Trajectory of injustice
http://www.hindu. com/lr/2008/ 12/07/stories/ 2008120750190500 ..htm
SOCIETY
Trajectory of injustice
TAPAN BASU
Putting into perspective the outrages of caste oppression .
The kharlanji massacre is... a paradigmatic event of violence against
dalits in post-independence india.
"Human beings can be awful cruel to one another." Mark Twain, The
Adventures of Hucklebury Finn.
Khairlanji : A Strange and Bitter Crop, Anand Teltumbde, Navayan Rs. 190.
Anand Teltumbde's Khairlanji: A Strange and Bitter Crop is a tale of
cruelty perpetrated on human beings by human beings, but not,
therefore, a tale narrated in terms of an universalistic discourse of
human fallibilities or f railties. Instead, as the sub-title to
Teltumbde's book, 'A Strange and Bitter Crop', as well as its
epigraph, the powerful poem about the lynching of black people in
racially-segregated United States, indicates, the tale is located in
the specific context of a society characterised by the unequal
distribution of power and privileges among its members. This is the
social context of Khairlanji, at once "an obscure village in the
unheard-of Mohadi taluk of Bhandara district, Maharastra" and "the
quintessence of caste India –– that [requires] people... to observe
their ascriptive statuses; stay put in their place."
Acts of sadism
At the core of the story is the shocking episode of caste atrocity
that happened in Khairlanji on 29 September, 2006, but came to light
only a month later. The entire family of Bhaiyalal Bhotmange, a Dalit
farmer of the Mahar caste –– comprising his wife, two sons and a
daughter –– were lynched by a mob of caste Hindus of the village. The
lynching was preceded by dastardly acts of sadism towards the victims,
including thrashing, sexual abuse, gang-rape and mutiliation of parts
of their bodies. The bodies of the four persons were dumped, following
the massacre, into a canal that irrigated the farmlands of Khairlanji.
Teltumbde's project is to put in perspective the Khairlanji massacre
by reading it as a paradigmatic event of violence against Dalits in
post-Independent India. Thus, after listing the notable cases of
anti-Dalit violence in India since 1947 –– Kilvenmani (44 Dalits burnt
alive in Tamil Nadu, 1968), Belchi (14 Dalits burnt alive in Bihar,
1977), Morichjhanpi (hundreds of Dalit refugees massacred by the state
in Sunderbans, West Bengal, 1978), Karamchedu (6 Dalits murdered, 3
Dalit women raped and many more wounded, Andhra Pradesh, 1984),
Chunduru (9 Dalits killed and dumped in a canal, Andhra Pradesh,
1991), Melavalavu (an elected Dalit panchyat leader and 5 Dalits done
to death, Tamil Nadu, 1997), Kambalapalli (6 Dalits burnt alive,
Karnataka, 2000) and Jhajar (5 Dalits lynched near a police station,
Haryana, 2003) –– he states the purpose of his monograph :
.... This book chronicles the [Khairlanji] massacre and its genealogy;
tracks the anger and disgust that was uncorked among the Dalits and
the brutal state repression that ensued; looks at how and why ordinary
people fighting the state-corporate nexus are being branded as naxals
and attacked; offers an analysis of the content and the prejudice of
the mass media with reference to crimes related to Dalits; surveys the
limitations of the constitutional measures to mitigate the sufferings
of Dalits in the face of systemic inertia and societal indifference;
examines the political economy and mechanics of atrocities; and
finally looks at how Khairlanji blasts many myths about caste,
including the belief that globalisation and neo-liberalism are
weakening the hold of caste.
No longer unattainable
Within this ambitious agenda which Teltumbde charts out for his book,
the most valuable item, in my opinion, is his intention, expertly
fulfilled, to explain the re-structuring of the traditional caste
hierarchy, the varnavyavastha as outlined in Hindu scriptures, through
its encounter with the institutions of capitalist modernity.
Contemporary caste society, according to Teltumbde, has re-invented
the relations between the varnas by pitchforking into prominence, at
least in the countryside, the erstwhile Shudras or menial classes (the
Backward Classes and Other Backward Classes of today) via
developmental policies such as land reforms and the Green Revolution.
It is the Shudras who now dominate the social terrain of rural India,
while the so-called twice-born castes, once the ruling elite in the
villages, have shifted to the more prosperous urban territories.
Coupled with the flight to the cities on the part of the upper castes
is a new-found assertiveness in the 'untouchables' of yesterday
(presently Dalits) for whom the prospect of upward mobility in society
no longer appears unattainable. The changed equations between castes
has engendered fresh contradictions, manifest most of all in increased
clashes between the Dalits and the Backward and Other Backward
Classes, of which the Khairlanji conflict was only one terrible
example. Thus, to quote Arundhati Roy from the blurb of the book under
review, it's "not a book about the last days of relic feudalism, but a
book about what modernity means in India."
The paradox of Indian modernity, the book suggests, is that it
instigates Dalits to fight for social justice, even as more and more
social injustices are heaped upon them everyday.
Tapan Basu is Reader, Department of English, Hindu College, New Delhi.
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