*NATIONAL CAMPAIGN ON DALIT HUMAN RIGHTS is an Advocacy Platform committed for Dalit Human Rights at the Grass root, National and International levels. Dalits In News aims at sensitizing Civil societies, HR Mechanisms and providing updates of HR violations on Dalits for their Intervention.***
*NATIONAL CAMPAIGN ON DALIT HUMAN RIGHTS*** *NCDHR* *Dalits In News* *June 16, 2007* *Jharkhand dalits' noble way of protest- **NDTV* * *http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/story.aspx?id=NEWEN20070015684** Family refuses to cremate Dalit 'fake encounter' victim- *Indian Muslim * http://www.indianmuslims.info/news/2007/jun/15/family_refuses_cremate_dalit_fake_encounter_victim.html ** *CII to train SC, ST volunteers in tourism projects**- **Economic Times* * http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/News_By_Industry/Services/Travel/CII_to_train_SC_ST_volunteers_in_tourism_projects/articleshow/2125273.cms *** * * *The one-eyed twice-borns- **Tehelka* *http://www.tehelka.com/story_main31.asp?filename=op230607the_one.asp**** NDTV* * * *Jharkhand dalits' noble way of protest* http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/story.aspx?id=NEWEN20070015684 * * Vishwesh Arya Saturday, June 16, 2007 (Dumka, Jharkhand) Faced with discrimination on the basis of caste, a group of dalits in Dumka district of Jharkhand has decided to open school meant for the dalit students. The enterprising lot has now decided to sculpt their own future and build their own school. The groups' mode of protest was unique as it chose conviction rather than violence as its weapon. Earlier, the 53 students who study at the school used to go to the nearby government school. But there they say, they were judged by their caste and not by academic performance and often ill-treated. Even water from the hand pump used by upper caste students was out of bounds. ''They do not even let us drink water from the hand pump, once we did and were beaten,'' said Saron Kumar, student. ''Teachers discriminate with the SC students. They do not allow us to drink water in glasses, but upper caste children are allowed everything,'' said Diwakar Mohli, parent. They complained but when no one heard, as a result they decided to do something about it themselves and they found the answer in the makeshift school. ''Our children are given all sorts of names,'' said Sorun Kumar, teacher, Harijan School. When NDTV approached the Dumka education officer whose job is to look at such complaints, he first denied such school existed but on further questioning he said action will be taken. ''We will probe the matter,'' said Shiv Narayan Shah, District Education Officer. With answers like these, no wonder the people did not sit back for the government to act. Perhaps constructing a school for their children was a better alternative. *Indian Muslim* *Family refuses to cremate Dalit 'fake encounter' victim* http://www.indianmuslims.info/news/2007/jun/15/family_refuses_cremate_dalit_fake_encounter_victim.html Posted June 15th, 2007 by Tarique By IANS Patna : The family of a Dalit youth in Bihar who was killed by police in neighbouring Jharkhand says he was innocent and not a criminal and that they will not cremate his body till a second autopsy is conducted to find out the truth. Dadan Kumar Ram's body has been embalmed and is being kept in a coffin. The youth, who was in his 20s and was a resident of Jawahar Tola locality in Ara town, about 60 km from here, was killed last week in Jharkhand capital Ranchi by police who said he was involved in a bank robbery. But Dadan's family claimed that he was killed in a fake encounter. "He was a victim of a fake police encounter as he was shot at point blank range," said Gorakhnath Ram, his brother. Ram, who is an assistant commissioner of income tax, told IANS that the family would not cremate Dadan till justice was delivered. "There is no question of cremating him as per Hindu rites till the second post-mortem is performed. The report of the second post-mortem will prove that it was a fake police encounter," he said. Dadan's sister Manibala demanded that either the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) or a court direct a second post-mortem of Dadan's body. "Only that can prove my brother's innocence. He was not a criminal. It was a fake encounter," she said. "We have filed a petition with the NHRC and will file a writ petition in the Patna High Court for an autopsy," Ram said. Dadan's family has rejected the police claim that Dadan was involved in the theft of Rs.10.53 million from a Syndicate Bank branch in Ranchi June 7. Soon after the bank robbery, police launched an operation to nab the culprits. Within a few hours police killed three youths, including Dadan, in an encounter. "Dadan was a gentle, hard working student preparing for the civil service exams in Ranchi. There was no report of a criminal past," said Ram. *Economic Times* * * *CII to train SC, ST volunteers in tourism projects*** * * * http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/News_By_Industry/Services/Travel/CII_to_train_SC_ST_volunteers_in_tourism_projects/articleshow/2125273.cms * PTI[ FRIDAY, JUNE 15, 2007 12:10:51 