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INTRODUCTION 11 1 Introduction UNDERSTANDING CASTES TO ANNIHILATE THEM Khairlanji. An obscure village in the unheard of Mohadi taluk of Bhandara district, Maharashtra. Suddenly, in 2006, it became the newest addition to the series of names that have become synonymous with violent crimes against dalits in post- independence India—Kilvenmani (44 dalits burnt alive in Tamil Nadu, 1968), Belchi (14 dalits burnt alive in Bihar, 1977), Morichjhanpi (hundreds of dalit refugees massacred by the state in Sundarbans, West Bengal, 1978), Karamchedu (six dalits murdered, three dalit women raped and many more wounded in Andhra Pradesh, 1984), Chundru (nine dalits massacred and dumped in a canal in Andhra Pradesh, 1991), Melavalavu (an elected dalit panchayat leader and five dalits murdered, Tamil Nadu, 1997), Kambalapalli (six dalits burnt alive in Karnataka, 2000) and Jhajjar (five dalits lynched near a police station in Haryana, 2003). The incidents listed here may not figure in any history of post-independence India. Most Indians may not even have heard of these places. Khairlanji, too, may soon be similarly forgotten. This book is an effort to ensure that it will not be easily erased from memory. As Milan Kundera says, the struggle against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. 12 KHAIRLANJI Khairlanji ignited dalit anger and spawned agitations all over Maharashtra and beyond—spontaneous protests that erupted on the streets and were led by ordinary people, sans leaders. It was unlike anything Maharashtra had seen before. This book chronicles the massacre and its genealogy; tracks the anger and disgust that was uncorked among that dalits and the brutal state repression that ensued; looks at how and why ordinary people fighting the state–corporate nexus are being branded as naxals and attacked; offers an analysis of the content and the prejudice of the mass media when it comes to crimes related to dalits; surveys the limitations of the constitutional measures to mitigate the sufferings of dalits in the face of systemic inertia and societal indifference; examines the political economy and mechanics of atrocities; and finally looks at how Khairlanji blasts many myths about caste, including the belief that globalization and neoliberalism are weakening the hold of caste. Khairlanji was not catapulted to the national stage all at once. The incident of 29 September 2006 – that devastated the world of Bhaiyalal Bhotmange – came to light only a month later. Bhotmange’s entire family – wife Surekha (40), sons Roshan (21) and Sudhir (19) and daughter Priyanka (17) – were lynched by a mob of caste Hindus of the village. It was not simple murder; it was the worst display of collective and premeditated sadism that could shame humanity anywhere— gang-rape, public humiliation and torture, culminating in the lynching of four lives at the village square. Yet, all this was effectively covered up for over a month. It was purported to be the violent end to an illicit relationship between the mother (Surekha) and a man (Siddharth Gajbhiye), for which not only the mother but her children had to pay with their lives. The lynching was made out to be not a criminal act but an instance of ‘moral outrage’ on the part of ‘simple villagers’ who could not stomach such ‘immorality’ in their midst. The atrocity was projected by the locals, and initially by the media too, in such a way that a majority of Indians would have sympathized with INTRODUCTION 13 the mob. The logic is similar to the public sympathy that is orchestrated when instant ‘justice’ is meted out in countless cases of ‘police encounters’, and the public admires the police and condemns the victims of violence without caring to know the facts of the case. Khairlanji was similarly packaged as an act of public-spirited ‘moral justice’ where the real crime could well have been buried and eventually forgotten. But for the indignant interventions of a few ordinary people and independent activists – who forefronted the heart-rending facts of the case against all odds – the truth about Khairlanji would perhaps have never been exposed. At one level, Khairlanji is not unique. It seems to be a reen- actment of a primordial punishment to the subordinated castes that Manu had ordained over two millennia ago. The crime of the Bhotmanges therefore was simple—they were dalits who asserted their independence and dignity. Khairlanji is not a one- off incident—an unfortunate aberration in globalizing, shining India. Every village in India is a potential Khairlanji. If most villages wear a veneer of peace and tranquillity, much celebrated in textbooks and tourist brochures, this owes to the tacit compromise – and reconcilement – dalits have made with their demeaning conditions. It is the same compromise that has carried India through centuries of having been bestowed with utterly undeserved attributes such as tolerance, nonviolence, and love of peace. Whenever this compromise has collapsed, the