Finding it difficult to change Dalit mindset for better prospects, 'respected' lifestyle

A Gujarat Dalit women's demonstration

By Shantanu Singh Yadav*
Even after 75 years of independence, India, along with significant macro and microeconomic issues, is dealing with a problem that lies at the very heart: Casteism. The first thing an individual associates to, right after being born, is their caste. This is a critical factor during admission to a school, marriage, renting/buying a flat in society, and even the rights performed during cremation. The result of casteism is heavily skewed with only selected individuals enjoying power at the helm of everything while the masses still facing the brunt.
Many leaders and activists throughout the last 75 years who have fought against this evil of casteism. One of those is a human rights activist and lawyer, Manjula Pradeep, a women rights leader dedicated to the Dalit movement in Gujarat. She was born to a Dalit family in Vadodara district which had recently migrated from Uttar Pradesh.
Being from a Dalit family, Manjula knows and closely understands the abuse and misery Dalits, especially Dalit women, are subjected to due to the trinity of gender, class, and caste deep enshrined in the Indian societal hierarchy.
Pradeep, right after graduating from the MS University, Baroda (Vadodara), joined as the first female employee of the Navsarjan Trust, one of the largest organizations for Dalit rights addressing issues of discrimination on the basis of gender and caste. While being associated with the Navsarjan Trust, Manjula got a deeper and more holistic experience of the lives of Dalit women in India and the atrocities committed against them.
Pradeep decided to study law while dealing with an elderly Dalit woman whose son was killed in custody after being brutally beaten up by police. She realized that in order to drive change, one needs to fight not only in the streets but also in the courts of law.
After becoming director of Navsarjan Trust in 2004, Manjula made attempts to bring caste and gender in the Dalit rights framework. Currently, she is involved in State and national-level programmes of the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights. Additionally, she is also a member of the International Dalit Solidarity Network. During the UN World Conference Against Racism, South Africa, she garnered visibility for Dalit rights.
Working in Gujarat, Pradeep realized that though there has been infrastructure and industrial development in the State, the situation of the marginalized communities has only deteriorated. Deep inside the state is very much casteist, with the upper caste communities reaping the benefits of employment and a better standard of living coming from the development.
She says that caste identity is the sole reason behind the sexual abuse of women in the villages and even in developed cities like Vadodara and Ahmedabad. And this is the reason behind the high dropout rate from schools among Dalit students.

Manjula Pradeep

Despite being banned in India since 1993, manual scavenging is pretty common in the state of Gujarat, with the scavengers from just the Dalit communities stepping inside the drains and sewers for this inhuman task. Dry toilets used by upper caste communities and cleaned by Dalit women were common in the Bhavnagar district of Gujarat. Pradeep worked on a documentary named “Gandhi ka Gujarat” for submission to the Supreme Court on a petition filed against manual scavenging, which demolished makeshift dry toilets.
The most shocking incident she came across was the 2008 Patan Gang Rape case where a 17-year-old Dalit girl student was gang-raped by six male teachers multiple times. In the absence of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, Pradeep took custody of the student and fought the case on her behalf.
After one year long, resulting in life imprisonment for all the six accused, she won the case. In addition, there are other cases on the grounds of sexual trafficking, sexual abuse, murder of Dalit women, etc., that Pradeep has dealt with during her work as an activist.
Driving change in the mindset of people, both upper and lower caste, has been an extremely difficult task for her. While upper caste communities leave all the degrading work for lower caste communities, people from lower caste communities also accept it as their fate. Since these communities have been employed in such demeaning jobs for generations, to drive a change in their mindset for better prospects of job and hence a respected lifestyle is also difficult.
Pradeep believes that during the last 30 years of her work, she has observed some change in the mindset from both ends and expects it to continue for the future to come.
---
Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, PGP 2020-22

Comments

Urgent need to study cause of large number of natural deaths in Gulf countries

By Venkatesh Nayak* According to data tabled in Parliament in April 2018, there are 87.76 lakh (8.77 million) Indians in six Gulf countries, namely Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). While replying to an Unstarred Question (#6091) raised in the Lok Sabha, the Union Minister of State for External Affairs said, during the first half of this financial year alone (between April-September 2018), blue-collared Indian workers in these countries had remitted USD 33.47 Billion back home. Not much is known about the human cost of such earnings which swell up the country’s forex reserves quietly. My recent RTI intervention and research of proceedings in Parliament has revealed that between 2012 and mid-2018 more than 24,570 Indian Workers died in these Gulf countries. This works out to an average of more than 10 deaths per day. For every US$ 1 Billion they remitted to India during the same period there were at least 117 deaths of Indian Workers in Gulf ...