PM] PUDUCHERRY: The Confederation of Indian Industry will train 100 volunteers belonging to Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes here on toruism releated projects, the puducherry unit of the CII said on Friday. The CII, in a press release, said that the CII Director General Lt General (retired) S S Mehta and the chairman of the Puducherry chapter C Chinnaswamy held talks with Lt Governor Mukut Mithi and Chief Minister N Rangasamy recently and expressed CII's readiness to train the youths in such projects The CII would also work jointly with the Industrial Training Institute (ITI) here to upgrade ITIs in India, as visualised by the Centre. Faculty from industries would be sponsored to upgrade ITI students' skills here and also to prepare the curriculum, wherever necessary, the release said. An Emergency Management system would be put in place in the Southern region with necessary facilities. The CII urged the Puducherry administration to go in for a partnership to carry out these programmes. The Director General also felt that the Pondicherry university could have a tie up with foreign universities to enable students from the Union Territorydo courses of the universities abroad from here *Tehelka* * * * * * * *The one-eyed twice-borns* *http://www.tehelka.com/story_main31.asp?filename=op230607the_one.asp*** *Confronting the extremist fringe of the Right comes easy to the liberal-secular set but it ignores the more widespread casteist slurs by other sections of society*** *S. Anand* Two recent incidents, seemingly unrelated, demonstrate how the "secular" common sense can react in shockingly contrasting ways. The first, much publicised case from MS University, Vadodara, involves Chandramohan Srimantula's paintings, the rightwing opposition to his work, and the subsequent rallying of the secular-liberal intelligentsia around the victim. About the same time, at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, a case of blatant victimisation of a postgraduate student, Sukhbir Singh Badhal, was reported. The case came to light through the findings of a three-member committee inquiring into caste discrimination at AIIMS headed by University Grants Commission chairman Sukhdeo Thorat. Badhal's case was highlighted by The Times of India (May 13, 2007) and followed up by cnn-ibn. Badhal had stood first in a selection examination in lab medicine, but he was superseded by the second-ranker in the appointment to the coveted post of senior resident at the department of lab medicine. Like Chandramohan, a Lalit Kala award winner, Badhal had distinguished himself in his field. Both were wronged. In both cases, the deans of the departments concerned — Shivaji Panikkar at msu and RC Deka at AIIMS — stood up for their students whereas the respective managements not only justified their maltreatment but actively participated in their persecution. Where the similarity begins, it also ends. While Chandramohan's victimisation outraged a cross-section of voices — artists, academics, writers, actors, public intellectuals, lawyers, concerned citizens — there was no one to take up Badhal's cause. While a Free Chandramohan Committee quickly came into existence, a Help Badhal Committee did not materialise. Crucial here is the fact that Badhal happens to be a Dalit, and a Dalit who could stake a rightful claim to an institutional position without taking recourse to reservation. He had topped in the General category. In Chandramohan's case, the very obvious villainy of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal provided an ideal foil for the righteous though predictable indignation of the Left-liberal-secularists against the loony Right. Many times in the past they have appeared to feed off each other, and seem to unwittingly participate in a theatrical ritual where words and phrases such as "artistic freedom, cultural freedom, land of Khajuraho and Tantra, freedom of expression, moral policing, cultural intolerance/ hijack", etc, cross swords with "Western ideas, Hindu culture, hurting the sentiments of the majority, desecration of gods", and so on. These tiresome expressions, in turn, occupy placards, editorials, television bytes and SMS polls. In this secular theatre, Chandramohan and not Badhal would appear "the good victim". This phrase was used in another illuminating context by Gary Younge (The Nation, April 19, 2007) while comparing Rosa Parks' case in Alabama, 1955, with that of Claudette Colvin, a 15-year-old who too had a few months earlier refused to get up and offer her seat to a white man. But unlike Parks, Colvin was too dark, too poor; and worse, an unwed mother. Colvin being the trigger for the boycott that spurred the civil rights movement would have been unacceptable. Parks, however, was seen by Martin Luther King Jr as a woman of family values, someone who had "character, integrity and Christian commitment". Strategists of movements, argues Younge, need a good victim and wait for one if they have to. In India, this plays out a little differently. There are people whose victimhood, however grievous and morally grounded, does not qualify as campaign-worthy for the rest of civil society. AIIMS is a high-profile