24th August 2020: Tamil Nadu seems to have become a different kind of hot spot during the Covid-19 times in India- the hot spot of Dalit suppression. Over 81 cases of atrocities have been committed against the Dalits. The list sadly includes 14 murders, 41 cases of assault, 5 rapes, 4 deaths of Dalit manual scavengers, 2 honor killings, and a lot more.
In one incident, Dalits have been forced to create a separate graveyard to complete their post-death rituals. The death of manual scavenging comes as a surprise after the special enactment of an act in 2013 prohibiting manual scavenging as employment. In 2019 alone, over a hundred people have died of asphyxia while cleaning sewers and septic tanks. Sadly, no arrests have been made in those cases.
Dalits, called ‘Children of God’ by Mahatma Gandhi, constitute 17% of the Indian population. However, in present India, at least two Dalits are assaulted every hour, four Dalit women are raped every day, two Dalits are killed and two Dalit houses are torched on average. A village called Pokhari in Uttar Pradesh’s Gorakhpur district in June saw over a hundred people from the Thakur caste attacking a few Dalits due to their presence in a puja of the Goddess Kali.
The Dalits suffered severe injuries. An FIR was lodged against 29 assailants but no arrests have been made even after two months. These incidents give a tight message of the fatal gap between the love and respect of people based on their caste. Even after the enactment of the Scheduled Castes and Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, India seems to be unable to erase the hatred that has spawned in the minds of the upper caste people for ages.