Sparks April08

SPARKS

April 2008

Voices of Dalit Women

SPARKS

Vol. 2 No. 2

Editorial Collective Cynthia Stephen Dr. Ajita Rao Layout & Design Ranjit T. INSIGHT FOUNDATION 109/2, Gautam Nagar, New Delhi-110049 www.insightfoundation.org

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Dear Readers, Greetings on 117th Birth Anniversary of our leader Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar! The first edition of Sparks was received with greatest enthusiasm. It was really encouraging to see your mails and receive your congratulatory phone calls. We have been really eager to bring this second edition to you, albeit a little late. But we hope you will find that the wait was worth it! We know you will all be happy to receive and read this newsletter, which celebrates, commemorates, and hopes to further the struggles of Dalit and Adivasis women young and old. We celebrated the International Women’s Day last month. But did you know that it really commemorates the struggles of women garment workers who struck work one cold day in Chicago for the right to work for 8 hours a day? They were required to work 12 hours! But today the Day is seen as a celebration, not a struggle. But we as workers, as daughters of workers, as sisters, need to keep before us the lives and sacrifices of our foremothers in the struggles for justice and equality. WE must tell their stories, and retell them so that they will continue to inspire and challenge us. So this time we have collected some interesting stories of achievements, and hope you will find them as inspiring as we did! That brings me to the next point – since you love to read this little newsletter, don’t you wish more people – who do not have access to English – also read it? Can you help to make this available to more women? Are there any volunteers among you who would like to help us translate this newsletter into Hindi, so that Hindi readers can benefit? And yes.. we need you to keep writing in, let us know more about what you want to see.. there were many mails in appreciation of the poems carried in the first edition. There are two more this time. We are eager to get your poems and stories. Editorial Collective

Obituary

Remembering Kinkri Devi Kinkri Devi, 82, battled illegal mining in India by Haresh Pandya (New York Times)

K inkri Devi, an illiterate and impoverished woman who waged a long and at least partly successful fight against illegal min-

ing and quarrying in the mountainous northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, died on Dec.30 in Chandigarh, India. She was 82. She is survived by a son and 12 grandchildren. Devi was born into a poor Dalit family in the village of Ghaton in 1925. Her father was a subsistence farmer. That she came from a low caste made her struggle against powerful and politically connected mining interests all the more remarkable. With no hope of an education, she began working as a servant in early childhood and, at 14, married Shamu Ram, a bonded laborer. He died of typhoid when she was just 22, and she was forced to become a sweeper. Over the years, she watched the world around her change for the worse. Uncontrolled quarrying despoiled the fabled hills in many parts of Himachal Pradesh, harming the water supply and destroying oncerich paddy fields. Seeing the damage in her own district, she vowed to take on the mining interests. Backed by People’s Action for People in Need, a local volunteer group, Devi filed a public interest lawsuit in the High Court of Shimla, the state capital, against 48 mine owners, accusing them of reckless limestone quarrying. The quarry owners dismissed her campaign, saying she was only trying to blackmail them. After a long period with no response to her suit, she headed for Shimla and staged a 19-day hunger strike outside the court until it agreed to take up the issue. The strike won Devi national and international headlines. In 1987, the High Court not only ordered a stay on mining but also imposed a blanket ban on blasting in the hills. Faced with the prospect of closing their operations, her opponents threatened to kill her, but she continued to fight. The mine owners appealed to the Supreme Court of India, which ruled against them in July 1995, adding to Devi’s renown. Despite Devi’s efforts and the Supreme Court ruling, quarrying continues not only in the hills but also in the forest preserves, though with some improved regulation. Devi, who could neither read nor write and learned to sign her name just a few years ago, also waged a long campaign for opening a degreegranting college in Sangrah, the village where she spent most of her life. April 2008 Sparks

Kinkri Devi was born into a poor Dalit family in the village of Ghaton in 1925. Her father was a subsistence farmer. That she came from a low caste made her struggle against powerful and politically connected mining interests all the more remarkable.

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Dear Mr Tikait, You have been described by many as a great leader of the farmers. Leaders, great or not, we believe, must set the standards of civilised conduct, not violate them. Unfortunately, your recent public behaviour not only shows that you do not have basic manners; you are also a coward. You do not even have the courage to accept a mistake and apologise sincerely for it. From a public forum, where presumably hundreds, if not thousands must have heard you, you openly made a casteist remark against Mayawati, the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. This was a show of utter disrespect and contempt to the chair of the Chief Minister that she occupies, because by popular vote, people have chosen her to lead the state government, you should have shown respect to the office she holds under the Constitution of India. Then when you realised that the law you had broken, would be actually enforced against you, you tried to cover it up with the explanation that it was a mere slip of the tongue. You said that you only used language that everybody uses commonly in the villages. We have always known that such language is used commonly against Dalits who are treated as if they deserve no dignity. Thank you for putting that on record, that people abuse Dalits in your villages, commonly and there is nothing unusual about it. But you Mr Tikait, should ask your followers to stop using derogatory language, show respect to all human beings, to show people that the only way to win an argument is to use reason and logic, not hurl abuses at people? We think you failed on that count. When it became clear that you would

