Do Dalit lives matter less than Muslims’?

A Dalit is served water from a distance in Orchha, Madhya Pradesh, on May 7 2016. Representation pic

A fortnight before the debate over Sanatan Dharma was sparked, four Dalits were whisked away from their homes in Maharashtra's Ahmednagar district to a farm, where they were stripped to their waists, and with their feet and hands bound, hung from a tree before being beaten mercilessly on the suspicion of having stolen domesticated pigeons and goats. Their story made it to the inside pages of national newspapers for just an edition.

Imagine the four Dalits being Muslim - and meted the same treatment! They would have hogged media headlines for days. Dalit lives, it would seem, matter far less than Muslims'.

This was a complaint Dr B R Ambedkar voiced in the statement he made in 1951, after he resigned from Jawaharlal Nehru's Union Cabinet. Ambedkar castigated Nehru for devoting all his time to protect Muslims. Declaring that his desire to protect them was no less than that of Nehru, Ambedkar stated that even the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Christians needed security. "What concern has he [Nehru] shown for these communities? So far as I know, none..." he said.

Nehru's concern for Muslims was in the backdrop of the Partition bloodbath, which threatened to unravel the idea conceived during the freedom movement that members of all religious communities would be equal citizens. This idea of India remains an article of faith for millions even amidst the rising tide of Hindutva. Yet, seven decades after Ambedkar's resignation letter, we, the progressives, are complicit in invisibilising the violence against Dalits. One explanation for our complicity is that the notion of caste is also deeply ingrained in us.

The religious roots of the caste system legitimise, and justify, an unequal social order, which can only be perpetuated by suppressing aspirations for equality. Violence as the pivot of the caste system is a story that dates back centuries. We have been socialised into accepting the inevitability of the everyday violence against Dalits, regardless of the panoply of laws protecting them. This has rationalised the violence against Dalits. What is rationalised does not shock. And what does not shock is not worthy of extensive coverage, for there is nothing new to tell. Only a massacre of Dalits is novel, for it indicates a mass resistance to an unequal social order.

By contrast, the violence against Muslims dates back, at best, to 150 years. The violence against them lacked a philosophical-religious justification until Hindutva began to construct a new moral universe. Hindutva deemed that India could be the homeland only for those whose religion was birthed here. Since the holy land of Muslims and Christians is elsewhere, their loyalty to India will always be suspect. This theory subliminally justifies killing the "internal enemies", Muslims and Christians.

This frightening vision shifted from the margin to centrestage in the last three decades, particularly after 2014. Yet, for those who still haven't embraced Hindutva's moral universe, the killing of Muslims is without a moral basis - and is, therefore, senseless and shocking. These are the people who visibilise the violence against Muslims.

It is ostensibly surprising that the 84 Scheduled Caste MPs in the Lok Sabha seldom unite across party lines to protest against the killing of Dalits. The structure of political representation silences them, for they are fielded in elections from reserved constituencies, where every candidate has to be a Dalit, leading to the fragmentation of the community's votes. The winner among them is the one who rallies the support of other communities, which, in most constituencies, largely comprise Hindus.

Most of these Hindus are averse to voting for Dalit candidates who are assertive. Why? Because a Dalit cannot be assertive without challenging the caste system, which bestows symbolical and material power upon social groups arranged in a hierarchy. The assertive Dalit risks alienating the upper castes, the dominant Shudra groups, and his or her own party. Most elected Dalit leaders, therefore, mute themselves for power. The Dalit community also consists of subcastes that pull in different directions. Experiments to consolidate them behind a Dalit party have all failed, from the Republican Party of India to the Bahujan Samaj Party.

The sites of the violence against Dalits are mostly in rural India. Its remoteness from the media hub invisibilises the torment of Dalits. The principal form of violence against Muslims, until 2014, has been riots in urban India, where the ensuing instability stalls economic activities. Besides, there is never a guarantee that a Hindu won't get singed in a communal riot. The city-based media has an interest in visibilising the violence against Muslims.

No wonder, the Hindutva brigade increasingly prefers everyday communalism over organising mass violence against Muslims. They are now tormented or killed for reasons such as allegedly consuming beef, praying in the public arena, dating or marrying Hindu women, etc. With Hindutva's moral universe acquiring ascendancy, Muslims are now India's neo-Dalits, and the everyday-ness of the violence against them will soon become too stale to be even considered newsworthy. All the perfumes of the world cannot camouflage the stench of the blood of Dalits and Muslims spilled in Bharat, that is India, nor can it be by manufacturing fury over the debate on Sanatan Dharma.

The writer is a senior journalist.
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