From the BBC:
The Indian Dalit man killed for eating in front of upper-caste men
A helpless anger pervades the Dalit community in the remote Indian village of Kot.
Last month, a group of upper-caste men allegedly beat up a 21-year-old Dalit resident, named Jitendra, so badly that he died nine days later.
His alleged crime: he sat on a chair and ate in their presence at a wedding.
Not even one of the hundreds of guests who attended the wedding celebration - also of a young Dalit man - will go on record to describe what happened to Jitendra on 26 April.
Afraid of a backlash, they will only admit to being at a large ground where the wedding feast was being held.
Only the police have publicly said what happened.
The wedding food had been cooked by upper-caste residents because many people in remote regions don't touch any food prepared by Dalits, who are the bottom of the rigid Hindu caste hierarchy.
"The scuffle happened when food was being served. The controversy erupted over who was sitting on the chair," police officer Ashok Kumar said.
The incident has been registered under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities Act) - a law meant to protect historically oppressed communities.
Dalits, formerly known as untouchables, have suffered public shaming for generations at the hands of upper-caste Hindus.
Dalits continue to face widespread atrocities across the country and any attempts at upward social mobility are violently put down.
For example, four wedding processions of Dalits were attacked in the western state of Gujarat within a week in May.
It is still common to see reports of Dalits being threatened, beaten and killed for seemingly mundane reasons.
The culture that pervades their community is visible everywhere - including in Kot, which is in the hilly northern state of Uttarakhand.
Local residents from the Dalit community allege that Jitendra was beaten and humiliated at the wedding.
They say he left the event in tears, but was ambushed again a short distance away and attacked again - this time more brutally.
Jitendra's mother, Geeta Devi, found him injured outside their dilapidated house early the next morning.
"He had been perhaps lying there the entire night," she said, pointing to where she found him. "He had bruises and injury marks all over his body. He tried to speak but couldn't."
She does not know who left her son outside their home. He died nine days later in hospital.
Jitendra's death is a double tragedy for his mother - nearly five years ago her husband also died.
This meant that Jitendra, who was a carpenter, became the family's only breadwinner and had to drop out of school to start working.
Family and friends describe him as a private man who spoke very little.
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Loved ones have been demanding justice for his death, but have found little support among the community.
"There is fear. The family lives in a remote area. They have no land and are financially fragile," Dalit activist Jabar Singh Verma said. "In surrounding villages too, the Dalits are outnumbered by families from higher castes."
Of the 50 families in Jitendra's village, only some 12 or 13 are Dalits.
In India, eliminating the caste mindset is super tough but is needed. In Malaysia eliminating the entitlement / ketuanan mindset is also tough but needed.
ReplyDeleteHitler thru Joseph Goebbels and their Nazi party also propagated Ketuanan Aryan policies and once Germans became indoctrinated with this concept, most lost their humanity about genocides, considered non-Aryans as sub human beings, lost their country, became divided into West and East Germany after 1945 and reunited back only in 1990.
ReplyDeleteSuch lessons from history are bound to repeat for any country once it's leaders in their greed for power and wealth uses Ketuanan of race or religion to indoctrinate the rest to follow and support them. The actual victims in the end (usually in the millions) are the ordinary citizens who gained nothing except death and destruction of a Nation.
In India, the caste system practised by Hindus was actually created by the Priests thousands of years ago to put themselves at the top of the social chain (In other words, power over others). To make it divine, they then attribute such classification as to the God of Creation - Brahma. You wonder why those who are usually at the bottom of the chain do not change their occupations/jobs to escape such discriminations by work occupations to destroy this myth of caste separation created by the Priests.
As Hinduism as a religion which is so ingrained into the psyche of Hindus, such a caste tradition will continue so long as those staunch Hindus believe in the superiority of their priests and their own self glorified positions in the other social chains over others.
Any wonders why in Malaysia also, control of Hindu temples are so much sought among the Hindu politicians for their control over the Malaysian Indian Hindus voters?