domestic and social sphere inflicted by the men folk of family and community; the ultimate annapurna for her children, a role that conditions her into under-nourishing herself and her girl child; and, finally, what compels her, in the face of clawing hunger and thirst into lifelong indebtedness — even prostitution.

The Dalit woman.

She constitutes 49.96 per cent of the total 200 million Indian Dalit population, 16.3 per cent of the total Indian female population, 18 per cent of the Indian rural female population and 12 per cent of the urban female population. (1)

Living as she does at the beginning of the twenty–first century, she experiences a relentless cycle of oppression often made worse by the reluctance of the male Dalit leadership to frontally tackle these issues.

For non–Dalit India, the genteel and sophisticated discourse that deliberates on India’s deepening poverty line, shameful and increasing levels of malnutrition and illiteracy (370 million illiterates, say UNESCO figures of three years ago), continued denial of adequate and safe drinking water (2), there is a discreet but distinct reluctance to link this socio-economic and political reality, starkly, with the continued existence in a rigid and stratified form of caste. The perpetuation of class inequalities and indignities through caste, and therefore the connections between caste and class, the triple oppression experienced by the woman among Dalits, therefore the links between caste and gender and between class and gender are similarly denied.

Sensational accounts of gruesome violence (a Dalit woman being gang raped inside the precincts of a temple; another victim–survivor stripped, paraded and humiliated through village streets; Dhamma a Dalit girl blinded in Karnataka for daring to defy the untouchability system; Sanjay, a Dalit boy in Gujarat also losing an eye for similar reasons) are increasingly making it to the newspapers and television channels.

But few accounts link these incidents to the chilling cycle of want, hunger, deprivation, segregation, humiliation and violence, bondage and slavery that a particular section of our people and within that section, their women, suffer for generation after generation, without justice and reparation.

Globalisation and structural adjustment — especially the privatisation of natural resources — are also having an adverse impact on the rural poor in general, but on Dalit and adivasi women in particular, making their condition, unenviable as it is, worse under present economic conditions.

The very notion of sexual purity of the woman is intrinsic to understanding caste. Female sexuality presents a threat to caste hierarchy and stratification because of the male vision that views only the woman’s body as both property and carrier of caste lineage. Bodies of women of ‘lower’ castes may be abused because of the less than animal status accorded to a whole people but also the body and sexuality of women of their own, ‘upper’ castes are similarly subject to rigid control and abuse.

Patriarchal caste thinking (epitomised in Manu Smruti) emphasises that the danger of low quality blood exists only in the woman; raping a low caste woman by ‘upper’ caste man though committed regularly by men is condoned, arrogantly and hypocritically as his privilege. Public discourse sanctions this vile notion; but much worse, at times, even the Indian judiciary has condoned it.

Dubious decisions by the courts of this country reflect blatant and shabby ‘upper’ caste biases against Dalits and the oppressed castes in general but against women of the oppressed castes in particular.

In the mid–sixties, eminent constitutional expert, Nani Palkhiwala had made a staunch defence of caste Hindus, who were preventing entry of Dalits into the garbhagriha of temples in Tamil Nadu, saying that this was in keeping with their religious freedom (Article 25). It was an argument that the apex court in its ultimate wisdom had upheld.

On November 15, 1995, a district sessions judge in Rajasthan, while deliberating on the gang rape of a Dalit woman social worker, battling the evils of child marriage, ruled against the victim–survivor: "Since the offenders were ‘upper’ caste men and included a Brahmin, the rape could not have taken place because she (Bhanwari Devi) was from a ‘lower’ caste."

The judge in this case reflects the rank hypocrisy of the system of caste that perpetuates untouch-ability when it comes to access to water and sharing of food but violates it every time a landlord or a priest, a IAS officer or policeman, sexually abuses a Dalit woman. "We are untouch-able by day and touchable by night", a stark and challenging slogan of the Dalit woman’s movement of the nineties had declared.

