INDRAPRASTHA COLLEGE FOR WOMEN

DELHI UNIVERSITY

GEC ASSIGNMENT 2023

NAME: GARGI SHARMA

Answer:

INTRODUCTION

As we are moving towards a modern age, a broader mind-set towards religion, gender, class
and caste is promoted by the government and its people. But is it so or people are still finding it
difficult to absorb the fact that class and gender, despite differences need to be respected
equally. Caste in India is a unique cultural phenomenon that performs the task of shaping
identity and stratifying social status. This directly relates to hereditary belonging to inequality,
difference, discrimination and an ideological system with notions of contamination-purity,
notions of hierarchy and segregation. It concerns the division of labour and occupations,
marriage rules, interpersonal relationships, the endogamy of needs and the intergenerational
exercise of a particular occupation, which are dictated by a separate statute in the hierarchical
system.
Here the paper is presented to give light on another brutal rape case, where a young Dalit
women from a lower class was brutally raped by four upper caste men The case back from the
recent year in 2020 showed how a 19 year old Dalit girl was brutally raped in the district of
Hathras in the state of Uttar Pradesh. The women was attacked on September 14, 2020 in the
village of Hathras and suffered multiple fractures, strangulation, paralysis and cuts in her
tongue. These four men, dragged the victim with the help of dupatta joining around her neck.
She was brutally strangled, her tongue teeth were gashed, and spinal cord and bones were
broken. The fact that she received her medical treatment only after 5-days. She died two weeks
in Safdarjung hospital, New Delhi later as a result of her injuries. In her statement, she told the
local police that she was dragged by her dupatta into the fields when she was cutting grass with
her mother and brother and then raped. She was later found naked and bleeding in the fields
by her family. This was followed by the casteist and heartless behaviour of the Uttar Pradesh
police who burned the woman’s body in the dead of the night while locking away her family in
their house, for which the police denied the claim and said that family’s consent has been
taken.
FACT+ THEORY
Four men- Sandeep, Ramu, Lavkush and Ravi dragged belonging to the Thakur an upper caste.
The attackers tried to supress the victim. Her mother listened her cries and came to find her
lying down in the fields. When she was taken to the nearby police station her claims were
denied and they were humiliated by the police, according to the family. The police filed her
complaint on 22 September. The statements given by her stated that she was raped, and
strangled when she tried to resist them. She was then admitted to Jawaharlal Nehru Medical
College where her spinal cord was found to be damaged. When her condition got severe she
was transmitted to Safdarjung hospital where she died. Her mother told that two of those boys
were already harassing her from past few months. The victim was cremated post-midnight on
29 September 2020 by the Uttar Pradesh Police without taking concern of the family, which
they denied. The family alleged that they were faced pressure from the administration to
change their statements, where after they themselves changer their many statements. On 3 rd
October, five police officers including the superintendent of police, were suspended.
The role of the Uttar Pradesh police needs to be examined throughout the entire handling of
the case due to its multiple lapses. From the very beginning the police was unwilling to pursue
the allegations of rape. The news channel NDTV reported that the girl’s family accused the
police of not helping them and responding only after many days of public outrage. Initially, the
police identified the assault as an attempt to murder and only added the rape charges after the
girl submitted a formal statement. On the day when the girl died, police denied the victim’s
allegations of rape and its approval through medical examination despite the victim’s formal
statement. After her death, the police took her body straight to Delhi for the cremation ground
in Hathras. They made a chain to keep reporters, the family and villagers away from the
cremation ground and refused to hand over her body to the family. The family was locked in
their house and was permitted and was kept out to see the body. At approximately 2:30 a.m.,
the police burnt her body without the consent of the family, performed all the cremation rituals
and claimed that the body was “cremated” with the family’s consent.
The victim belonged to the Dalit sub-caste of Valmikis, otherwise also known as Bhangis, a
traditionally untouchable caste linked with cleaning toilets, sweeping and scavenging. The four
criminals were from the upper caste group of Thakurs, who have a majority in that village,
followed by ‘upper caste group’ of the Brahmins. At the time of the assault, there were only
four Dalit households in the village, all belonging to Valmiki caste and living within a half
kilometre radius. These Dalit families own some small lands, cattle. They sell their cattle and
paid less than what they do as their cleaning jobs for livelihood. On the others side, the Thakurs
possess political influence in the state. According to the National Crime Records Bureau of
(2019) Uttar Pradesh had the highest number of crimes against Dalits and around 25.8% of the
total cases in India are linked to this state. The state also has the second highest number of
rapes of Dalit women. Aftermath chief minister of UP ordered a CBI investigation which the
family denied for and asked for a Judicial enquiry. The CBI however intervened in the case, after
orders from the Central government.
Dalit families are fully aware of the caste oppression they face and its impact on crime and the
consequences of crime. They were locked in their homes by the county government and police
and prevented from communicating with people. Their phones were also confiscated and they
