Introduction
In India, Scheduled Caste
(SC) Women constituted about 16% of the total population of India. As per the
caste hierarchy system, the Scheduled Caste has been considered as one of the
lowest caste in the Indian Society. The SC women have been suffering from
social exclusion from economic, civil, cultural and political rights to the
decades. The women from Scheduled Caste community not only found to suffer from
discrimination but also inhuman atrocities such as rapes, murders,forceful
kidnap, social & economic boycott. The SC women are poor, illiterate,
deprived section and lowest level as per the educational and economical status.
As per the survey conducted by Thomson Reuters
Foundation on women’s issue and reported that India is the most dangerous
nation for sexual violence
against women, as well as human trafficking for domestic work, forced labour, forced marriage and sexual slavery and also stated that India is a dangerous country in the world for cultural traditions which impact women. The gender inequality (GII) was assessed by United Nations' Human Development and reported that India ranked 130 out of 155 countries. The Problem of caste and untouchability through various constitutional safeguards has been addressed in many platforms but the Scheduled Caste community has been recognised as historically deprived segments of the society. Scheduled Caste women are positioned at the bottom of India’s caste, class and gender hierarchies. They experience endemic gender and caste discrimination and violence as an outcome of severely imbalanced social, economic and political power equations. Women are often seen as a symbol of a community’s prestige and this is equally true of the Scheduled Caste community. Therefore, an outsider violating the honour of their women signals the powerlessness of the Scheduled Caste to protect their womenfolk. There are people who will not tolerate any assertion by Scheduled Caste women and are ready to suppress them or their voice at all costs. Incidentally, this phenomenon also poses a major challenge for the empowerment of Scheduled Caste women, who are not able to speak out against the atrocities committed against them. Dr.B.R.Ambedkar rightly stated that to measure the progress of a country by the degree of progress which women have achieved and said that the education is the right weapon to cut the social slavery and enlighten the downtrodden masses to come up and gain social status, economic betterment and political freedom. As the rate of atrocities day by day increasing on the SC women in the country.
against women, as well as human trafficking for domestic work, forced labour, forced marriage and sexual slavery and also stated that India is a dangerous country in the world for cultural traditions which impact women. The gender inequality (GII) was assessed by United Nations' Human Development and reported that India ranked 130 out of 155 countries. The Problem of caste and untouchability through various constitutional safeguards has been addressed in many platforms but the Scheduled Caste community has been recognised as historically deprived segments of the society. Scheduled Caste women are positioned at the bottom of India’s caste, class and gender hierarchies. They experience endemic gender and caste discrimination and violence as an outcome of severely imbalanced social, economic and political power equations. Women are often seen as a symbol of a community’s prestige and this is equally true of the Scheduled Caste community. Therefore, an outsider violating the honour of their women signals the powerlessness of the Scheduled Caste to protect their womenfolk. There are people who will not tolerate any assertion by Scheduled Caste women and are ready to suppress them or their voice at all costs. Incidentally, this phenomenon also poses a major challenge for the empowerment of Scheduled Caste women, who are not able to speak out against the atrocities committed against them. Dr.B.R.Ambedkar rightly stated that to measure the progress of a country by the degree of progress which women have achieved and said that the education is the right weapon to cut the social slavery and enlighten the downtrodden masses to come up and gain social status, economic betterment and political freedom. As the rate of atrocities day by day increasing on the SC women in the country.
Atrocities
against Scheduled Caste women
As per the decadal data from 2007 to
2016 the issue of kidnapping and abduction has got increased from 332 (2007) to
855 (2016), though the atrocity act 1989 envisage that SC/ST should be
protected. (Fig.2)
The status of Scheduled Caste women
seems much more alarming when one looks at the data pertaining to serious
crimes such as rape. The trend of rape
cases revealed that from 2007 to 2010 more or less similar except 2008.
Thereafter from 2011 onwards the trend increased from 1557 (2011) to 2541
(2016). This is clearly evident that, Scheduled Caste women are targeted and
moreover many cases are not registering due to influence of economically and
politically strong people. One of the many reasons for the upswing in crimes
against Scheduled Caste women has been attributed to the increase in the voices
raised by Scheduled Caste people in the last few years. The issues of insult
the modesty of women are started drastically in the country since 2014 and
number of cases pertaining to this has been increased from 56 (2014) to 81
(2016).
As per the Fig.3 the
trends of registered cases under SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act, 1989 the
data clearly revealed that, from the year 2007 to 2013, the number of registered
cases increased from 9819 to 13975.
Later on from the year 2014, the cases are reported to be declined to 8887 (2014),
6005 (2015) and 5082 (2016). This clearly indicates that though the SC/ STs
approaching to complain, which are either not accepted or prevented from
complaining. This shows that the authorities are not trying to protect the
weaker and the most vulnerable sections of society.
Major incidents occurred in India.
·
Bhanwari Devi was an Indian social worker
from Bhateri, Rajasthan, who was gang raped
in 1992 by higher caste men angered by her efforts to prevent a child
marriage in their family. Her subsequent treatment by the police and court
acquittal of the accused, attracted widespread national and international media
attention and became a landmark episode in India's women's rights movement
· On 29 September 2006, four members of the Bhotmange family
were murdered in Khairlanji, Maharashtra. The women of the family, Surekha (45) and Priyanka (17), were paraded naked in public before being
murdered, sexually abused them and then hacked them to death
- A 16-year old
Dalit girl was gang raped by a group of dominant caste men in Haryana. The
rapists filmed the gang rape on a cell phone and later circulated the video
in the village. When the father of the girl saw the video of what his
daughter had to go through he committed suicide.