Oppressed, abused and denied a voice, both within the caste–based Dalit movement and also by the wider, Indian women’s movement, the Dalit woman has begun to create her own space and dictate the discourse both within and outside her community. Ironically for the Dalit leadership, before and after Ambedkar, tackling the patriarchial base of caste by drawing women into active participation and leadership was critical (see page 14 ). For the present male-dominated Dalit political leadrership, this critical element of women’s empowerment and participation in the struggle, seems unimportant. Taking inspiration from Ambedkar and thousands of Dalit women who sacrificed much to make their articulations collectively, modern Dalit women have in recent decades been organising themselves into independent organisations.

The birth of the All India Progressive Women’s Organisation, Nagpur (1973), Women’s Voice, Bangalore (1987), Andhra Pradesh Vyavsaya Coolielu Samakhya, a federation of unions and organisations working with agricultural labourers, the Maharashtra Dalit Mahasang in Pune (1992) culminating in the birth of the National Federation for Dalit Women (NFDW) on August 11, 1995, reflected this articulation of Dalit women to command their own space and articulate their own issues within the wider Dalit movement and women’s movement, nationally.

"If the Dalit movement and women’s movement are ever to join hands, the Dalit movement needs to become more pro–women and the women’s movement more pro–Dalit", Dr Gabrielle Deitrich, president, Pennurimai Iyyakkam, Madurai has commented. In her analysis on the reasons behind the inability of Indian women’s groups to respond to Dalit women’s issues, Deitrich has pointed to the failure of ‘upper’ caste women to grapple with the system of caste itself, understand it, and thereafter admit how even they as women of the ‘‘upper’ castes’ are discriminated and subjugated by it.

Within the Dalit community, oppressed, segregated, ghettoised and subjected to a hidden apartheid (see CC, April 2001 and May 2000), it is the reluctance to tackle the issue of gender driven oppression directly, or to explain it away as simply an extension of the oppression that the Dalit man has been for centuries subjected to which is responsible for the sharpened and distinct Dalit women’s articulation that is increasingly responsible for these separate articulations.

Increasingly, Dalit women activists and groups are creating their own distinct spaces to identify and articulate the sources of what they see as distinct patriarchal biases within the men of their own community even while standing side by side with Dalit men when it comes to demanding that the world recognise caste crimes against Dalits as a crime against humanity and caste itself as an organised system of hidden apartheid.

"This Dalit man who has received education thanks to reservation and is conscious of his ‘Dalit’ and ‘untouchable’ identity and discriminations perpetuated because of it, follows Manuvad when it comes to women’s issues," says veteran Dalit woman leader, Kumudtai Pawde, who founded the All Indian Progressive Woman’s Organisation in 1973 in Nagpur. She has herself crossed the laxman rekha of caste by marrying, against stiff opposition, an ‘upper’ caste man, the only son of an influential family in the forties.

"There is a denial of basic autonomy and independence for Dalit girls by her father and brother and severe restrictions on her movement later by her husband; severe alcoholism leading to acute levels of domestic violence and battering are a common source of oppression and violence for our women," she adds. "I have to face criticism and abuse for saying what I am saying; I am even criticised for being influenced by Brahmanical notions for articulating gender issues and conducting shibirs (camps) among Dalit women in small hamlets where the pressures and taboos of caste are far more difficult to surmount."

Of late, the organisation has also been conducting camps and meetings with Dalit men. Young Dalits have shown an encouraging openness to discuss gender–related issues.

"Rape, violence, indignity and humiliation are being experienced by Dalit women every day. But forty years after the Dalit movement and three decades after the women’s movement took shape, hamari bhagyadari kya hai? (what’s our share?)," asks Vimal Thorat, an academic at Indira Gandhi Open University (IGNOU – see box).

While Valjibhai Patel of the Centre for Social Justice, Ahmedabad and Sumedh Jadhav, a young Dalit activist of the Manaviya Hakk Abhiyan, Mumbai, are in complete agreement with Kumudtai, Martin Macwan of Navsarjan in Gujarat has a slightly different view.

"As compared to the ‘higher’ castes and richer classes equality between men and women among Dalits is greater. There is much pain to share as also many responsibilities. So while I accept that there is a significant level of violence against women, women do not necessarily take the abuse in silence. They exercise greater freedom in giving it back (hurling verbal abuse back).

