remove this caste system?

a news report says:

Community organisation goes on sit-in on gotra issue.

Jhajjar (Haryana), July 30 (PTI) A community organisation today began an indefinite sit-in outside a village here on the issue of a marriage which allegedly violated the social norm of ''bhaichaara'' (brotherhood). Members of the Kadyan Barha Khaap Panchayat started their sit-in outside Dharana village here on the issue of marriage of a youth Ravinder, belonging to a Gehlout family, with a girl of the Kadyan gotra (clan).

The khaap announced that the sit-in would carry on till the family did not leave the village bowing to its diktat of either dissolving the marriage or leaving the village. The panchayat has also summoned a ''Sarva Khaap Panchayat'' (a group of all gotra panchayats in Haryana) in Beri town here on August 9 for discussing the matter.

strange kind of bhaichaara. and notice how the police, the indian state, don't seem to notice how openly some people practise caste- panchayats are held publicly and the police don't even look the other way, usually. who's going to provide the bandobast? and notice how the state protects those who break caste, sometimes:

Bhopal, Aug 12 (PTI)At a time when inter-caste marriages are being encouraged by the governments in various states, a functionary of Aaron Panchayat in Madhya Pradesh's Guna district has been terminated from her service for "marrying outside her caste", but was reinstated later.

Chief Executive Officer Hemlata Mandloi, a tribal, was sacked on January 14 this year after she married Avadhesh Sharma belonging to upper caste, official sources said today.

elsewhere, the speaker of the lok sabha exhorts her countrymen: remove this caste system.

caste doesn't need the village

Mumbai Bollywood actor Shiney Ahuja’s lawyer on Tuesday gave a new angle to the case, claiming that the victim of the alleged rape belongs to a lower caste, which is “aggressive” in nature. During a hearing on the actor’s bail plea filed before a sessions court, lawyer Shrikant Shivde contented that Shiney hails from a “respectable” family and was wrongly implicated in the case.

Elaborating his version of “consensual sex”, Shivde argued that if Ahuja had tried to rape the victim, she could have “definitely” resisted. “She belongs to a lower caste, which is aggressive by nature, and she wouldn’t have submitted herself so easily. They are known for being aggressive,” Shivde said.

what's more surprising than the lawyer's contention is the fact that he was allowed to make it. that the prosecutor didn't seem to object, the judge... it seems they were discussing issues related to a common set of beliefs.

she belongs to a lower caste, which is aggressive by nature. like he was talking of some species of animals and not another human being like himself. at the moment, i don't think i'd be able to overcome the disgust the lawyer's argument evokes in me and discuss his argument itself at more length.

here's another story of another caste which has been reduced to living like..animals almost, at least in one respect: their inability to build permanent homes:

KHAMMAM: Imagine an entire population of a caste not having ration cards. This is exactly the case of the people of Budagajangalu caste in Khammam district, who are otherwise known as `Koya vallu’.

A recent survey conducted by the Scheduled Caste Corporation which involved people of the same community in it has revealed that out of the total population of 5290 in the district, none whatsoever have a ration card and the reason given - they are mostly nomadic in nature.

one a story from india's most cosmopolitan city, another from the boondocks. both stories illustrate how caste can adapt itself and take new forms. while older prejudices work in the countryside, modern secular education allows urban indians to nurture its seed and give it new life. almost unknowingly.

how? i sleep until past seven-eight every morning. that's late by the standards of many indians. a few friends (who know about my sleeping habits), very early birds, who sometimes call me in the morning, inevitably start out with the query: are you asleep? even when it's past nine, well past the time i wake up. and there's inevitably, a note of disapproval underlining the stupid question. the fact that these queries are intrusive in nature doesn't seem to strike them. their disapproval of my flagrant (in their view) behaviour so overwhelms them, i think, that they don't stop to think about their rudeness. and why is the disapproval so overwhelming for them? it stems from their belief in certain norms, part of certain socio-religious baggage they forgot to leave behind in the village. about a householder's dharma. its corollary being the right to judge anyone morally, not on moral grounds, but on the basis of the prescribed norms. this baggage of norms ostensibly grew out of agricultural life but it is religion, or dharma, that supervises it and gives it logic, howsoever twisted you might consider it.

so the urban indian might have left agriculture behind, but not his dharma. here's what m.n.srinivas had to say on dharma in'The Remembered Village' (in the chapter on religion):

Dharma had both an ethical and religious referent. Its different meanings, 'correct', 'right', 'moral' and 'merit', all formed a continuum, and the same term connoted different things on different occasions. Similarly, even a term like tappu was capable of being used in a religious context: a man begged forgiveness from his god for a lapse (tappu) and paid a fine (tappu kanike) or performed some other action to atone for it.

