People's Democracy

EDITORIAL

The Khairlanji Atrocity

FOUR members of a dalit family – a woman, her daughter and two sons – were brutally lynched after the women were savagely raped and the two young men mutilated. This barbarous incident took place at Khairlanji village in Bhandara district in Maharashtra on September 29. The Bhotmange family was one of the two dalit families in the village. They lived by cultivating a plot of land that they owned in the village. Surekha Bhotmange was resisting the demand of the dominant castes in the village for a portion of the land for a pathway. It is as a result of this defiance that a series of incidents took place which led to the horrific attack by a mob on the family. 

The Khairlanji atrocity is a cruel reminder of the plight of dalits in the country. In the case of the Bhotmange family, the daughter Priyanka had completed her class 12 and wanted to join the army. She ended up being raped, mutilated and murdered alongwith her mother. The shocking part of the entire episode is how the police callously sought to cover up this terrible crime. It is only weeks after the incident that the full truth came to be known to the outside world. 

The state government and the police authorities have to be ashamed of how the administration reacted to this incident. Efforts have to be made to ensure that each and every person involved in the crime are brought to book. No mercy should be shown to the perpetrators. Four policemen had been suspended. This is not enough. Cases must be filed against all the police officials who have connived to destroy evidence.

The outrage caused by the incident has led to mass protests by dalits in Nagpur and elsewhere. As usual, the police seeks to put down such protests as merely a law and order problem. It is a disturbing state of affairs that only dalits felt the necessity to protest this crime.

Caste oppression and atrocities against dalits are regularly recorded as statistics of crimes against scheduled castes. In recent figures released for 2005, the cases of crimes committed against scheduled castes show that three states – Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan – recorded 46 per cent of the total number of cases. These include murder, rape, arson and other serious crimes. Such oppression takes place all over the country. In the south too, Andhra Pradesh recorded 11.9 per cent of the cases and Karnataka 6.8 per cent. While “atrocities” against dalits are noted, decried and condemned periodically, what is ignored are the hard social realities facing the dalit people. In the villages, the land is still the central issue where they are oppressed and exploited with a bulk of them being landless. Untouchability and degrading practices are still widespread. The Khairlanji brutality must be viewed in this overall context of the shameful and continuing dalit oppression.

Reservation for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes in education and jobs are but a limited palliative. Even these quotas are now being opposed and sought to be whittled down. The recent Supreme Court judgement seeking to extend the creamy layer concept to scheduled castes and scheduled tribes reservation indicates how far removed from reality is the ruling order including the higher judiciary. The Left and democratic forces in the country have to accord the highest priority to taking up all the issues connected with dalit oppression and organise sustained movements against the vicious oppression of the caste system.