Dalit atrocities: Who needs to step up
Practicing Hindus must change their mindset; there is no other way to reduce caste discrimination. I say practicing Hindus because so-called progressives who have renounced all religion as obscurantist are doomed to remain a small minority in India and elsewhere. Renouncing Hinduism in India is, in effect, renouncing society - one is left shouting in a lonely place.
You may exhaust every remedy available within the constitutional framework, you may pass new laws, you may continue to bring legal challenges, and they may help somewhat, but unfortunately, the infrastructure from which you seek redress, especially at the village level, is controlled by people who have implicitly accepted caste hierarchy, who have organized their lives around a birth-based order. This is why, despite a very reformist constitution that made untouchability illegal, Dalits continue to be raped, murdered, and tortured. This is why the laws are not enforced.
While I support the Dalits’ right to convert, and recognize the psychological liberation it has given to some, conversion has done little to better their situation collectively. Dalit Christians continue to be discriminated against within Christian churches, so much so that they seek reservations for jobs and seats in educational institutions; in Maharastra, "baudh" has become another term for the Mahar Buddhist.
Religious conversion will make the problem inter-religious rather than intra-communal; caste discrimination will morph into religious discrimination, and no one would have been served.
The urban Hindu who makes a casteist remark about a Dalit is only a less brutal version of the villager who physically assaults Dalits for overstepping their "place." The "high" caste pandit who refuses to initiate a sudra is implicitly saying, "You are a lower level of human, be off!" Where do you think the so-called backwards learn their behavior from? And, let me add, the indifferent Hindu unaware of what happens beyond the perimeters of his metro, who is so proud to have "transcended caste," is complicit for compartmentalizing himself in a false world.
Religious leaders still have immense power within India. I am told that Swami Ramdev virtually halted the sale of Coke in Delhi when he alleged it wasn’t a good product. What if we pressured them to rethink their ways? Can we reinterpret our understanding of caste enough to eliminate birth-based hierarchy? I think we can, though it will take many passionate people to finish what Gandhi, Phule, Narayana Guru, Suraj Bhan and other reformist Hindus started. If anti-casteism is sanctioned by dharma, if we end the apologies for what is rotten in the system, then things will change for the better, and this can only be an internal effort.