Dalits, both men and women suffer extreme violence, extreme abuse, and extreme poverty. Within this scenario, women do suffer more than men. However, this is not because of the man-woman equation or relationship alone but because of caste–driven oppression which is the primary cause."

"The first Dalit is a woman, Brahmin or Bhangi, as Babasaheb Ambedkar had said and she suffers the combined indignity of caste-based oppression outside and triple burdens of running the family and feeding children daily. Often her husband is irresponsible, and is also, sometimes an alcoholic," Valjibhai Patel told CC.

Despite the official prohibition policy, Dalit bastis are rife with the problem of alcoholism combined with extreme poverty. "The Dalit woman’s work, like garbage picking in the dark hours before dawn, make her vulnerable to physical violence, too."

In the first week of May (2001) alone, three seemingly isolated incidents of Dalit garbage picker women having their ears chopped off in Ahmedabad, because of the small amount of gold they wore as earrings, have added another kind of crime to the long list that Dalit women have especially to endure.

"It is Dalit men who conduct annual meetings to celebrate Ambedkar jayanti who are not serious about genuinely carrying the principles of empowerment in to their own homes and families," affirms Sumedh Jadhav. "It is patriarchy and patriarchy alone that is causing this. Look, in Maharashtra, what is our excuse? We have historically enjoyed the leadership given by Savitribai Phule, Ahilyabai Holkar, Jijabai. But centuries later we are still reluctant to accept that our sisters, our daughters, our wives make independent articulations in social and political life".

Jadhav adds: "There are so many issues that only Dalit women can take up because they live through the hardships. The issue of safe drinking water in rural areas (villages) and urban slums, the issue of ration cards and the two-child norm being imposed by present governments, health issues and the issue of shelter. But somehow the Dalit male is reluctant to abandon his patriarchal notions of control. I am convinced that these issues, deserving as they are, will only get raised if women, Dalit women, come and take command and leadership of the movement."

Congress MP from Gujarat, Praveen Rashtrapal quoted a saying in Gujarati that sums up the attitude towards women in general and which has been internalised by the Dalit community as well. ‘Jar, jameenne, jorhu, Prane kajyancha choru’ (‘Money, land and women are the root of all divisions.’) Gujarat has 23 sub-castes among the Dalits. Except for the lowest among these, the bhangis, the social system is heavily dominated and controlled by the male Dalit.

"Do you know that at most locations where the meetings of the panchayat take place, there will be a khatlo (cot) where only men sit and women will in most cases sit on the floor! Despite entry into the panchayati raj system nearly a decade ago, it is only one or two out of ten Dalit women who manage at the end of the day to articulate their issues, Dalit women’s concerns, at the level of the panchayat’s priorities. The others are simply representatives of their husbands. Among the 22 other sub-castes, it is the paragnawad, a men’s group from the sub–caste who decide every issue from marriage to divorce and other matters."

At a recent public hearing of Dalit women organised by Sahrwaru-Sanchetana, Ahmedabad, in April 2001, many of these issues received attention with a sharp gender focus for the first time in Gujarat.

Worse than any other, it is the focus on gender–related violence against Dalit women at the hands of caste Hindu males (a phenomenon that in the past few decades even Muslim women have had to endure) that is singularly absent among the articulations of the wider Dalit movement. Worse still, it has been virtually ignored by the rest of the Indian women’s movement.

The Dalit woman sarpanch of a village in Gurgaon, Sheeladidi, has had to bear the loss of two sons in their prime (one was picked up by the ‘upper’ castes last year and has ‘disappeared’ since, the other was burnt to death in early 2001) simply because she ‘dared’ to enter the political arena and contest panchayat elections. Gurgaon is an hour’s drive from Delhi but the incident has received no support or solidarity from either a woman’s organisation or political parties who articulate Dalit interests.

Other Dalit women sarpanchs who have battled the barriers of family, community and caste to contest elections on the 33 per cent constitutional reservation for Dalit women have to suffer humiliations by ‘upper’ caste men for daring to hoist the national flag!

