Anti-Dalit discrimination in flood relief
Dalits have been chased out of camps for displaced people and discriminated against in aid delivery. Research has indicated that one Dalit woman is raped every 60 hours and one man killed every nine days.
Jaipur (AsiaNews) Dalits are being discriminated against in flood relief in Barmer district, Rajasthan. A committee has been set up by Dalit organizations to verify the abuses but there is little hope of redressing them.
Local sources said that in Barmer and Jaisalmer districts, members of higher castes have chased Dalits out of camps for displaced people: they are denying them food and water and not allowing them use toilets, lodgings and common kitchens in the camp.
According to the national press, P.L.Mimroth, chairman of the committee and of the Centre for Dalit Rights said those belonging to higher castes were vehemently opposing the drainage of water from Malwa and Kawas villages, where many Dalits live. "Government engineers fear a violent backlash from the dominant communities if machines are used to pump out water from Dalit localities,'' Mimroth said. "These areas have seen very little of the massive relief operations launched by government agencies and NGOs." He continued: "This seems to be a replay of the old story of caste hatred in feudal Rajasthan" and the perpetual prejudice among people who believe that having Dalits in relief camps would "pollute the sanctity of camps''. Now the committee is striving to give Dalits equal access to aid and to draw up a report about their plight.
Speaking to AsiaNews, Fr A. Philomin Raj, secretary of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India, said: "It is tragic that even in natural calamities, caste discriminations dominate. Caste destroys the lives of the people in India, even in such life and death situations. Dalits have been marginalized for centuries and even in this new tech age, their conditions are not too different."
Dr. John Dayal, president of the All India Catholic Council told AsiaNews: "This just shows how deep caste divisions are in India, particularly in states such as Rajasthan and Gujarat, where so-called tradition legitimizes all discrimination, like a ban on Dalit grooms riding horses on their wedding day. Discrimination in aid already happened recently: after the devastation of the Bhuj earthquake, the local government isolated Dalits into ghettos. We saw it again in tsunami relief operations where the Catholic Union had to expose the practice of reserving a large part of relief for upper castes. We have seen authorities side with the upper castes, almost threatening the Dalits. In Rajasthan, the cry of the advocate Mimroth is hard to bear. The central commission for scheduled castes, the national human rights commission and the central government must intervene to ensure relief for the Dalits. There must be no question of caste in this common tragedy."
A study by the Public Advocacy Initiatives for Rights and Values in India and the Development Coordination Network Committee Trust confirmed that discrimination against Dalits was at its worst in the states of Rajasthan, Uttaranchal, Bihar and Chhattisgarh. Increasing incidents of violence against women have been ascertained, including rape and trafficking of women and minor girls, female foeticide and infanticide, mental torture and molestation. A Dalit woman is raped every 60 hours and one Dalit murdered every nine days in Rajasthan.
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