- Two teenage girls (aged 14
and 16) were gang raped in Uttar Pradesh on May 29th, 2014, after stepping
into a field, because they had no toilet at home. The families had gone to
the police when the girls had gone missing but police had refused to
register the case. The next morning the girls were found dead – hanging in
nooses from a mango tree. The police did not take action until villagers
blocked the main road with the dead bodies and alerted the media.
·
Dalit girl kidnapped, raped by upper caste man. “The family
members of the victim were not allowed by upper caste men to go to the police
station for registering the case. They tried to convince the victim and her
family to withdraw the case. Girl said that “A few upper caste men from a
nearby village were harassed her for past 4-5 months, they forced her to come
to Kotputli, a town on Jaipur-Delhi highway and kidnapped her. After dragging
her into a car, they gave her a drink laced with sedatives.
· A young Dalit woman
(22-year-old Ruchi), nine months pregnant and her unborn child died allegedly
after being brutally beaten up by the police in the Barabanki district of Uttar
Pradesh. witness to the incident said that a police raided Ruchi’s house in
search of country-made liquor. After the raid, scared male members of the
family ran away from the house but Ruchi, in the last days of her
pregnancy, was unable to escape. The police thrashed her outside the
house, beat her with wooden sticks and kicked her on her stomach, until she
died on the spot.
· During
Navaratri festival, Dalit family (Khema Parmar) had been thrashed by members of the Patel community.
Attackers had been angered by the presence of Dalit women at a garba event. The
accused said Dalits "do not have any right to watch Garba.
·
Santoshi dies in a remote
village in Jharkhand due to hunger. No one in her household had eaten a meal for a full eight
days before she died. There was not a
grain in their mud house.
·
Puja Sakat (19) a witness the caste violence at Bhima Koregaon, Maharshtra found
dead
in
well
near Pune. Her family’s home was burnt down on January 1, when violence
broke out in the village and surrounding areas during celebrations to mark the
200th year of the Battle of Koregaon-Bhima
- Four Dalit women
have alleged that some upper caste men thrashed them for dumping
garbage in Fatehgarh village. Dalit
families have been dumping garbage at a place for the last 20 years. But now,
members of upper caste have asked the Dalit families not to throw waste
there because they wanted to grab the land. They alleged that five upper
caste men attacked and abused them.
- A
Dalit woman Pallaviben Jadav (45), was allegedly attacked by a mob for
sitting on a chair at a school in a village Valthera in Ahmedabad
district, She works at an anganwadi (government-run nursery school), had
been entrusted the task of distributing Aadhaar cards. According to the
FIR registered at Kath police station, Jayraj Vegad, a local resident
(Karadia Rajput community), was infuriated to see that Pallaviben was
sitting on a chair while doing her work. Vegad asked her, how she dared to
sit on a chair being a Dalit and kicked the chair, causing her to fall.
Later, Vegad and some 25 others went to the woman’s house in the evening
and allegedly attacked her, her husband and some other family members with
sticks and sharp weapons.
·
A woman IPS police
officer Bhagyashree Navtake, working as assistant superintendent of police in
Majalgaon in Maharashtra Beed's district, In viral video, she said that "I
hit you just four-five times. But do you know how we beat dalits? We tie their
hands and legs and thrash them. "By thrashing dalits, I gave vent to my
anger against the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of
Atrocities) Act," she says. She tharashed
as many as 21 Dalit and beaten the Muslims also. During Navaratri
(2018), 15 years old Scheduled Caste girl of class 10 belonged to village in
Kurukshetra district of Hariyana
was Gang-raped like Nirbhaya.
Conclusion
The data revealed
that, day by day and year after year atrocities against SC women becoming worse
and required immediate attention of the Government and to implement the
policies envisaged for SC/ST women. The constitutional and legal
safeguard provisions with regard to discrimination and atrocities are not fully
effective because of dominance of higher castes. As per the constitution of India, an Indian
legislative framework envisages to promote and protect women starting from the
fundamental constitutional provision. Article 15, affirms the principle of
non-discrimination on the basis of caste and gender. Article 21 guaranties the
right to life and to security and article 46 specifically
protect SC community from social injustice and all forms of exploitation. The SC/ST Atrocities Prevention Acts enacted in
1989 has to be followed with proper monitoring, control and surveillance. So
that, physical, sexual and psychological violence against women would be prohibited
which in turn fulfil the dream and vision of Dr.B.R.Ambedkar to see that the Indian
society should be free from discrimination, ignorance, narrow minded etc and establish the equality among the different
communities of the society. At last, Rights and dignity of SC is
on peril. Every day SC are being killed, SC women are raped and naked paraded
but scheduled caste Members of parliament and assembly, Intellectuals and
lawyers are sitting salient. Their proactive role is very much needed at this
point of time or otherwise the communities will to face many more problem in
future
References
1. Times of India and Hindustan time (Events on atrocities)
2. National
Crime Record Bureau official website
3. Annual Reports of Ministry
of Home affairs from 2007 to 2016 s
4. Human Development Report ( United Nations Development Programme)
Bapu Raut
Mo.no.9224343464
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