The existence and perpetuation of the Devdasi system in different villages of Karnataka and Maharashtra is only a ritualistic stamp for sanctioned prostitution. Detailed documentation of their struggle, collected by the NFDW (to be published soon) records the human rights’ violations of Dalit women because of the perpetuation of this practice as also the widespread protests among Dalit women against the continuation of the practice.

"Thousands of Dalit women from poor and landless peasant families or Devdasis (female ‘servants of god’) have been traced in brothels of Mumbai. The Jogini system in Telangana areas, the Basivi system in Karnataka, the Moti system in Maharashtra are part of the Devdasi system where young girls are dedicated to a female deity like Yellamma," the NFDW manuscript documents.

"Dalit girls thus dedicated to the goddess are sexually abused by priests and visitors to the temples. While the dedication ceremony differs from place to place, often the ‘upper’ caste patron of the ceremony has the privilege of spending the first night with the girl. This system of patronage and sexual exploitation has given way to rank commercialised prostitution. Many Devdasis have been protesting against this system vociferously".

"Most of the Dalits from the village of Yellampura get full employment for only three months of the year (February to April) … Daughters and young women from such families are forced into prostitution. The traditional Devdasi system has given way to the commercialisation of the cult. Of the 84 Devdasis of Yellampura village, 34 were found in urban brothels. Dalit families choose to send the best looking daughter. A beautiful daughter was equivalent to three acres of land." (Jogan Shankar, Devdasi Cult, 1990).

Janki, an elderly Dalit woman forced into prostitution, who had deposed at the early public hearing of the NFDW had astutely remarked, "Nothing can stop prostitution, not police raids, no check-posts on borders, no protective homes like Nari Niketan, not even pensions for widows. Buy freedom for our men; give us land, only land. It is this land, these green fields, which will contain our girls. Nothing else can."

"Rape and molestation are new dimensions of a caste war, used as weapons of reprisal and to crush the morale of a section of the people," Justice PN Bhagwati, former chief justice of the Supreme Court, had stated while addressing the Maharashtra state women’s council. Recent rounds of communal violence in Surat (December 1992) and Bombay (1993), apart from historical accounts of Partition-related gender violence against women of different communities are indicators how gender driven violence has not stopped at Dalit women who alone have borne this humiliation in the past.

The past few years have seen communal violence join, if not replace in intensity, caste driven atrocities against Dalits, men women and children. It is not a coincidence that the Hindutva ideology that fuels communalism is rooted in a Brahmanical and ‘upper’ caste exclusion of India’s religious minorities. Muslim women especially in Surat and Bombay suffered similar kinds of gender violence when their communities were targeted.

This coupled with the designs of Hindutva forces to diffuse caste divisions by making assertions of an ‘all Hindu’ unity against the ‘enemy outsider’ (read Muslims and Christians) have also resulted in some sections of the Dalit community getting communalised.

Muslim women are also subjected to isolation by communal forces who have picked the issue of Muslim personal law reform — especially banning of triple talaaq and polygamy — as sticks to beat the Muslim leadership with.

On both issues of communalism and caste, the Indian women’s movement has revealed sharp schisms reflecting a diffidence to tackle the issues directly. It is within these developments that the growing articulations of Dalit women have found their roots.

Some have gone a step farther to forge an alliance between Dalit women and women of India’s minorities. This is following the realisation that under the specificities of violence and marginalisation of women, all these sections would be subjected to increasing levels of gender–driven violence, targeting and marginalisation. For example, Ruth Manorama who was pivotal in forming Women’s Voice, an organisation of slum dwellers and a domestic worker’s union apart from launching NFDW, has also played an important role in launching the National Alliance of Women (NAWO), an alliance between minority and Dalit women.

The story of Dalit women is the story of a longer history of starvation, of oppression, of gender violence from ‘upper’ caste men. Dalit women’s voices raise life and death concerns like water, food, wages, electricity, education and work. Of denials and continued segregation and oppression within the family by Dalit men. The socio-economic condition of a majority of Muslim women reflects varying but similar predicaments. Bread and butter issues, education for themselves and their girls, security to lives and persons.