institution headed by P. Venugopal, an unabashed opponent of reservation who has done little to hide his prejudices against Dalits and other oppressed sections of society. (A white man in a similar position at Harvard Medical School would not have so zealously paraded his prejudices as Venugopal has.) Badhal, with his indisputable academic "merit", represents an attack on the new sense of victimhood claimed by the entrenched classes and castes, the likes of Venugopal and his no-less-tactful supporters in the media. When news of Badhal's victimisation broke, we did not see any outrage from the usual interlocutors who launched email signature campaigns and organised protest meetings in support of Chandramohan. Badhal's, for that matter, is not an isolated case. Reports of Dalit and Adivasi students being hounded at AIIMS surfaced in April and September 2006. One student, Umakant Nagar, had reported that an "abusive and threatening" message had been inscribed on the door of his room forcing him to shift out. In due course, 29 students — all Dalits and Adivasis — were forced to shift hostels. But such ghettoisation and segregation at AIIMS — justified by Venugopal and his ad-hoc appointees — did not become a campaign issue for the secular-liberals. *More recently, Ajay Kumar Singh, an mbbs student at AIIMS, testified at the Indian People's Tribunal on Untouchability organised by the National Council for Dalit Human Rights. His account of systematic abuse by the AIIMS administration appeared in Tehelka (June 2, 2007) in which he describes how the privileged caste students and management at AIIMS had joined hands to make sure he does not get his medical degree.* This selective indifference is not so inscrutable. It could be argued, perhaps rationally, that Badhal's being a Dalit is not the sole factor, and that the secular-liberals who show up at these protests relate more easily to a case of denial of freedom of an artist's expression than to a case of denial of a job to an otherwise qualified candidate. The latter comes across as a dull, drab case in comparison with one like Chandramohan's. It is likely that most of those who identified with the Baroda student-artist were in fact offended by the encroachment by unenlightened lumpens on the turf of art. Art becomes a good cause to fight for and Chandramohan the perfect victim. However, the reason why most players who took to the streets for Chandramohan did not deem it necessary to react to Badhal goes a little deeper than the attractiveness that "art" provides. When students in elite institutions across the country (led by iits, iims, AIIMS) protested the suggested reservation for the Other Backward Classes in Central colleges, and demonstrated their protest in the most vulgar and demeaning manner — by sweeping roads, polishing shoes and selling vegetables — the same secular-liberal intelligentsia that jumps at the opportunity that a Chandramohan or a Husain provides, remained completely indifferent. Perhaps they decided that the protesting students could not be denied their rightful freedom to express their contempt towards the labouring castes. It is this silence — 'indifferentism' as Ambedkar had prophetically termed the caste Hindu/liberal attitude to anti-caste concerns — that continues to echo for Badhal. What happened to Badhal was unconstitutional, as much as what happened to Chandramohan. msu Vice-Chancellor Manoj Soni, Narendra Modi's rss-backed appointee, is quite easily the ugly villain compared to Venugopal; unlike Soni, the AIIMS director does not have any direct Hindutva connection. We are left with a scenario where confronting the obvious wrongs of the overzealous Hindutva brigade seems an acceptable national-secular pastime, whereas taking on the casteist non-Hindutva demons who have prowled this society for far longer, becomes nobody's burden. When only Dalits are forced to bear the burden of articulating Dalit issues they are dubbed sectarian; the casual betrayal of Dalits by the rest of society passes for secularism. While everyday secularism in India is animated by concerns for issues that relate to religion, and especially the religious Right, issues concerned with caste discrimination leave them cold. Such secularism fails to acknowledge, forget understand, that for civil society to come to real terms with the Modis, Sonis, Goradias and Togadias, it has to first take a position on invisibilised everyday caste discrimination. In the hierarchy of wickedness, Venugopal must share space with Soni and Modi. We can no longer afford to choose to free Chandramohan from Soni and yet allow Venugopal to hold Badhal a prisoner of caste ARUN KHOTE National Secretary National Campaign On Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR) 8/1, 2nd Floor, South Patel Nagar, New Delhi-110008 Ph: 011- 25842249 /25842250 0- 9350183802 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Website: www.ncdhr.org -- Subscribe to ZESTCaste by sending a BLANK email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] OR, if you have a Yahoo! ID, by visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join Yahoo! 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