Dalits: Also A Part Of My India?

After spending a great evening reasserting my independence and spending time with friends, I woke up today only have my friend call me up early in the morning.

During our conversation we talked about two incidents which happened in the past 24 hours and triggered me to write this post.

In one part of the country a Dalit girl was paraded naked by Upper castes in a village for no fault of her’s and in another part, Upper caste men tried to rape another Dalit girl, weren’t successful in the attempt and so cut her arm cut off, taking it away with them.

As I write this, another story trickles in. A nine year old girl this time.

I have one grouse with the mainstream media. It isn’t doing enough to highlight this. Why can we have specials on Valentine’s Day or length of Sania’s skirt but no talk of issues which ail this county? Is there an unspoken code where we don’t talk about the ‘caste divide’?

In my knowledge, the only person writing about Dalit issues in the mainstream is Chandra Bhan Prasad. Though it is an issue close to his heart because he belongs to that community but are enough opportunities been given to this community to rise? There are other issues pertaining to Dalits which I haven't touched in this post which I may in later posts.

We talk about communalism being a problem but casteism can’t be ignored either.

Obviously the caste divide is very wide. When the Indian constitution was been formed, it was B R Ambedkar’s dream that the constitution should give equality to one and all. He also added, “Rights are protected not by laws, but by the social and moral conscience of society”.

In letter we have equality but in spirit we don’t.

For more, read this

Originally posted on Wednesday, February 15, 2006 6:08 PM