were banned from speaking to the media. The media has been banned from the village due to
the ban on mass gatherings due to COVID 19. In interviews, the mother of victim said that her
daughter was unfortunate to born in the village of Thakurs, while her brother said that the
upper castes do not recognize them and pretend they do not exist. In an interview, the village
pastor admitted that Dalits are not welcome in their home and that it is enough to live with
them in the same village, while the mayor's children openly admitted that they could not eat
and drink with the Dalits. A relative of the victim admitted the inequality in the village and that
they were beaten by the upper castes because they refused to do dirty jobs like cleaning the
sewers for which they were not paid enough. This is a quantitative analysis of two hundred and
fifty tweets (between September 14 and October 14, 2020) related to the Hathras rape case
that were collected and analysed. It provides a brief overview of the issues identified as
significant and prominent in the protest mobilization against the Hathras rape case. Of the
tweets collected, twenty percent contain elements and basics related to protest. Other tweet
topics like call for justice, human rights violations, injustice, caste discrimination, discontent etc.
are some of the other arguments that can motivate people to mobilize and protest against the
gang rapes in Hathras. Thus, women’s violent practices depend on their socioeconomic status.
Although upper-caste women are subject to strict controls on their sexuality and mobility, the
relative lack of such controls for lower-caste women makes them vulnerable to rape, sexual
harassment, and public violence.
The occurrences of rape of Dalit women are not considered rape because upper caste men
have had continued sexual authority to Dalit women’s sexuality. Additionally rape popularly
translates to izzat lootna (stealing honor) and since lower caste women have no honor to speak
of, the punishment or redressal of the rape is denied to them. Moreover, the Indian judicial
system maintains caste and gender as two separate issues, which renders invisibly the
interconnectedness between violence against women and lower caste standing.
CONCLUSION
The Hathras rape proves once again that India has failed miserably in protecting Dalits from
caste. A 20-year-old Dalit woman was gang-raped by four so-called "upper castes". All this
shows how the caste system works, perpetuates itself and becomes autonomous. The brutal
attacks on Dalits and the first gang rape and subsequent murder of Dalit women reveal the
corrupt attitude of caste men who believe they can dominate the Dalits. Once again, the rapes
and attacks on Dalits openly show that caste hatred and caste politics drool on Dalits in such a
cruel way would weaken the Dalits' resolve and resilience in their quest for equality and dignity.
Caste forces carefully construct and cover up their heinous activities, raping and lynching Dalits
to crush their desire for equality and dignity. Gang rapes of Dalit women and lynching of Dalits
have become common place in caste-divided India. When something like this happens, all
political parties come out with strong words demanding punitive measures, but basically
nothing changes. If we carefully analyse the patterns and practices of the rape and murder of
Dalit women today, patriarchy itself emerges on a large scale, wielding power and stimulating
state apparatuses such as police, hospital workers and politicians to exploit the caste system for
their own purposes. An advantage that protects members of the so-called high castes. The rape
and mass murder of Dalit women and the atrocities they commit should be viewed as a political
matter. This clearly shows that India's political system and society is caste-based, which is why
Dalits have to endure these events and their brutalization. Caste has permeated all aspects of
Indian society. Political parties select their candidates on the basis of caste, ask votes on the
basis of caste, elect and offer ministerial posts, including the prime minister, and form a
government solely on the basis of caste. Men of the so-called ruling caste go unpunished and
continue raping and killing the lower caste women. This is the story and it is happening quite
often. Phenomenon of raping and killing of the Dalits need to be viewed within the framework
of patriarchy wherein power intersects. Dalit women are poor, powerless, and vulnerable and
disliked when compared with so-called high-caste women.
In such a background, we need to bring those agencies through state actors who have failed to
offer protection, instead covering up the issues with all sorts of excuses. Those belonging to the
so-called ‘high castes’ have complete entitlements as they are given impunity. Cultural system
of caste perpetuates power dominance in favor of casteists. Intersectional power politics is
going to get heightened and, in the process, escalates such things in the coming days. We
should identify and denounce this caste attitude whenever we encounter caste-based violence.
The State Government of Uttar Pradesh and the Central Governments at Delhi have covered-up
the heinous murder by not proactively engaging with the victims, but withdrawing from it.
Those in power should not say that let us not make it as a political issue. Political power and
patriarchy plot when it comes to Dalit rapes and atrocities against the Dalits.
It's acaste problem that develops at the intersection of patriarchy and power, because the
victim was a Dalit, a woman, a poor man and a peasant, so the so-
called "high caste" men get their privileges and from the right the equation of power. We have
governments both in the state and in the middle that do not go
beyond the traditional distribution of power and caste. As long as Indian society draws the lines
of the caste system we will continue to see worse things like this and things will get much
worse and definitely not better because there is more
impunity developing from the caste powers than the culture system intends to perpetuate
and provide in the process of growth.