Go Dalits!
Dalits, those Indians known as "Untouchables", are finding they have serious political muscle these days. They also have a popular leader in a lady named Mayawati (pictured), the "Queen of the Dalits".
India may be awakening to the truth that God didn't make the "Untouchables" untouchable, man did. May India's abominable caste system collapse peacefully in the coming decades. More on the Dalits' rising political power below:
Mayawati, known as the "Queen of Dalits", said on Wednesday that 10 mainly regional-based opposition parties were uniting a day after the Congress party-led government won a vote that was marred by charges opposition lawmakers were bribed to abstain.
"The government won the vote of confidence but lost the trust of the nation," Mayawati, flanked by party leaders from north and south India as well as influential communists, told reporters.
The confidence vote was triggered by the withdrawal of the government's communist parliamentary allies to protest against a nuclear deal with the United States.
Mayawati emerged as one of the strongest organisers of opposition to the ruling coalition, and Wednesday's meeting was the latest sign of her growing influence.
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She rose to prominence after her Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) won an outright majority in elections last year in Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state that is also seen as one of its most lawless and corrupt.
Mayawati's support base in among Dalits, or "untouchables", who account for about 16 percent of India's 1.1 billion people and have traditionally been supporters of the Congress.
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More than 160 million people in India are considered "Untouchable" people tainted by their birth into a caste system that deems them impure, less than human. Human rights abuses against these people, known as Dalits, are legion.
India's Untouchables are relegated to the lowest jobs, and live in constant fear of being publicly humiliated, paraded naked, beaten, and raped with impunity by upper-caste Hindus seeking to keep them in their place. Merely walking through an upper-caste neighborhood is a life-threatening offense. Statistics compiled by India's National Crime Records Bureau indicate that in the year 2007, the last year for which figures are available, 25,455 crimes were committed against Dalits. Every hour two Dalits are assaulted; every day three Dalit women are raped, two Dalits are murdered, and two Dalit homes are torched. Nearly 90 percent of all the poor Indians and 95 percent of all the illiterate Indians are Dalits.
No one believes these numbers are anywhere close to the reality of crimes committed against Dalits. Because the police, village councils, and government officials often support the caste system, which is based on the religious teachings of Hinduism, many crimes go unreported due to fear of reprisal, intimidation by police, inability to pay bribes demanded by police, or simply the knowledge that the police will do nothing. There have been large-scale abuses by the police, acting in collusion with upper castes, including raids, beatings in custody, failure to charge offenders or investigate reported crimes. During year 2007, 68,160 complaints were filed against the police for activities ranging from murder, torture, and collusion in acts of atrocity, to refusal to file a complaint. Sixty two percent of the cases were dismissed as unsubstantiated; 26 police officers were convicted in court.
Despite the fact that untouchability was officially banned when India adopted its constitution in 1950, discrimination against Dalits remained so pervasive that in 1989 the government passed legislation known as The Prevention of Atrocities Act. The act specifically made it illegal to parade people naked through the streets, force them to eat feces, take away their land, foul their water, interfere with their right to vote, and burn down their homes. Since then, the violence has escalated, largely as a result of the emergence of a grassroots human rights movement among Dalits to demand their rights and resist the dictates of untouchability.
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