what is one way the indian government tried to improve the statue of dalits
NEW DELHI — The president of India recently received a letter of the alphabet from a young homo in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. It included graphic details of how the writer said he had been abused by police in his village.
Vara Prasad, 22, said he was seeking the permission of President Ram Nath Kovind to bring together the Naxalites,an outlawed Maoist insurgent group fighting a guerrilla war against Indian security forces.
"The police force-and-gild arrangement has failed me," Prasad, a "Dalit" from the lowest rung of India's caste hierarchy, said in the alphabetic character, dated Aug. eleven to Kovind — who is also a Dalit. "I want to await elsewhere to preserve my dignity."
India's caste system — and the violence perpetrated confronting those at the bottom of the rigid, hereditary social stratification — stood even so again at middle phase.
Prasad lives on the banks of a deltaic stream of the Godavari, India's second longest river. The riverbed is a reservoir for rampant illegal sand mining, controlled by powerful local business organization and political cliques.
"There was a death in our village that day," Prasad told NBC News by phone, referring to July 19, the day earlier he was beaten by the police.
"Nosotros were making funeral arrangements when a truck belonging to a local politician fetching sand from the riverbed passed past. I asked them to wait awhile while we moved the body. They wouldn't heed, and at that place was an altercation."
In the ensuing melee, Prasad said, blows were exchanged and, past his business relationship he was hit first. He also admitted dissentious the windshield of the truck.
"They wouldn't heed and words came to blows," he said. "The commuter slapped my face and I damaged his windscreen."
"The next day, I was taken to the police force station," he said. "The officers thrashed me and used the vilest expletives. They called in a barber and had him shave the top of my head and shave off my mustache. It was and so humiliating. I wrote the president to grab attending."
Local police acknowledge the incident took place. In a ii-page document, a copy of which was obtained past NBC News, Shemushi Bajpai, the district's superintendent of police force, said a departmental investigation established that Prasad had been the victim of "inhuman acts towards an accused person," and the officer involved had been arrested.
Prasad contends he was victimized for beingness a Dalit.
The police force filed a case against the officeholder in question under what is commonly known equally the Atrocities Deed, which specifically targets crimes based on the victim's degree. It was an internal, departmental investigation.
Dalit is a word that can hateful oppressed, broken or crushed and refers to those formerly known by the dehumanizing term "untouchables." Over the years, the community has chosen the term Dalit for itself, eschewing the official moniker of Scheduled Castes. In that location are 200 million Dalits in India out of a population of 1.3 billion.
The Hindu caste system, in which identity and status are ascribed at birth, dates to an ancient Sanskrit text chosen the "Manusmriti" (The laws of Manu), and uses a doctrine of purity and pollution to allocate people into four varnas or castes.
At the top are the Brahmins (priests), followed by Kshatriyas (soldiers/administrators) and Vaishyas (merchants), with Shudras (servants/laborers) at the lesser. Dalits are beyond the scope of this system, which considers them "untouchables."
Untouchability was abolished legally in 1950, when India became a republic. In reality, it remains embedded in India'southward psyche.
'Degree hatred at piece of work'
Beyond prejudice, Dalit activists run across a more sinister agenda, tied to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party's vision for a Hindu nation.
The BJP — or the Indian people'due south party — leads the alliance heading the central government. In its second consecutive term in power, it'due south known for its robust assertion of nationalism.
A party spokesman denied the BJP's Hindu nationalism had contributed to the increasing number of attacks on Dalits.
"Ours is an inclusive nationalism," Sudesh Verma, a national spokesperson for the party, said by phone. "We believe all Indians are Hindu by ancestry."
India, however, has a significant population of minorities, including about 194 million Muslims, which equates to 14.9 percent of the population. This is the second largest Muslim population of any country in the earth after Indonesia, according to a Pew Research Centre certificate released in 2019. There are also virtually 28 1000000 Christians, and 20 million Sikhs.
Activists point to a spate of mob lynchings over beefiness, for example, in which people have been attacked and ofttimes killed on mere suspicion.
Hindus venerate the moo-cow, and its slaughter is illegal in most states.
The lynchings are carried out by vigilante groups; the victims are mostly Dalits and Muslims. Many of these events are filmed and circulated widely on social media.
The president'southward office said it forwarded Prasad's letter to local government officials, asking them to investigate.
While the police officers involved have been suspended and a departmental enquiry ordered, Prasad says the policemen were post-obit orders. He hopes the president'southward directives will pb to activeness against the ascendant-degree villagers — those, he said, who instigated the police brutality.
The note circulated by the law confirms Prasad'southward accusation, and names Kavala Krishna Murthy, a local homo of the dominant Kapu – a land owning caste, — forth with v unnamed persons — as the accused. The note says the complaint is under investigation. Murthy could not be reached for comment.
"This is caste hatred at work," Prasad said.