be arrested and your supporters surrounded the village, Sisauli, did you ask them to not use violence or allow the police to come and arrest you? Gangsters, Mr Tikait, are expected to behave in this fashion, openly defying the law. You, Mr Tikait have disregarded the law and law enforcers. We found you failing on this count too. When it became clear that the state would not bow to any pressure, you changed tactics. In a statement projected as your belated apology you said, that you are sorry if you hurt someone’s sentiments. In this country Mr Tikait, even logic and reason sometimes hurt people’s sentiments. Mayawati had not said that you should apologise because you hurt her ‘sentiment’. That is not

The fact, that a woman, and that too a Dalit woman is holding a high position, did not go down well with your casteist and patriarchal outlook. Your supporters have said in your defence, that Mayawati too used the slogan ‘tilak tarazu aur talwar, sabko maro jute chaar’, and that is equally derogatory. Allow us to point out Mr. Tikait, that the slogan was not targeted against any person. It also did not name any community or Constitutional office. “ Tilak, Tarazu and Talwar,” are symbols of a hierarchical system in which castes are ascribed certain duties. Mayawati was not abusing any person with that slogan; she was seeking the demolition of an abhorrent system. The slogan was a voice seeking justice, against caste oppression. You have been called a great leader Mr Tikait. We think this greatness has been mistakenly thrust upon you. In fact even the term ‘leader’ is a misnomer in your case for you are just the head of a narrow-minded caste Panchayat, not a leader with a wide appeal cutting across all castes and sections, which is what a great leader is and should be. You are the head of just a caste Panchayat Mr Tikait. That is why you have not been able to break the traditional mould of hurling caste abuses and open display of total insensitivity to the sense of dignity of people.

An open letter to Tikait

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the charge against you. This is not a matter of sentiment but of displaying contempt for a particular section of people, that you have yourself said is quite common in your villages. Mr Tikait, come on, own up your mistake. Wasn’t it your intention to insult and humiliate the Chief Minister because she is a woman, and she belongs to the Dalit community? You have not expressed any remorse, regret or feeling of shame for your intention. You have not examined your conscience. It is obvious that you think throwing her caste origins on her face is not criminal, derogatory or even uncivilised. Why would one who claims to be a leader, abuse another leader, who with sheer hard work, grit and determination has achieved the confidence of the people and risen to hold powerful positions in the polity of the nation? The only explanation, which we get, is that you are caste-biased and gender-biased.

We demand an unqualified apology from you for your unconstitutional, unlawful behaviour and above all, for lacking a conscience and sensitivity towards the excluded section of society. Sd/Anjali Despande Dr. Ajita Rao April 2008 Sparks

Dalit women will stand by them. This free hand gives a free run to their imaginations, and witchhunts have grown macabre by the day. The helpless “witches” are hounded and punished by being stripped naked, paraded around the villages, their hair is burnt off or their heads tonsured, their faces blackened, their noses cut off, their teeth pulled out (they are supposedly defanged) so that they can no longer curse, they are whipped, they are branded, sometimes, they are forced to eat human faeces and finally, they are put to death (here again the Indian imagination takes over: the victim is hanged, impaled, hacked, lynched or buried alive). It is no surprise that almost all the ‘witches’ have been Dalit or Adivasi women. Nowhere else in Indian history can we see such an explicit tie-up between patriarchal oppression and casteist subjugation. Witch-hunting is a powerful tool in the hands of caste-Hindu men who want to persecute assertive Dalit and Adivasi women who might directly challenge caste hegemony, or indirectly subvert local power equations. Where do these cruel and perverse caste-Hindu witch-hunters get the moral high-ground to condemn Dalit and Adivasi women? Dr. Ambedkar observed that the Atharva Veda itself as “nothing but a collection of sorcery, black-magic and medicine,” so witchery is not something new to the ‘upper’ castes. And shouldn’t the caste-Hindus be reminded of Joan Mencher’s sociological insight into sorcery in Travancore, that “some social control over the excesses of the high-caste

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April 2008 Sparks

landlords was exercised through the thread of Pulaya black magic” since Pulaya medicine men and witch doctors were believed to possess the “powers of bringing malaise and misfortune on wrongdoers, especially the cruel landlords and wicked bossmen.” It is true that lack of adequate health-care systems have spawned the growth of alternative beliefs and faith healing, and consequently witch-doctors. But that is not the reason why Dalit and Adivasi women have been singled out for public humiliation. By punishing those who are seen as vile and wild, oppressors want to send a not-so-subtle message to the women of their own castes: docility and domesticity gets rewarded, anything else gets punished. This has been the legacy of violence against women. When sin meets superstition, as in witch-hunting, the victims are also single (read widowed/deserted/ divorced) women of a certain age who are no longer burdened with reproductive duties. The word ‘witch’ is thrust on these ‘dangerous’ women who asserted their entitlement to rights and thus challenged patriarchal and caste supremacist diktats. Dalit or Adivasi women who dared to contest elections and directly challenged the political power of the landed caste-Hindus have been labeled hags. They have been accused of exercising black magic when in fact they have only been exercising their fundamental rights. Witchcraft, when used by brutal caste-Hindus in the modern context, has come to signify women’s resistance to oppression, and the price they have paid for it.