A comrade in culture and controversy: Yao Wenyuan’s revolutionary legacy

By Harsh Thakor* This year marks two important anniversaries in Chinese revolutionary history—the 20th death anniversary of Yao Wenyuan, and the 50th anniversary of his seminal essay "On the Social Basis of the Lin Biao Anti-Party Clique". These milestones invite reflection on the man whose pen ignited the first sparks of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and whose sharp ideological interventions left an indelible imprint on the political and cultural landscape of socialist China.

India's health workers have no legal right for their protection, regrets NGO network

Counterview Desk In a letter to Union labour and employment minister Santosh Gangwar, the civil rights group Occupational and Environmental Health Network of India (OEHNI), writing against the backdrop of strike by Bhabha hospital heath care workers, has insisted that they should be given “clear legal right for their protection”.

Uttarakhand tunnel disaster: 'Question mark' on rescue plan, appraisal, construction

By Bhim Singh Rawat* As many as 40 workers were trapped inside Barkot-Silkyara tunnel in Uttarkashi after a portion of the 4.5 km long, supposedly completed portion of the tunnel, collapsed early morning on Sunday, Nov 12, 2023. The incident has once again raised several questions over negligence in planning, appraisal and construction, absence of emergency rescue plan, violations of labour laws and environmental norms resulting in this avoidable accident.

History, culture and literature of Fatehpur, UP, from where Maulana Hasrat Mohani hailed

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat* Maulana Hasrat Mohani was a member of the Constituent Assembly and an extremely important leader of our freedom movement. Born in Unnao district of Uttar Pradesh, Hasrat Mohani's relationship with nearby district of Fatehpur is interesting and not explored much by biographers and historians. Dr Mohammad Ismail Azad Fatehpuri has written a book on Maulana Hasrat Mohani and Fatehpur. The book is in Urdu. He has just come out with another important book, 'Hindi kee Pratham Rachna: Chandayan' authored by Mulla Daud Dalmai.' During my recent visit to Fatehpur town, I had an opportunity to meet Dr Mohammad Ismail Azad Fatehpuri and recorded a conversation with him on issues of history, culture and literature of Fatehpur. Sharing this conversation here with you. Kindly click this link. --- *Human rights defender. Facebook https://www.facebook.com/vbrawat , X @freetohumanity, Skype @vbrawat

Job opportunities decreasing, wages remain low: Delhi construction workers' plight

By Bharat Dogra* It was about 32 years back that a hut colony in posh Prashant Vihar area of Delhi was demolished. It was after a great struggle that the people evicted from here could get alternative plots that were not too far away from their earlier colony. Nirmana, an organization of construction workers, played an important role in helping the evicted people to get this alternative land. At that time it was a big relief to get this alternative land, even though the plots given to them were very small ones of 10X8 feet size. The people worked hard to construct new houses, often constructing two floors so that the family could be accommodated in the small plots. However a recent visit revealed that people are rather disheartened now by a number of adverse factors. They have not been given the proper allotment papers yet. There is still no sewer system here. They have to use public toilets constructed some distance away which can sometimes be quite messy. There is still no...

Women's rights leaders told to negotiate with Muslimness, as India's donor agencies shun the word Muslim

By A Representative Former vice-president Hamid Ansari has sharply criticized donor agencies engaged in nongovernmental development work, saying that they seek to "help out" marginalizes communities with their funds, but shy away from naming Muslims as the target group, something, he insisted, needs to change. Speaking at a book release function in Delhi, he said, since large sections of Muslims are poor, they need political as also social outreach.

Gujarat Bitcoin scam worth Rs 5,000 crore "linked" with BJP leaders: Need for Supreme Court monitored probe

By Shaktisinh Gohil* BJP hit a jackpot in the form of demonetisation, which it used as an alibi to convert black money into white in Gujarat. Even as party scrambles for answers of how the Ahmedabad District Cooperative Bank (ADCB), whose director is BJP president Amit Shah, received old currency worth Rs 745.58 crore in just five days, and how Rs 3118.51 crore was deposited in 11 district cooperative banks linked with Gujarat BJP leaders, a new mega Bitcoin scam, worth more than Rs 5,000 crore has been unraveled.

Warning bells for India: Tribal exploitation by powerful corporate interests may turn into international issue

By Ashok Shrimali* Warning bells are ringing for India. Even as news drops in from Odisha that Adivasi villages, one after another, are rejecting the top UK-based MNC Vedanta's plea for mining, a recent move by two senior scholars Felix Padel and Samarendra Das suggests the way tribals are being exploited in India by powerful international and national business interests may become an international issue. In fact, one has only to count days when things may be taken up at the United Nations level, with India being pushed to the corner. Padel, it may be recalled, is a major British authority on indigenous peoples across the world, with several scholarly books to his credit.

Counterview

Search This Blog