“Though the 19-year-old succumbed in front of our eyes, what’s on that funeral pyre are the unkept promises of our constitution and the unfulfilled dreams of a young life.”
On 14 September, a young Dalit woman in Hathras, Uttar Pradesh, was allegedly gang-raped by four dominant caste Brahmin men. She was beaten so severely that she incurred multiple fractures and even her tongue was cut off. It has left the country shocked once again. Her death on 29 September has revealed back memories of the brutal gang rape from 2012 in New Delhi. Many have termed it as “Second Nirbhaya“.
The horrific manner in which the UP police robbed her family of the right to cremate her body deserves the highest condemnation. As per the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) report of 2018, UP tops the list of the number of crimes committed against Dalits.
Now the question is, what is the reason behind this heinous crime? She wasn’t “wearing shorts”. She wasn’t “partying late”. She was working with her mother in the field in a rural region of UP. She was dragged by the neck with her dupatta. The reason was caste-related indifference which has been going on since time immemorial in India.
NCRB data also suggests that more than four Dalit women are raped every day. This is only to remind us of a very powerful and prominent power-structure dominating Indian society, i.e. Brahmanical patriarchy. It indicates the patriarchy in Brahmanical texts that dominate women based on their gender and caste.
Rape and abduction of Dalit women are often used as a form of punishment levied on lower caste women who try to overcome or cross the boundaries of Brahmanical caste differences and patriarchy. Dalit women are not allowed to move around, seek education and employment or marry a person of another caste.
The worst fact is that the conviction rate of caste-based crime is low because the police, law and politicians are known to take the side of the men of the dominant caste and try to blanket the case. The easiest way to cower down a family or community is by targeting their women and it hasn’t changed even in 2020.
On 29 September, 2020, India has once again failed Dalit women and girls in upholding their rights and safety due to which another young life has been lost. Thus, we can say that nothing has changed since Nirbhaya, Kathua and Hyderabad.