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Thursday March 28, 2024

A cosmetic change

By Abdul Sattar
July 25, 2017

Ram Nath Kovind entered the Indian presidency on Thursday. He is the second Indian president who belongs to the marginalised Dalit caste in one of the largest democracies in the world. It is for the first time that the upper-caste dominated BJP nominated someone from the bottom layer of social stratification.

The 72-year-old president is the second Dalit to secure this office – with Kocheril Raman Narayanan, who assumed office in 1997, being the first. Narayanan was nominated by the left.

The ascension of a Dalit to what is considered to be a largely ceremonial post may have created a ripple of excitement among reformers from the lowest caste of India. But those on the radical front of Dalit politics have not pinned many hopes on the newly-elected president. For them, he is a collaborator who has aligned with the tormentors of the Dalits. For an ordinary Dalit, a change in the country’s president does not make much of a difference unless radical reforms are carried out and strictly implemented to liberate them from the brutal caste system that has shackled them for decades. Even the reforms introduced in the 1950s did little to ameliorate their condition.

Brutalities against them have become frequent and increased in recent years. According to Jignesh Mevani, a lawyer and social activist from Gujarat, the number of cases involving atrocities against Dalits stood at 39,000 in 2014. In 2015-16, the figure increased to 47,000.

Dalit rights activists have pointed out statistics from various sources. These statistics suggest that every 18 minutes a crime is committed against a member of their community. And every day, three women of their hapless caste are raped, two Dalits are murdered while two houses belonging to members of the caste are burnt. In addition, 11 Dalits are beaten up daily.

The luxuries of the President House cannot bring any relief and succour to the marginalised community, which continues to remain in the bottom layer of the human development index. At least 37 percent of Dalits live below the poverty line, more than 54 percent of their children are undernourished and 83 out of 1,000 Dalit babies die before they can celebrate their first birthday. Around 45 percent of Dalits cannot read or write and one-third of their households are bereft of basic facilities.

In 33 percent of India’s villages, public health workers refuse to visit the houses of Dalits. Only 27 percent of Dalit women are provided institutional deliveries. Untouchables are denied entry in 27.7 percent of police stations in the country’s rural areas and Dalit students are made to eat separately in 37.8 percent of government schools. Dalits do not get mail deliveries in 23.5 percent of villages and they have been denied access to water in 48.4 percent of villages owing to segregation and the prevalent notions of untouchability.

According to Indian law, one-fifth of all parliamentary candidates must be Dalit under decades-long affirmative action laws that were introduced to improve representation and outlaw discrimination. Dalits are also guaranteed a proportion of college placements and government jobs. Despite all these measures and six decades of entry-level quotas, there are only a few Dalit senior officers. Of around 88 secretary-level posts within the central government, not one is filled by a Dalit even though their population in the country is more than 200 million.

On the other hand, Brahmins – with a population of a little over 56 million – have a literacy rate of 84 percent (among those who are under 18). At least 39 percent graduates are Brahmin and 19 percent of them are rich. They were hugely over-represented, especially in the country’s judicial system; they constituted 47 percent of the chief justices between 1950 and 2000 and 40 percent associate justices during the same period.

Their representation in parliament, though dwindling, is still higher than their population percentage. For instance, Brahmins MP constituted 19.91 percent of the total number of MPs in 1984. In 1989 and 1998, this figure stood at 12.44 percent and was reduced to 11.3 percent in 1999. In 2007, it was further reduced to 9.17 percent.

The disparity within various organs of the state will not disappear after Kovind becomes India’s president because the BJP has not brought him in to introduce any drastic reforms. Instead, this is a cosmetic change to mask the agenda of Hindutva that not only justifies the centuries-old system of discrimination but also seeks to relegate the Dalits, Muslims and Christians to the level of second-class citizens. The fears of Dalits converting to Christianity and other religions could be another factor that may have prompted the Hindu right to offer this titular post to a member of the marginalised community.

The nationalist Hindu organisations will continue to portray a rosy picture of the state of affairs as Kovind is sworn-in. But we must not forget that the dominant classes in any society are reluctant to make space for those at the bottom layer of social stratification. For instance, Gandhi wanted a Dalit to be the first president of India. According to a recently published book titled Why Gandhi Still Matters? by Rajmohan Gandhi, the sage wanted a Dalit man from Andhra Pradesh named Chakrayya to be the first president of India. But the man met with an untimely death. This prompted Gandhi to propose the name of a Dalit woman for the post, but the proposal was shot down by top Congress leaders. It took India 50 years to elect the first Dalit as India’s president in 1997. Regardless, things remained unchanged for the Dalits.

The first litmus test of the new Indian president will be to introduce radical social reforms and stop attacks on Dalits and other minority groups at the hands of Hindu extremists. He needs to account for those who attacked a Dalit’s village in Saharanpur in UP, wounding 12 members of the marginalised community and setting ablaze 55 houses. He must ensure that such attacks will not be accepted in modern India if he wants to prove that his ascension to this office will bring a real change in the lives of millions of marginalised Indians.

 

The writer is a Karachi-based
freelance journalist.

Email: egalitarianism444@gmail.com