Why is the angle of caste discrimination necessary in this case of rape and murder?
A 19-year-old Dalit girl in Hathras was gang-raped by four Thakur men, her tongue mutilated and several parts fractured. After fighting a long battle, she succumbed to the injuries on Sept. 29. The police locked her family and locales in and forcibly burnt her body at 3 am in the night. The family couldn’t see her one last time. She didn’t find respect even in death. Yet there is a huge population of people who have chosen to unsee the caste angle of this horrific incident.
The intersectionality of gender, class, and caste often remains unseen in the case of rapes. Rapes are an assertion of power, which is not just patriarchal but also casteist. Saying “rapists are monsters that don’t have a caste”, is similar to saying “rapists are monsters that don’t have a gender”. It is important to narrow down the problem to be able to actually solve it.
Positioned at the bottom of India’s caste, class, and gender hierarchies, largely uneducated and consistently paid less than their male counterparts, Dalit womxn make up the majority of landless laborers, as well as a significant percentage of the womxn forced into prostitution in rural areas or sold into urban brothels. Found vulnerable, they are often subjected to barbaric crimes by their higher authorities, landlords, upper-caste powerful men.
An Indian Express report said that according to the 2016 National Crime Records Bureau data, of all crimes committed against the members of the Scheduled Castes, the highest is against Dalit womxn. The data also suggests that over four Dalit womxn are raped every day. The National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights, an NGO, revealed that more than 23% of Dalit womxn report being raped, even multiple times. But none of these heinous crimes evoke any form of media or public response.
If you selectively outrage for savarna womxn, and stay quiet for the under-privileged, don’t call yourself a feminist. The Hathras gang-rape must be taken as a lead for us to recognize the caste basis of crime against womxn. Feminism, as an ideology, believes in the breaking of power structures. It is not feminist to work towards a reality that works well only for certain types of womxn. It has to be a reality that provides all womxn, access to capital, resources, land, education, livelihood, safety, healthcare, and justice. That’s what it means to be intersectional. That’s what it means to be equal. #JusticeForManishaValmiki #DalitLivesMatter