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by Meena Kandasamy On March 28, 2008, Lalpari Devi, a 45-year-old Dalit woman was accused of being a witch by casteHindu, feudal villagers in Bihar who mercilessly beat her up, paraded her through the streets, tied her to a palm tree, cut her hair and smeared her face with limestone paste. She was saved from certain death by the timely arrival of the police. Lalpari somehow managed to survive the ordeal of social censure and hysteric, mob-driven humiliation. Many of her sisters have not been that lucky. According to conservative (official and outdated) estimates, 2,556 women were branded as witches and killed in India between 1987 and 2003. From 1991 to 2000, over 522 cases of witch-hunting have been registered in Bihar alone. In the same decade, about 300 people were done to death in the Telangana region in Andhra Pradesh on the suspicion that they were practicing black magic. Bihar, for all its backwardness, was the first state in India to pass a law against witch-hunting in 1999. Jharkhand followed up with its anti-witch-hunt law in 2001, Chhattisgarh in 2005 and Rajasthan in 2006. What is wonderful on paper rarely gets translated into something effective in practice. Besides, the threat of punishment and conviction hasn’t been a deterrent since the perpetrators of the crime (always male, almost always casteHindus who enjoy political clout) know that they will not be brought to book for what will be seen as an incidence of mob fury. Sometimes, it is the knowledge that the state

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I will cry out. I will not be silenced. When the nurturing womb becomes the tomb, when Incubator becomes Incinerator. When the wise and the old, the healers too become agents of death. When medical knowledge loses its way in commerce, When surgeons’ gloves, tipped with talons, are red with our yet-unborn female blood. I will not remain silent. When Lakshmi – that goddess of wealth – blesses the home, the people become rich, they say. Much good may their wealth bring them, soaked in the gore of innocent unborn girls.

Here’s news: we still live! Our spirits gather, hover, waiting, over the land. And One day our mourning will break. Our unshed tears, from unformed eyes, will fall in salty torrents from the sky. Engulf them in a quagmire of their own making. So till that day comes, mercy will endure for them, and I Will still cry my soundless cry, from unformed throat: “No, no, let us live, so you too may live!” I will not be silenced.

And Saraswathi – you white-clad one accomplished in learning – so large your home, long your degrees, so many your cars! Their wheels leave red tracks as they roll by. But we – we have only seen the minions of Yama descending upon us, like Sparrows on the yet-tender grains, still in the ear of ripening corn. Let the land be devastated, the fields be barren! Let the rivers dry up, the rains cease to fall! Parents and grandparents, doctors and nurses, lawyers and judges, all have forgotten that their lives too, like ours are fragile and precious. One day destined to die. They have closed their hearts, their eyes, their ears. They think they have succeeded in shutting us off from life.

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But it is they who are blind, deaf, unfeeling. Like the dead. They may cauterise their consciences, but we – our spirits – yet hover over the land, block out the sky.

Girl-Cry Cynthia Stephen April 2008 Sparks

To Senthil An HCU Dalit drop-out’s poem [In the memory of Senthil Kumar, a Dalit PhD scholar at the School of Physics, University of Hyderabad, who was found dead under suspicious circumstances in his hostel room on 24 February, 2008]

I did not know you when you lived. I seem to know you so well after you have gone. Did we not walk the same lonely paths? Paths strewn with little hurtful insults, some obvious most not-obvious humiliations designed to erode our self worth, with the power to shake our confidence in humanity, in our thinking, in our love for life and our search for its meaning. Could we have talked about our shared bewildering experience, of hearing a system stealthily tell us that we are not good enough to seek knowledge? Today, you have chosen to protest in a way that only intensifies my pursuits more lonely, or should I believe that you have instead opened a channel for the rest of us? To make public what until now, is our private pain, pain delivered to us by systems meant to deliver knowledge and uplift mankind From an HCU dropout Dalit [Courtesy -http://unbrokensilences.blogspot.com/] April 2008 Sparks

http://unbrokensilences.blogspot.com/ This blog is part of various initiatives to institutionalise the memory of Senthil Kumar. His death has brought to the fore various questions about the struggles and ‘systematic’ discriminations that Dalit students face in modern institutional spaces. This blog is a space to discuss questions that arise out of the lives (and deaths) of many Senthils: the subtle ways of caste discriminations and the politics of new rules & regulations in institutions. It also raises questions about the silence (from the part of civil society and institutions) about the tragic event and the questions it raises.

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