Groaning under the burden of triple oppression, rooted in their caste and community realities, sustained articulations from the most marginalised among Indian women could well throw up more challenging issues and approaches for the Indian women’s movement as a whole.

(1) 1991 census data, taken from "Database on Scheduled Caste Literacy in India", Indian Social Institute, New Delhi, 1999.

(2) Fifty–three years after Independence, the deprivation of a long and healthy life (people not expected to survive beyond 40), high levels of adult illiteracy, deprivation in economic provisioning by the percentage of people lacking access to health services and safe water, and social inclusion (employment is one indicator) has put India at a low rank (128 out of 174) in the United Nations Human Development Report, 2000.

Archived from Communalism Combat, May 2001 Year 8  No. 69, Cover Story 1

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For Indians who truly  value tolerance, every  passing day sounds a  death knell. The ground  is slipping swiftly; we are  sinking fast into the  quicksand of brazen manipulation. Such outlets for articulating grievances that still exist are severely proscribed by the rapidity of events and happenings. Institutions for the affirmation of inalienable basic rights are limited by an apathy that is compounded by a piece–meal response to events. 

Courts, the police, the legislature and the executive are all crippled. Either because of a self–inflicted tunnel vision that refuses to recognise the calculated plan or pattern behind the systematic build up of the climate of hate in which violence appears ‘legitimate’, or because of calculated indifference, driven by bias. 

We are all witness to the wilful flouting of the rule of law, daily. As it has been happening since the mid–eighties before their formal grip on political power, and more so since 1998, after the BJP’s rise to power, the fundamental freedom of faith and the identity of Indians who are not Hindu has been a constant target. 

Constant intimidation through verbal barrage and frequent acts of violence against a section of Indians — Muslims and Christians — have come to be accepted as facts of life. Vicious utterances, that go unrestrained and unchallenged by the guardians of law, have accorded them a sinister legitimacy. The statements by the leaders of the BJP/RSS/VHP/Bajrang Dal/SS, inciting hatred and violence and acts of violence themselves, are being highlighted by the mainline media every other day. 

As the cumulative outcome of the carefully cultivated climate of coercion, other basic freedoms — right to life and liberty, of personal security of and the right of association — of thousands of Indians stand severely curtailed. Churches are attacked; copies of the Bible desecrated and burnt. A Christian priest is forced to worship inside a temple; adivasis are ‘re–converted’ amidst much fanfare but told to worship in separate shrines thereafter.

Physical attacks and intimidation of minorities have re–surfaced with a vengeance. Incidents in the past three months alone — between April and June 2000 — have crossed the three dozen mark. Christian religious persons running educational institutions or health centres have been singled out for murder or other forms of mistreatment. In every instance, mob rule and intimidation has overpowered the rule of law, with the local police reduced to wilful impotency. 

Every attack has been preceded by systematic distribution of hate spewing pamphlets (see box 2). Since 1996, media reports have drawn repeated attention to such hate campaigns. But all the vitriol has suspiciously escaped police action under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). Gujarat, and now Uttar Pradesh, are living examples of life for Indians under ‘Hindu rashtra’.

Senior officials in the police, like the DGP of Gujarat, CP Singh, have stated on record that “organisations like the VHP and Bajrang Dal are clearly behind the violence” (see CC, October 1998). Concrete evidence in specific cases points clearly to the moral and ideological backing that the sangh parivar renders to the assailants. But our watchdogs and institutions fail to make the connection or see the pattern.

Four months ago, the newly appointed RSS Sarsanghchalak, KS Sudarshan, declared that an ‘epic war’ was in progress in India between Hindus and ‘anti–Hindu forces’; in Mumbai, Bal Thackeray’s Saamna is once again spitting venom with a vengeance against ‘anti–national’ Muslims (See page 25). And yet, we resist drawing the links. 

What is responsible for this selective amnesia? How is it possible for us to react to rights’ violations in individual cases but turn a blind eye to the bloody and devious design that underlies them?

