Gujarat, India: Arrest of Dalit leader and wife as ‘Naxalites’ condemned

Srinivas Kurapati was arrested at Ghodasar on 30 May 2010

AHMEDABAD, June 6, 2010

Manas Dasgupta

Several voluntary organisations and “concerned citizens” fighting for human rights have condemned the “indiscriminate” detention of some human right activists and trade union leaders, branding them as “Naxalites.”

“It has become an obsession with the Gujarat government and its police to brand human right activists as Naxalites to stifle the voice of protest by the poor and the downtrodden. The civil society need to stand up against such undemocratic methods of the police to curb dissensions against the government administration,” Mr. Hiren Gandhi, director of “Darshan,” a voluntary organisation, noted human right activist and advocate Girish Patel, and several others said here on Tuesday.

They were particularly protesting against the detention earlier this week of a Dalit leader, Ambubhai Vaghela Srinivas Sattayya Kurapati alias Kishore, who hails from Andhra Pradesh, but has made Gujarat his work place for the last eight years or so, and his young wife, Hansaben.

Bihar Professor Beaten for Speaking Out against Demolition of Dalit Homes

This article was published in the Times of India.

Bihar cops thrash Jamia professor, brand him ‘Naxal’

Pranava K Chaudhary, 26 December 2009

PATNA: Associate professor at Jamia Millia Islamia, Rahul Ramagundam, was assaulted, abused and branded a Naxalite by Bihar police for daring to ask the cops why the hutments belonging to Musahars — among the most backward of Scheduled Castes — were being demolished. [The Musahars, or rat-eaters,  are one of the Dalit subcastes in Bihar. See article below for more information on them.]

Ramagundam, who teaches at Dr K R Narayanan Centre for Dalit and Minorities Studies at JMI, was thrashed and abused and called a Naxalite by Khagaria police at Amausi village. His local companion was also manhandled and beaten up by lathi-wielding police constables and officers. The incident took place on December 22.  ”How could asking just one question lead to such physical violence? How can one be called a Naxalite and assaulted and humiliated like this,” asked Ramagundam.

Amausi had hit headlines on October 1 when 16 villagers, mostly OBCs (Kurmi), were killed allegedly by Musahars. The village has some 300 Musahar families who live in thatched huts.

“On December 22, I rode pillion on the motorbike of Varun Choudhry, a grassroots activist with Khagaria-based NGO Samta, to go to Amausi. When we reached, the village was in turmoil. The cops were breaking thatched houses of people who were said to be absconding. Shankar Sada, whom Varun met in the village, took us to the place where the police party had camped before taking up the rip-and-strip job,” Ramagundam said.

“Just as we spoke, a police party arrived and pulled down the thatched roof and walls of a hut. I couldn’t control myself. I asked the cops if they had any written orders to pull down the houses of the absconding accused.” A tall uniformed man stared at me. Instead of answering, he asked me my identity. I teach in Delhi,  I told him. ‘Name?’ I told him. ‘Father’s name?’ I told him. But even before I could take out my identity card, he turned hostile.

Police Attack Dalit Rights Movement in Kerala

Kerala Dalits demand land on rubber plantation

Posted on Counter Currents

Kerala’s So Called Dalit Terror: How a Dalit Minister Turns Against His Own Community

B.R.P. Bhaskar, Gulf Today, December 14, 2009

The fate of a set of proposals sent to the Kerala government by the State Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Commission illustrates how the political establishment scuttles efforts to address the problems of the weaker sections.

The Commission, headed by PK Sivanandan, a former IAS officer, received on Oct.6 a complaint from VV Selvaraj, chairman of Dalit Human Rights Movement (DHRM), alleging police atrocities against the organisation’s supporters in Varkala. It also received a petition signed by 536 Dalit women containing the same allegation. The commission forwarded the complaints to the Chief Secretary, the Director General of Police and the Secretaries to the Home and Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Welfare departments. It received no response from any of them.

Varkala was the scene of a dastardly murder on Sept.23. The victim was a person named Sivaprasad with no known affiliation. Within hours of the murder, the police said DHRM members had killed him to proclaim the organisation’s strength. Police swooped on Dalit colonies and arrested many DHRM workers. However, it has still not filed a charge-sheet in the murder case.

West Bengal: Evicted Dalit Starves to Death

This statement was posted on the Asian Human Rights Commission website on November 18, 2009.

Government of West Bengal must act to prevent further starvation deaths

E.M. Parvati died yesterday. Parvati was a resident of Belgachhia Bhagar, a municipal dumping ground of Howrah in West Bengal. The doctor who examined Parvati’s body certified that the cause of death was pulmonary tuberculosis aggravated by severe malnourishment and anaemia.

Parvati is not the first person in her family to die in this manner. Her daughter E.M. Lachhmi, died of starvation at the age of five on 11 March 2005. Her two sons, E.M. Shiva, died in December 2003 and E.M. Gaddama alias Chhottu, died in November 2004. Shiva was three years old and Gaddama was about a month old.

Parvati’s death is further proof to the despicable apathy of the West Bengal state government and that of the government of India to the plight of the poor and marginalised in the country. It is also part of the continuing saga of an estimated 7000 Dalits who were evicted from Bellilious Park on 2 February 2003 by the Howrah Municipal Corporation (HMC).