it seems difficult for the brahminized classes, modern or otherwise, to distinguish between 'correct', 'right', 'merit' and 'moral'. hence the disapproval. the belief that a householder, whatever his vocation, should behave in a certain fashion is a part of a set of beliefs that, as i said, are a religious prescription originating in a need to privilege 'right' behaviour or conduct, according to one's ascribed dharma (which means the dharma of your caste), over ethical or moral conduct. and they still seem to govern people's view of right and moral conduct (including private biological affairs) outside an agricultural, rural setting. unlike what m.n.srinivas and many others had tried to formulate, caste doesn't need the village to thrive.

why should we blame them?

we're still paying for what people like jagdish tytler did twenty five years ago. we paid for it every year after 1984. bombs, riots, kidnappings, hijacking, plain mass murder-the cbi should've checked all that evidence. the ruling government should've checked all that evidence.

those who shall be planning the next round of bombs, riots, kidnappings, hijacking, plain mass murder would be checking tytler's clean chit. they'll find enough evidence there that they've always been right. and at this moment, i can't really blame them.

jehad

i am watching everything
observing your every move
the bodies that drifted away in the blood rivers of december 6th
i am still searching for them with wet eyes

while no foot can turn a man into man now
i watch them turn into rocks and maniacs

the al kabeer gherao
which stands between my hunger and my livelihood
the falling flag post which turned into a trishul in hubli idgah
'mathura' lying crushed under your kautilyan plans
i am watching all.

thinking, indivar- is the light of our home
rajeev- the fragrance of my heritage
i celebrated
you too turned into vamana's feet
walked over the guldastas of my dreams
to rip open the pyjamas of my trust
hacking me, anointing your foreheads with my blood
leaving me with a bougainvillea citizenship.

with nothing more to bring down
perhaps, you might be annoyed or impatient.
spread your hawk's eyes across the land once
by the yamuna, some mad dada of ours,
you'll find, had turned all his love for dadi ma
into a milk and cream moonlight mansion.
in delhi, someone had plucked a piece of the eastern sky,
you'll see, and planted it as a palace soaked in his blood
my traces shall continue stoking
as qutub minars char minars buland darwazas
jama masjids mecca masjids maharaja palaces
your restless fanaticism.
when you destroyed or cut down throats we stayed silent
as you set fire to our history
and announced compensation with another hand
but- when you break the country into pieces
stamp people down into graves
and raise beasts in the cities, i wouldn't tolerate that
you necrophiliac-
to release the dead if one needs corpses-
it's inevitable
the first corpse would be mine.
i am watching everything.

my translation (like my other attempts, this shall remain a work-in-progress for some time) of jehad, a telugu poem by khaja that i found in padunekkina pAta, a compilation of dalit poetry published in 1996.

'Treat encounter killings as murder'

Hearing a batch of petitions filed by revolutionary writer P Varavara Rao and civil liberty organisations in connecton with encounter killing that took place at Manala in Nizambad district in March 2005, a five-judge bench of the High Court said,''in every case of an encounter death , a case must be registered against the police.'' The order was passed reversing an earlier judgement of another Bench dismissing a petition seeking registeration of murder cases in all encounter deaths.

The ruling assumes significance in the wake of a large number of killing of Naxalites in alleged 'fake encounters'' and also elimination of rowdy-sheeters in encounters.

torture is not interrogation. harassment is not investigation. now, get off your fat a%$@s, and serve the people for a change. not shoot them.

vAkapalli's vow

it'd have been better if we'd related our woes to the trees, the forest,
with leaves and roots they'd have treated our wounds
it'd have been better if we'd told the wind, the earth,
we'd have received some cool relief;
in our heart's hamlet suspicions stoke our wounds,
for justice, we gave up shame,
we brought our pain to the cities
to heal the bruises in our hearts, our honour,
we opened them to the officers;
those who examine and those who rule
those who judge and those who looted us:
we didn't realize they're all one
we spit on you..you scoundrels!
it was our mistake to let you into the forest
it was a bigger mistake to plead for justice outside the forest
evil men!
between your sniggers, artifice and threats
we dusted our tearful skirts --
we're returning to our hamlet,
come into the forest and we shall decide;
one day we know we'll catch you
and we shall extract a just price.

my translation of krupakar madiga's shOkapalli shabadham (first published in surya in december, 2007), a tribute to the women of vAkapalli.

cancel the licentious

She also shifted the probe focus to whether or not the pub had the licence to serve liquor.

sri ram sene needed guidance. of the temporal kind: the faithful were unsure about where is it okay to protect our sanskriti? considering, what the pub owners did or did not do seemed to be having more impact on our sanskriti than their own valiant efforts.