One fine day, a Bajrang Dal leader, Dharmendra Sharma, sah-sahayojak for the Braj region, makes front page news declaring that Christians are now “bigger enemies” than Muslims. (The Times of India, June 23, 2000). Clarification, if any were needed, that Muslims remain the Bajrang Dal’s and the VHP’s enemies! “Maar peet to kya, hum sab kuch karne ke liye taiyar hain” (“We are prepared to use violence. There is no limit”), said Sharma, leaving no room for any confusion. 

The remark prompted an expression of outrage from India’s attorney general, Soli Sorabjee. He opined that such elements should be put behind bars. The National Human Rights Commission demanded details of attacks on Christians from the central and state governments. But only weeks earlier, the remark of the all–India Bajrang Dal convenor, Dr. Surendra Jain, calling for “a second Quit India movement” to drive away Christian missionaries had passed unnoticed and unchallenged. (The Afternoon Despatch and Courier, May 27, 2000).

Life in Gujarat for a Muslim or a Christian today is a suffocating reminder that he or she no longer enjoys the precious privilege of being regarded as an equal Indian. Muslims residing in ‘cosmopolitan’ localities in Gujarat are forcibly evicted; Muslim children have to compulsory attend school and even give examinations on Id day. Discrimination and bias has insidiously crept into the marketplace of ideas, avenues of livelihood, educational institutions, the administration, the police, the judiciary. All in all, the quality that we used to proudly describe as Indian values is fast eroding. 

What more will it take to force us to recognise the extent of corrosion? Mumbai’s classrooms, at the university level, reflect this public sanction to brazen bias in their own style. A professor advising students on how to write an essay for the All India Open School examination elaborates: “Write about how the British exploited this country. And how before that the Muslim rulers, thanks to their love of the good life, robbed this great wealthy land of all its wealth. Muslims have always loved the good life and it is this greed that has looted our country that used to be a sone ki chidiya (a golden bird). 

There is a clever and calculated plan behind every campaign launched, sustained and developed by the RSS and its faithful followers. In the eighties, the campaign for a glorious temple in the name of Lord Ram at Ayodhya fired 18,000 villages to participate in the shilanyas in 1990, and over 5,00,000 kar sevaks to be witness and participants in the demolition of a mosque in Ayodhya two years later. Clever double entendre accompanied the campaign for a temple at Lord Ram’s legendary birthplace. The justification in the nation–wide effort was through the demonising of Mughal emperor Babar. Muslims in India today, ‘Babar ki aulad’, were crudely told again and again, that they had trampled on all that is decent Indian, read Hindu.

With the campaign for the construction of a Ram mandir at Ayodhya now in the process of being actively revived, the anti–Muslim underpinnings of the campaign are also re–surfacing in subtle and not–so–subtle forms. The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), nudged by an encouraging human resources development ministry under none less than Murli Manohar Joshi, is busy excavating 46 Indian historical sites, including UNESCO–protected World Heritage sites like Fatehpur Sikri. Objective? To establish that Hindu or Jain temples exist below Mughal (read Muslim), monuments.

There is a brazenness that underlines the physical assaults and intimidation whereby the assailants present themselves as victims acting in self–defence. Of late, the Bajrang Dal has publicly started arms training for its cadre in order to prepare them for ‘defending’ Hindus and Hinduism from the demons being resurrected — Muslims and Christians. The daily violators of law and those who condone verbal assaults, physical intimidation and murder are the first to point to Pakistan’s ISI as the real culprit! Union home minister, Advani also concurs, seeing a foreign hand behind the attacks on Christians. The result: the nitty–gritty facts behind those responsible for the assaults and violence in each of the cases, where culprits inspired by or belonging to the RSS, the Bajrang Dal and the VHP have been identified, are glossed over and the police just do not act. The guilty not only escape the arm of the law but enjoy government protection every time. 

Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee and his strongman, Union home minister LK Advani, have once more declared that there is “no communal twist to the recent incidents”. The liberal mukhota of the sangh parivar is useful for the saffron bandwagon at ticklish moments like this. 

