Why The Rape And Murder Of A Dalit Girl Eats Away At Our Collective Conscience

Delhi has witnessed tensions rise over the last week as fervent protests gain strength in Nangal over the alleged gang rape, murder, and forced cremation of a nine-year-old girl.

The girl’s parents have accused a Hindu priest and three others of attacking her daughter when she had gone to a nearby crematorium to fetch water from the cooler. After the child did not return for over an hour, the mother went searching for her, only to find her lying dead. “Her lips were blue, there was blood under her nose, she had bruises on her hands and arms and her clothes were wet,” the mother, who is a Dalit, told the media.

Upon inquiry, the priest at the crematorium allegedly told her that the child had been electrocuted and advised her against informing the police, claiming that they would “insist on an autopsy and steal her organs and sell them". The mother adds that they shut the gates to prevent her from leaving, threatened her, and also attempted to bribe her.

By the time the child’s father and others reached the crematorium, the priest and his accomplices had almost succeeded in cremating the body of the child. After the villagers gathered, they were able to douse the flames but only recovered the legs, making it impossible to conduct a post mortem to confirm allegations of rape.

It’s difficult to reduce a life to a statistic, but the data paints a painful picture that reveals the magnitude of the issue plaguing the country. According to the 2019 National Crime Record Bureau report, an average of 10 Dalit women were raped in the country every day, with the highest numbers being reported in Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh. Over 4 lakh cases of crimes against women were reported in that year, a 7.3% rise from 2018, while the crimes against people from scheduled castes also showed a similar increase.

For a ruling party that has harped on about ‘Hindu khatre mein hai (Hindus are in danger),’ it is increasingly clear which factions of the community are actually in danger. In a TV interview, Rajya Sabha MP Derek O’ Brien said that he would “shave his head if Union Home Minister Amit Shah comes to parliament and makes a statement on Dalit girl rape in the national capital.” Yet, only silence has been witnessed even as the protest gains international coverage.

The intersection of caste and gender crimes

Meena Kotwal of Feminism In India first reported the crime, even as many mainstream media houses remained quiet. Since the news broke, hundreds including activists and students have taken to Jantar Mantar to register their protest against the heinous act.

A Dalit girl lives at the intersection of two marginalized identities and the power skew here has been more than evident. Even while the mother protested, the priest and his co-accused who are from the oppressor caste burnt her body to get rid of the evidence of the alleged crime. An act they knew they could potentially get away with because after all, the child whose parents were rag pickers and beggars hold little to no power in the society.

Many drew parallels to a similar crime that occurred in Hathras, Uttar Pradesh last year where a 19-year-old girl was gang-raped by four men from the oppressor caste. She passed away two weeks later in a Delhi hospital and was swiftly cremated in the dead of night by the police.

Despite their responsibility to protect the citizens of this country without bias, the actions of the police stand in sharp contrast to the oath that they take. Citing security issues and preparations for Independence Day, the police has now cleared one carriageway of the road around Delhi Cantonment where protests are ongoing. Media reports state that the Delhi Commission of Women issued a summons for the Delhi police seeking a detailed report of action taken along with the statement of the family.

Condemning the act perpetrated against the minor, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said, “there is a need to improve the law and order situation” in the national capital. The gory memory of Nirbhaya has still not been erased from the minds of Indians, yet the women and girls of this country continue to be subjected to sexual violence day after day. No amount of police protection is going to change that because patriarchy provides a protective cushion of safety for men. There is a sense of impunity that exists around those who are accused of such crimes because they feel entitled to female bodies which they view as nothing more than an object of pleasure.

Another drop in the ocean of casteism

In a now-deleted tweet, TV anchor Rahul Shivshankar claimed that members of the opposition including Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi, who offered their support to the family, were “using the child’s identity to politicize it”. It is truly absurd to look at an act of sexual violence without understanding its social context.

“Women irrespective of caste particularly suffered the most from denial of rights. In this sequence of graded inequality, the untouchables women suffered the most,” writes BR Ambedkar. In a paper titled Sex as a Weapon to Settle Scores against Dalits: A Quotidian Phenomenon, author Jyoti Diwakar asserts the necessity to move away from viewing Indian women as a homogenous group and recognize how vastly different the experiences of Dalit women are.

From time immemorial, rape has been used as a tool against marginalized communities where sexual atrocities are used to “punish” them for asserting themselves against the caste hierarchy. The paper further emphasizes that in the Indian context, violence perpetrated against women is regulated through their social standing as well as civil society’s reaction to it.

Read more: Tarun Tejpal Acquittal Is Emblematic Of The Negligent Way Indian Society Views Gender Crimes

There is a contrast seen in the way the larger society reacts to the rape of non-Dalit women like in the cases of Nirbhaya (2012) or Priyanka Reddy (2019) where the media machinery made the case known to the masses. In comparison, cases involving Dalit women like those which happened in Budaun in UP in 2014 or the 2015 Satyabhama incident did not gain as much support from the larger populace.

‘What can a Dalit do to us?’ read the statement of one of the offenders of the 2019 Alwar gang rape against a Dalit woman. “An upper-caste man could not have defiled himself by raping a lower-caste woman,” a trial judge said in the 1992 Bhanwari Devi case, where a group of Gurjar men gang-raped her in front of her husband for intervening in child marriage.

From the police to the judiciary, men from the dominant caste understand fully well that they enjoy the support of others in the dominant caste who primarily make up these systems. Perhaps, that is why the case has not sparked the kind of outrage that is normally expected in the aftermath of such a horrific crime — because the victim is a Dalit.

(Edited by Amrita Ghosh)

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