Dalit Students Protest Manual Scavenging

This article was published on The Times of India, August 13, 2009.

Ahmedabad : A huge number of Dalit students marched through the city roads on Monday. They were protesting against manual scavenging which is still practised in Gujarat. The rally started from Vadaj and ended at Gandhi Ashram, where a public hearing was held. The students, who study in government schools are still being forced to clean toilets in their schools.

Bhagwati Parmar, 13, a resident of Paliyad village in Botad taluka of Bhavnagar said,  “I dropped out of school in 2004 when I was in class III and would go along with my father to dump garbage. But, now I live with my mother after my father died of kidney ailment. We live in utter poor conditions and so I have to go to clean or sweep when someone asks me to do so. I still go to Darbargadh for cleaning work, 2 to 3 times a month and also collect trash from the roads with other girls. For this, I get Rs 5 to Rs 15 with which we buy milk to make tea. It is necessary to make ends meet.”

Gautam Dodiya, 15, who lives in Dhoda village in Umrala taluka of Bhavnagar district said, “I stay with my mother after my father’s death, he was an alcoholic. I studied till class V and then left school because I was asked to clean urinals and toilets there. But, to earn a living I still go once a month to clean soak pit and I get Rs 200.”

Similarly, Bharatkumar Chandubhai, 13, who lives in Aslali village in Matar taluka of Kheda district said,  “I study in a government school in my village. Even I faced the wrath of being a Dalit. I am told to clean up urinals in my school once a week.”

“Manual scavenging is a forced caste-based occupation where more than 1.3 million people in the country are affected by this practice,” said Manjula Pradip trustee of Navsarjan trust.

Dalit children, mainly whose parents are scavengers, are forced to do menial works like cleaning toilets and classrooms and they are also discriminated in schools, she alleged. The students, who took part in the rally accused school authorities of forcing them to clean rubbish.

“Scavenging has been outlawed in the country but it is still practised in a developed state like Gujarat,” said Martin Macwan, a social activist, alleged.

Scrap the Anti-Dalit Reservation Bill

This article was published in People’s Truth, the intro is by Revolution in South Asia.

Note to readers: From Wikipedia, “Reservation in Indian law is a form of affirmative action whereby a percentage of seats are reserved in the public sector units, union and state civil services, union and state government departments and in all public and private educational institutions, except in the religious/ linguistic minority educational institutions, for the socially and educationally backward classes of citizens or the Scheduled Castes and Tribes who were inadequately represented in these services and institutions.”

Scrap the anti-reservation Reservation Bill

The Rajya Sabha, during its winter session, passed the Reservation Bill in two minutes without debate. Till today Reservations are being extended every 10 years by executive order. Now they seek to institutionalize it; and while doing so they made sure to remove its teeth.

The casteist mentality and the brahmanical ideology of the Indian ruling classes is once again exposed during the last session of Parliament when an anti-dalit and anti adivasi Bill “The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Reservations in Posts and Services) Bill, 2008” was passed in Rajya Sabha without any discussion. The name of the Bill is quite misleading. Instead of protecting the reservations, The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Reservation in Posts and Services) Bill, 2008, passed by the Rajya Sabha in December 2008, restricts, cripples and wipes out, to a significant extent, the provision of reservation for the SCs and the STs.

From various clauses in the Bill it becomes very clear that the objective of the Bill was not to implement reservation but to end reservation to ensure complete and legalized exclusion of Dalits and Adivasis from all spheres of development.The striking feature of this Bill is that it removes 47 government institutions from the purview of reservation. These include the Indian Institutes of Technology, the Indian Institutes of Management, post graduate medical institutions, the National Institutes of Technology and five Central universities. Section 4(1) of the Bill says there shall be no reservation where appointments are made for a period of less than 45 days; to posts required for any emergency relief work; to posts qualified as scientific or technical posts, and to posts in “institutions of national importance” and the IIMs specified in an attached Schedule. Sub clauses mention that these concern posts higher than the lowest grade of Group A jobs. The Schedule lists 47 institutions, but the Bill says that it can be expanded at the will and whim of the government without going to Parliament again.

Dalits Rescued Last in Floods

Gavin Rabinowitz, Associated Press, 02 September, 2008

TRIVENIGANJ– In the two weeks since a monsoon-swollen river burst its banks, ancient prejudices have run just as deep as the floodwaters. India’s “untouchables” are the last to be rescued – if at all – from a deluge that has killed dozens and made 1.2 million homeless.

Dalits, the social outcasts at the bottom of the Hindu caste ladder, have borne the brunt of the devastation as the rampaging Kosi River* swamped hundreds of square miles in northern India after it overflowed and shifted its course dozens of miles to the east.

On Sunday, one Dalit, Mohan Parwan ran up and down a half destroyed bridge that has become the headquarters for rescue operations in this town near the border with Nepal, desperately scanning arriving boats for signs of his family. Dozens came in but each time he was disappointed.

Parwan, 43, is from a Dalit village just 2 miles away but completely cut off by a deep lake created by the swirling waters. As the village headman, he was put on the first rescue boat that came and was promised his wife, four children and the rest of the community would follow.