pub-disguised-as-a-restaurant and not having a license: is it okay to beat up girls there?
pub-not-disguised-as-a-restaurant-and-having-a-license: is it okay to beat up girls there?
pub-disguised-as-a-restaurant-and-having-enough-security: is it okay to beat up girls there?
pub-meant-for-lodgers-but-catering-to-outsiders: is it okay to beat up girls there?
pub-which-could-be-any-of-the-above-or-a-combination-of-any-two-er-three-or-something-else: is it okay to beat up and chase girls outside the pub etc?

the lord-disguised-as-a-lady answered: a pub or anywhere, as long as it's girls, with or without licenses. i mean, anywhere without license, with girls, as long as it's pubs. let me do this slowly...girls anywhere, with or without pubs, as long as it's license...

s#$*...listen. girls, ok? beat. i grant you license.

terrorists are animals?

NEW DELHI: A senior judge of the Supreme Court on Tuesday likened terrorists killing innocent people to "animals" and said they cannot be allowed to take benefit of human rights.

"Those who violate the rights of society and have no respect for human rights cannot be a human," Justice Arijit Pasayat said at a seminar on terrorism here.

"We should not talk about human rights violation of terrorists because terrorists are the people who kill innocent people with AK-47 and AK-56," he said, adding that "those who killed innocent people by no stretch of imagination are human beings. They are worth not more than animals."

animals? my view is that they generally started out as human beings. a lot of things helped them along on their progress towards animalhood. including human-made structures, institutions, ideas and sometimes, perhaps, chemicals in their brains. not forgetting other human beings who refused to believe that they were human.

'...so long as it is black'

"Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black"
- henry ford.

only four dalits have been appointed as justices of the supreme court until now. how many sc judges were from an adivasi background? we do not know. how many were obcs? we do not know. came across this paper which says ( in the abstract):

If the Indian Supreme Court is institutionally biased towards protecting the fundamental rights of all Indians, than it stands to reason that the Court will have a non-elitist ideology. The methodology used in this paper is an examination of the castes of justices in benches of different sizes and the cases assigned to them. Using a random sample of cases dealing with caste reservations between 1950 and 2005, I find an overwhelming support for the institutional responsibility hypothesis and that across bench sizes, Non-Brahmin justices are much more likely to be assigned to cases involving caste reservations than Brahmin justices. [italics mine]

for the researcher, shyam sriram, analysis of the background of all justices (from 1950 to 2000) was important. he finds out:

TOTAL NUMBER OF ALL JUSTICES (INCLUDING CHIEF JUSTICES) = 166 (From 1950 to 2000)
-Percentage Hindu: 81% [Brahmins – 56.6%; Non-Brahmins – 43.4%]
-Percentage Muslim: 11%
-Percentage Christian: 4.4%
-Percentage Other Religions [Sikh, Parsi/Zoroasterian & Buddhist]: 4.4%

in the research results he points out that more non-brahmin judges get assigned to deal with cases involving rights of the underprivileged such as reservations:

The results overwhelming support my hypothesis. Across bench sizes, there is a substantial difference in the number of Non-Brahmin justices assigned to these cases versus Brahmin justices. Of the 73 cases chosen for analysis, there were a total of 300 justices in all the benches. According to the results in Figure 4, a Non-Brahmin justice was four times more likely to be assigned to a case involving caste reservations than a Brahmin justice. This is more than a coincidence, but evidence of a pro-minority and anti-elitist ideology of the Chief Justice and subsequently, of the institute of the Supreme Court as a whole. [italics mine]

now who are these non-brahmin judges? apart from the sikh, christian, muslim judges? there's a list at the end of the paper (in the appendix).

check how many of the non-brahmin judges are obcs, dalits, adivasis. i can spot some khatris, kayasths, rajputs, marathas, reddies etc., non-brahmin does not mean non-brahminized, does it? remember how long it took for the indian state to constitute the national commission for scheduled castes and tribes. remember how long it took for the second backward classes commission to be appointed after the first. remember how long...

'Hundred percent reservation in capital punishment'

PATNA: It is unbelievable but irrefutable. That barring Kare Singh, out of 36 prisoners waiting on the gallows in Bihar's Bhagalpur Central Jail, 35 belong to OBCs, Dalits and Muslims.

this news report goes on to say:

Kare, a Bhumihar, is the lone exception. This caste has been categorised among forwards in the official list. He comes from Ramdiri village under Begusarai district.