Litany of violence
Prasad'south experience at the police station is just the most recent in a long list of cases in which Dalits accept faced violence in Bharat.
Bharat has a special statute to bargain with crimes against Dalits. Parliament passed the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act in 1989. Its existence is an acquittance that Dalits suffer asymmetric violence and hatred, and the law targets crimes against the group. It also allows for speedy trials, special courts and strict punishment. Prasad'due south case has been registered nether this human activity.
But less than half the cases go to court and the conviction rate has been equally low as fifteen percentage, according to authorities data. A 2017 Home Ministry building certificate said, "despite the deterrent provisions made in the act, increasing atrocities ... have been a cause of concern for authorities."
The National Law-breaking Records Bureau publishes an almanac "Offense in India" report. In its 2018 study, information technology lists 42,793 cases — meaning a Dalit was a target of criminal offense, on average, every 15 minutes. The number of cases has increased 66 pct over the final decade.
S.R. Darapuri, who uses initials instead of a last name like many Indians, is a retired police officer, a member of the Indian Police Service. He is likewise a Dalit and has spent his retirement candidature for Dalit and minority rights.
"I know the forcefulness well, and degree prejudice is rife amid all ranks," he said past telephone.
Beyond police violence, inter-caste violence is likewise widespread. The triggers can exist acts equally innocuous as entering a temple or falling in love.
In September 2018, Pranay Kumar, 25, was hacked to death in broad daylight in the town of Miryalaguda in Telangana country. His wife, Amruta, accused her male parent of hiring hitmen to impale Pranay because he was a Dalit. The father, Maruti Rao, was charged and died past suicide while the case was still beingness heard.
His funeral was circulate alive on local Boob tube and he was celebrated for his "fatherly dear." Amruta was trolled every bit an uncaring girl, and vilified on social media.
"We saw the casteist face of the media and the public," Kumar'due south father, Balaswamy, who goes by one name, said by telephone. "We don't want revenge. We want this story known then that at that place can be an cease to such casteist and then-called 'honor killings'."
India's history as a commonwealth is littered with fifty-fifty more macabre incidents. At that place have been massacres of Dalits in states as far apart as Tamil Nadu and Bihar, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh. There has been retaliatory violence, besides.
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In 2016, in Una, a town in Gujarat state, seven members of a family unit were tied to an automobile and publicly flogged, stripped and marched naked in the town. They were skinning a cow, which they had bought afterwards information technology was expressionless. They were accused of having slaughtered it.
In another incident in Jharkhand state, in 2018, a BJP government minister gave flowers to 6 men defendant of lynching to celebrate their release on bail. There has been criticism from Dalit and minority activists, the political opposition and media commentators that the ruling party has never clearly condemned these incidents.
In March 2018, the Supreme Court diluted some provisions of the Atrocities Deed. It restricted constabulary powers, and introduced "safeguards" to protect people accused under the police. The judgment fifty-fifty hinted that some Dalits might have been using the act as a weapon for blackmail and harassment.
India's Dalits erupted in protest.
A national strike was announced for April ii, 2018, and thousands joined across the country. They blocked railroads and highways. There were clashes with the police in several states and many incidents of violence and arson. Xiv people died and several hundred were injured, according to Jignesh Mevani, 38, an independent legislator in the state of Gujarat, and a firebrand Dalit youth leader.
Information technology was the first time that Dalit protesters ensured a nationwide lockdown, Mevani said. And this, without the backing of any major political party.
The protests galvanized the regime. It filed a review petition and also went further. Hurriedly drafted amendments to the act, nullifying the judgment, were rushed through parliament. Eventually, the Supreme Court recalled its own judgment in Oct 2019.
This was no minor victory for the Dalit motion.
The BJP parlayed its response to engineer an increase in its Dalit vote share in the 2019 elections.
"Educated Dalits are no longer meek," Mevani says. "They are organizing and demanding their due. This is resented by the non-Dalit castes, exposing them to more than violence, merely we are not giving upwards".
Withal, the road ahead for activists like him is filled with peril, co-ordinate to Darapuri, the retired police officer.
"The nowadays dispensation operates at ii levels — at the political level it uses rhetoric to woo the Dalit vote, to bang-up success," he says. "Simply on the streets the vigilantes now feel emboldened and are more than ambitious. They feel protected."
The caste organisation also dogs Indian communities as they migrate and settle abroad.
A recent survey among Dalits living in the USA claims that 25 percent of the respondents reported facing verbal or physical set on, and 60 pct experiencing caste-based derogatory jokes.
In that location accept also been lawsuits filed in California confronting big IT companies alleging caste discrimination against Dalit employees, by their managers from other Hindu castes.
If you lot or someone yous know is in crisis, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255, text Abode to 741741 or visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional resource.
Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/india-dalits-still-feel-bottom-caste-ladder-n1239846
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