Despite a progressive Constitution, caste prejudice and the obsession that your place in life is determined by birth are alive and kicking.
"Love and marriage, love and marriage, go together like a horse and carriage. This I tell ya, brother, you can’t have one without the other” so trilled Frank Sinatra, the legendary American singer-actor, way back in 1955.
In 2014, in Maidangarhi, South Delhi, reality gave a knockout punch to the romantic nostalgia of the ditty. In this urban village, close to Sainik Farms, one of the city’s toniest colonies, love and marriage are not a melodious matter if you are a dalit. Last week, Sumit Singh, a young dalit groom, was pulled out of his buggy by two upper-caste men as he was heading towards the wedding venue. News reports note that the two hoodlums who taunted the groom about not being “qualified” to sit in a buggy and roughed him up were brothers. Both were drunk. One of them reportedly also said, “Pehle yahan ke naale saaf kar, tabhi tu shaadi karega (First clean the drains here, and only then can you marry).”
A case has now been registered and the two upper caste men have been arrested. But the chain of events, as reported in a national daily, points to an all too familiar pattern of dilly dallying on the part of the police to bring the culprits to book. Despite several calls, the cops remained unavailable at the time. A complaint could be formally registered only some four hours after the incident. The fracas delayed the wedding which finally took place in the presence of policemen. The neighbourhood remains tense. The few dalit families that live in the area are nervous, fearing retaliation from the upper castes.
Strangely, in a city that has been spewing rage over recent hate crimes, this barbaric incident has sparked little reaction. No politician has raised his or her voice. Nor have there been demonstrations by civil society in Jantar Mantar or other popular protest grounds. The usually voluble are silent. Lenin Raghuvanshi, secretary general of the People’s Vigilance Committee on Human Rights (PVCHR), who has written a letter to the chairperson of the National Human Rights Commission seeking appropriate action, explains it as part of the “culture of impunity”.
Mr Raghuvanshi says that if even those whose electoral calculations pivot around the dalit vote are silent on the matter, it is because upper-caste votes are now critical even in the politics of the marginalised. Gobinda C. Pal, a researcher at the Indian Institute of Dalit Studies, says that in urban pockets, where dalits are in a minority, dalit politicians would typically be reluctant to intervene in such matters. The reason: there are not enough votes at stake and the effort is to thrash out a compromise with the upper castes to prevent retaliatory violence. Many of us would find it shocking that in 2014, in a globalising megapolis and the capital of an emerging economic power, a young man can be so brutalised on his wedding day simply because he aspired to a style that upper castes have considered their sole preserve. But the barbaric incident is by no means an isolated instance. Dalit bridegrooms riding on horses are routinely targeted across the country and face social boycott for daring to seek police help. Recently, there was a similar incident reported from Uttar Pradesh’s Mahoba district when a dalit groom was forced by upper castes to get off his palanquin and walk on foot along with other members of the wedding party. In May 2013, in Bhilwara, Rajasthan, another dalit groom was forced to get off his horse by people of higher castes. When the family of the groom resisted, the wedding party was showered with a hail of stones. In all these cases, the police typically arrive late; complaints are lodged but we rarely get to know if any action was taken.
In a 2007 report, the Delhi based Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR) catalogued several instances of dalit grooms not being allowed to ride on horses in their marriage processions. Why does the sight of a dalit groom riding a horse trigger such rage?
In a commentary piece in a national newspaper last year, Chandrabhan Prasad, eminent dalit thinker and scholar, pointed out, “Earlier, a dalit groom was never attacked by the upper caste because he could never muster enough courage to sit on a horse and arrive at the wedding venue. He would quietly walk the distance or went on a bullock cart. Today, he rides the horse. The upper caste is intolerant of the fact that a dalit now wants to do things that non-dalits do.”
Dalits are taking risks to free themselves from oppressive and casteist practices. Now it is up to all of us to support this social defiance.
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