WUNRN
WOMEN NEWS NETWORK
January 27,
2008
Shuriah
Niazi - Women News Network - WNN
- Because
of their caste Dalit women, also known as Scheduled
Caste women, are often given very few equal rights or protections. -
Nineteen-year-old
Anita, of Raisen district in Madhya Pradesh in Central India was raped by a
group of males, on February 9, 2007, when she was returning home after working
in a nearby farm. Police registered the case and launched a hunt for
the accused.
A lower
caste woman who was part of India’s “Scheduled Caste” was raped in
Chhatarpur district on November 7, 2006 by four men. According to the
report, the woman who was raped had gone to attend to “nature’s call.” Police
arrested all four men on the complaint of the woman.
Pursuing
justice is not easy for a lower caste woman in Central India if the crime is
rape. It is not uncommon in Madhya Pradesh for women to suffer callous
vendettas, including sexual violence, for the actions of their male relatives.
The
Scheduled Caste in India, also known as the “dalit” or the “untouchables”, make
up only 16.2% of the entire population of India (2001 India Census).
Three years
ago, on July 8, 2004, three women of a Dalit (Scheduled Caste) family were
allegedly gang raped by thirty men belonging to upper castes at Bhamtola in
Seoni district in revenge for a Dalit boy’s elopement with a girl from an upper
caste family. A complaint to the police alleged that about 30 Yadav men
raped the Dalit boy’s mother and two aunts, having first paraded them through
the village.
These are
not isolated incidents.
Madhya
Pradesh has perhaps the highest number of gang rapes in the India.
Shockingly, in the last 1,300 days — from Dec 7, 2003 to June 30, 2007
– 1,217 gang rapes were reported in the state as per the Madhya Pradesh
State Assembly records.
The victims
of these rapes were largely women who have minority and disadvantaged status in
India. Out of the records, 362 victims were from Central
India’s ”Scheduled Castes.” 310 were from the “Scheduled
Tribes,” which number 8.2% of India’s total population (India Census
records 2001). 381 were from the “backward classes,” comprising only
27% of students in higher education institutions in India (India Surpreme
Court finding 2007). And last, 169 of the rapes listed in the Madhya
Pradesh State Assembly were from the “general category.”
“Caste-based
discrimination is illegal in our country. But we see that men from upper
castes always treat lower castes like inferior human beings,” said Right to
Food Campaign State Convener, Sachin Jain. “Gang rape is one of the
easiest means for men to attack a woman in the villages. Women belonging
to Scheduled Castes and tribes are also coming forward through NREGA (India’s
Ministry of Rural Development) and the panchayats (local governing
bodies) in the state. The upper classes take revenge by committing gang
rape. These people once referred to as ‘untouchables’ — have attained
positions in local governance but they are still among the poorest and most
victimized people.”
A majority
of the rape victims are minors that belong to India’s lower
classes. Out of 1,217 cases of gang rape, 726 cases cited minor-aged
girls who were victims. Take the case of 17 year old Kanchan, who was
murdered after a gang rape as she was returning from school in Chakki
Khamaria in the Chhindwara district on August 10, 2007. So far on this
case police have only managed to arrest one person.
“Everyone
wants to take advantage of (the) poverty of these people. One of the easiest
way(s) is rape,” said Shiksha Abhiyan Avinash Jhade, State Coordinator of
Madhya Pradesh.
Political
analyst and writer Rasheed Kidwai feels that rape is, for the members
of India’s upper classes, a means to show power rather than sexual
gratification. “It is easy to create dominance through rape on the lower
castes.” In a Dec 2005 report from Bhopal for India’s daily news, the Calcutta Telegraph,
Kidwai outlined how “a 32-year-old Dalit had her hand chopped off in a village
near here (Bhopal) for refusing to take back her complaints of rape against two
upper-caste men.”
Madhya
Pradesh Chief minister, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, has stated publically that
the government would not spare anyone guilty in cases of mass rape.
But the
statistics show a totally different picture.
In 136 cases
this year the accused could not be arrested in 64 of the cases. On
state government failures in controlling crime against lower
caste women, Ms. Jamuna Devi, leader of the opposition in the Madhya Pradesh
Assembly, condemned the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government for the increasing
incidents of crime against women when she said, “When such is the state
of affairs, how can people of the state feel secure”.
Madhya
Pradesh Chief Minister, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, in a written reply to a public
question about rape, has accepted the fact that there was a sharp recent rise
in incidents of sexual assaults on women in Madhya Pradesh in comparison to
earlier years. Sandip Naik, State Coordinator for The Hunger Project, who
currently works among women in the local governing bodies, believes that
only a fraction of rape cases are reaching the police.
While
mindful that gang rape is among the most horrendous crime for teenagers and
women to report to the police, Sandip Naik urged that victims follow
through. Police role in such cases has always been criticized.
Police have failed to nab the culprits in a majority of the cases.
Unfortunately for the victims, they have to run from pillar to post
to even get the case registered.
In the case
of a 15 yr old Scheduled Caste girl who was gang raped in Shajapur
district - a report was made three months after the crime was
committed. The girl was threatened by her attackers and told not to talk
about the ordeal. A police official, too, told her not to mention her
rape. The police first lodged the case only as a kidnapping. The
girl suffered in silence for months but then gathered the courage to come
forward. She then went for a medical checkup.
“It is seen
that in most cases the police had been slow to move against the accused because
of the pressure from influential people to hush up the case,” said Sandeep Naik
on the rape of the 15 yr old minor. The fear is not merely of the
physical assault on the body, but of stigmatization associated in India with
the act. This fear of stigma associated with this sort of crime prevents
these women from talking about it. In many cases the family and the
villagers don’t accept the victims. Usually people avoid all interaction
with them.
Sandeep Naik
added, “In (the) case of rape, the girl is punished for the crime of which she
herself is the victim. The same society allows the perpetrator of the
crime to lead a normal life, without stigma, after serving the required term in
jail - if he is caught and prosecuted”.
Sachin Jain
is of the view that, due to fear of social ostracism, most of the rape cases in
the villages are not reported. “Sometimes it is the victim who hides the
crime,” he said as he added that family members also tended to cover-up
the case. These gang rapes are designed to cause not only as much
physical pain as possible, but also, as much emotional pain as possible.
Because there is so much shame associated with rape in villages very few women
actually report the crime. Not only do they think that the rape was their
fault, but they believe — and rightfully so — that their families will
ostracize them if they report the rape.
Many young
girls have been kidnapped, gang raped and tortured in Madhya Pradesh in the
last few years. The physical and emotional pain is certainly
unbearable. It is inevitable that these young girls may fall into a deep
depression with, of course, no possibility for treatment.
- Dalit
women and their families in Bapcha village in Shajapur district of Madhya
Pradesh are living in fear. The pressure from the powerful is so strong that
violence is usually not reported or greatly “under-reported”. This is an NDTV
news production Sept 2007.
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