The list of 24 other condemned prisoners includes the names of Hariballabh Singh, Bhumi Mandal, Binod Mandal, Indradeo Mandal, Arjun Muni, Dukho Sharma, Jagdish Shahni, Shivesh Mandal, Baidyanath Sharma, Bindeshwari Mandal, Upendra Mandal, Jalim Mandal, Ramshagun Mahto, Singheshwar Rai, Binod Prasad, Mithilesh Thakur, Manoj Rai, Raghunath Shahni, Ashok Kumar Gupta, Prabhat Kumar Rai, Mahendra Yadav, Durga Mandal, Manoj Singh and Naresh Yadav are among those convicts who all come from the OBC group.

Bir Kunwar Paswan, Krishna Mochi, Nandlal Mochi, Dharmendra Singh and Shobhit Chamar are among 5 convicts who come from dalit section of the society.

Funo Shah, Md. Ehsan Shah, Sheikh Shamshul, Sheikh Gyash, Md. Gayasuddin Khan and Naushad Alam are among those 5 convicts who are Muslims.

5 dalits, 24 obcs, 5 muslims and one upper caste hindu. you could say the gallows are almost totally reserved for the non-brahminized sections of the country.

i tried to find the original article (published in the hindi daily hindustan, a few years ago), on the study the report refers to, by prabhat kumar shandilya, without much success. but i did find another reference to the same study here:

Amid the intellectual debate over the justification for the capital punishment, Gaya-based human rights activist and PUCL member Prabhat Kumar Shandilya gave another twist to the very concept of death penalty. He pointed out that people belonging to only Dalit and lower castes, tribals and minorities are awarded death sentence and no culprit of upper caste ever went to the gallows after the Independence; with the only exception of Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte, the killers of Mahatma Gandhi, and lastly Dhananjoy Chatterjee. "Most of them were Dalits, tribals, lower caste people and minorities and belonged to the poor sections of the society," he said.

"It's like 100 per cent reservation for the lower castes and minorities to the gallows," lamented Shandilya, who some time back wrote to the President of India for a review of this "discrimination". [emphasis mine].

nice to know that there's at least one public institution in india that doesn't worry about dilution of merit.

please note: the title of this post is the title (translated from hindi, i guess) of the article by prabhat kumar shandilya- if anyone finds the article, please send me the link.

'Aapko kaisa lag raha hai?'

pranab mukherjee says the Indian government has handed over 'evidence of the links with elements in Pakistan of the terrorists who attacked Mumbai on 26 November, 2008' today. the minister also, according to the news report, 'accused Islamabad of "denial" and "shifting the blame" for the deadly Mumbai attacks'.

isn't that ironic? that the government of india has to produce 'evidence' and go to a court, of sorts, before an indifferent judge, pakistan and the so-called international community of nations, and seek a hearing and justice, ultimately? one'd like to ask the brahminized ruling classes: how does it feel like being an unfortunate dalit or a muslim or an adivasi.... waiting outside a police station, for once?

meaningless icons

from a paper on the very informative judicial reforms website:

When one is talking about access to justice than one has to keep in mind the level of justice. By and large people do not come in touch with the judiciary in order to enforce their right to justice. But what are the basic problems, which the people face when they do approach the court? They come to the court and then wait for justice for years on end. On August 2006, the figures of pending cases were 39 lakhs at the level of High Courts and 235 crore in subordinate courts, while 35000 cases are pending in the Supreme Court. Figures of cases filed per thousand population comes around 1.2 per 1000 population, which is far less than 17 cases per 1000 in Malaysia and 14 per 1000 in Korea. This shows that in India we do not have many people approaching the courts for getting justice.

Every Law Commission is dealing with disparity in the number of judges per population. According to the standards of the world, the country should have at least 50 judges per million population. But in India in 2004, we had 12 judges per million population. Apart from the fact there are 2000 vacant positions in subordinate judiciary.

Who do these delays and backlogs impact the most? How do they impact access to justice? In case of the criminal cases, the poor people are the most affected. More than 70% of persons inside jails who are held on suspicion of having committed a crime are not able to pay the bail amount, which is very high. They are inside the jails for months and years, as they cannot afford a lawyer.

among other figures and facts mentioned in those few paras, i think this line best illustrates how inaccessible justice is to the great majority of the people in this country:

Figures of cases filed per thousand population comes around 1.2 per 1000 population, which is far less than 17 cases per 1000 in Malaysia and 14 per 1000 in Korea [italics mine].

place that figure alongside these two random facts: number of indians who do not have bank accounts (ans: around 85% of the total population), proportion of people in the country employed in the unorganized sector (ans: 93% of total workforce). those figures tell me: most people in india have a right to be angry. but why aren't they going to the courts?

it'd seem, for the great majority of people in india, not just the taj mahal hotel in mumbai, most of india's courts too are meaningless icons.