Vajpayee’s admirers, who simply refuse to believe him capable of legitimising hatred and selective murder, saw his recent bowing before the Pope at the Vatican as a “master stroke”. That the pontiff raised the issue of increasing attacks on Christians at his meeting with the PM and yet again, three days later, is seen as simply a passing hitch in international relations. 

Graham Staines’ murderer, Dara Singh is today a man lionised by the literature emanating from the saffron camp. He proposes to fight the next election. For the moment, the Hindu Jagran Sammukhya, backed by the RSS, is busy distributing thousands of copies of a 16–page booklet Mu Dara Singh Kahuchi (I am Dara Singh speaking) in Manoharpur, Orissa. The booklet focuses on the activities of the Staines’ family and proclaiming that since “Staines was the killer of our culture, so his killing was necessary”. 

The officially–appointed Wadhwa Commission implicated Dara Singh in the triple murder case but despite the evidence of police officers and counsel before the Commission, it exonerated the like BJP, RSS, VHP and BD. An example, yet again, of a resistance to examine the ideological backup that allows a Dara Singh to flourish and grow in popularity.
Vajpayee has been of consistent use to the hate–driven parivar. Eighteen months ago, on New Year’s Day 1999, after visiting the southern district of The Dangs in Gujarat, that had suffered systematic violence against its minuscule resident Christian community (ruining traditional Christmas celebrations), Vajpayee spoke to the national media. Without a single word on the violence and intimidation suffered by Dang Christians, he called for a national debate on conversions! 

Union home minister, LK Advani, used to be the BJP’s most eloquent leader on every issue pertaining to minority–majority relations in the country in the eighties and nineties — before he took an oath swearing allegiance to the secular and democratic tenets of the Indian Constitution. Today, he has mastered the art of keeping a conspicuous silence. He does surface on appropriate occasions only to issue clean character certificates to the Bajrang Dal and the VHP every time their name gets associated with criminal incidents. 

Following the triple murder by burning of Graham Staines and his young sons, Advani was quick to absolve the VHP and Bajrang Dal of any involvement in the crime. He knew these organisations well, he said, adding that they were incapable of criminal acts! It is a well–programmed symphony in operation, being played out by the different organs of the sangh parivar every day. That the Vajpayee–Advani duo is right on top of the political pyramid, ever ready with alibis, helps a great deal. 

That the BJP and its supporters within and outside the sangh parivar rely heavily on Vajpayee’s liberal mask is more than understandable. What is not, however, is the wilful blindness of the secular components of the NDA, leaders such as the TDP’s technocrat, Chandrababu Naidu, the Trinamool Congress’ firebrand, Mamata Banerjee, and the ever–reasonable socialists, George Fernandes and Jaya Jaitly. 

Equally difficult to appreciate is the failure of individuals within other secular political formations to categorically affirm that the basic rights and freedoms of every Indian, regardless of religion, caste, creed or gender is inalienable. (Remember a state minister from the ‘secular’ Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) in Maharashtra, personally welcoming criminals allegedly associated with the Bajrang Dal on their release from the Nasik jail. They were charged with the vandalising a girl’s hostel in April. The deputy chief minister of Maharashtra, Chhagan Bhujbal, later justified the minister’s behaviour).

Most opinion polls conducted to gauge public opinion indicate that only about a quarter of the Indian population backs the BJP and not all the support is for communal reasons. The rest of India, which naturally includes minorities, Dalits and other Hindus within it, remains opposed to Hindutva’s antics.

The hitch lies, however, in the lack of translation of this opposition into organised protest and outrage. The ignominies of rights abuses and oppression of minorities, women and Dalits notwithstanding, there is an innate reluctance to accept, acknowledge and rise in unison against these horrors. One of the reasons is our refusal to abandon the prevalent myth of Indian civilisation as the most ancient, the most non-violent, and the mSost tolerant in the world.

Only the creative explosion of that myth will help rid us of our false cocoon of comfort and galvanise us into articulation of outrage that is long overdue.

Archived from Communalism Combat, July 2000, Year 7  No. 60, Cover Story

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