inherent violence of this society has reared its ugly face to brutally suppress any possible eruption of the wrath of the wretched. The history of this country underscores this bitter reality. Such violence is not a feudal relic, as many of our intellectuals would like to theorize; it has been well assimilated not only by capitalist India but also by globalizing India. Indeed, Khairlanjis are not confined to villages—the feudal cesspools of everything backward. They are manifest even in our towns and cities, sections of which have clad themselves in metal and glass in recent years. The surface calm persists so 14 KHAIRLANJI long as a tacit compromise operates. The moment it is broken, all hell breaks loose. Such moments of rupture may not always leave behind the brutalized, naked corpses of Priyankas and Surekhas to tease middle-class sensibilities into bemoaning the fate of dalits. They do not always find space in the corners of our newspapers and become scrolls on our television channels. But such moments are always around us. They continue to happen daily. Every day, millions are crushed and killed in spirit; ever so often some of them are killed physically as well. While the public sector – where dalits are accommodated owing to binding statutes (mandatory reservation) – has become a veritable graveyard of dalit aspirations, the corporate private sector stubbornly keeps them out. The reason given is familiar: dalits genetically lack merit. The truth is they have been wronged. It is an injustice no less grave in cumulative terms than what happened in Khairlanji. No dead bodies around. No postmortems for the living corpses of dalits in urban India. They just get buried deep down within the system, reduced to be lesser than what they are—the living dead. Khairlanji represents the quintessence of caste India—that people have to observe their ascriptive statuses; stay put in their place. They cannot cross caste boundaries. If they do, they could be punished. Khairlanji lays bare the self-righteous arrogance of the caste Hindus and their assumptions about and demands from the subordinated castes. Paradoxically, Khairlanji also represents their vulnerability. It represents resistance, defiance and struggle – howsoever feeble – of the subaltern castes. While caste oppression can be said to be embedded in the system, a caste atrocity is invariably the result of a defiant response from the victims. Khairlanji demonstrates that the caste system, howsoever oppressive, is essentially a self-regulative system that expects people to conduct themselves according to its code. It causes no harm to those who do so; instead, it is supportive of them. However, those who do not accept its diktats are not spared. In this sense, a INTRODUCTION 15 moment like Khairlanji represents the breakdown of that wicked equilibrium that has held this subcontinent in a historically frozen state. If what happened in Khairlanji accords with many of the features of the caste system, it also demolishes quite a few myths and stereotypes around it. The foremost stereotype is our understanding of caste itself. Although it could be argued that caste society has staved off changes at the structural, macro level, in reality it has under- gone many changes in its composition and character. These changes can be largely identified with the influence of ‘invasions’ from the seventh century onwards, and the impact of ruling- class ideologies from the eleventh century onwards – such as Islam – that were not premised on caste. Changes that have crept in during the British colonial period and thereafter, during the last century, have been momentous. The classical association of the caste system with the shastras may not be fully irrelevant but it has weakened considerably. The ritual base of the castes, likewise, is encountered only as an exception. Today’s castes cannot be understood, much less fought against, simply along the dimensions of religion or tradition; they have become far more complex with the influence of the political economy that characterizes our times. The so-called ‘secular democratic’ politics and ‘socialist’ economic policies that our ‘republic’ implanted over an iniquitous social base over the last six decades have given a new lease of life to the caste system. The manifestation of castes today represents an indeterminate outcome of the interaction between the psycho–social–cultural residue of the past and the political processes and economic strategies followed by the state in favour of certain classes. It is sheer intellectual inertia to continue blaming the traditionally privileged castes (brahmins and other dwijas) for the caste system as it obtains today. While their hegemony over the state as well as civil society appears intact (given their preponderance in the higher echelons of virtually all the wings of the state—the judiciary, the legislature and the executive), it 16 KHAIRLANJI cannot be denied that their hold is steadily declining.

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