Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), in advance of its February 2007 consideration
of a report by the government of India.CERD is a body of independent experts responsible for monitoring states’ compliance with
the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. India
ratified the Convention in 1968. The Convention guarantees rights of non-discrimination on
the basis of “race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin.” In 1996, CERD concluded
that the plight of Dalits falls squarely under the prohibition of descent-based discrimination.As a state party to the Convention, India is obliged to submit periodic reports detailing its
implementation of rights guaranteed under the Convention. During the review session CERD
examines these reports and engages in constructive dialogue with the state party,
addressing its concerns and offering recommendations in the form of “Concluding
Observations.” As part of this process, CERD uses supplementary or alternative information
contained in non-governmental organization “shadow reports” to effectively evaluate
states’ reports.The India report being considered by CERD in February 2007 (the report was more than eight
years overdue when it was submitted) covers more than a decade of India’s compliance
with the Convention (from 1996 to 2006) yet does not contain a single mention of abuses
against Dalits–abuses that India’s own governmental agencies have documented and
verified. This report fills that gap and presents CERD members with information that we
believe is essential to a fair assessment of India’s record and, ultimately, to encouraging
the government to live up to its treaty obligations.
ICERD: International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination
Human Rights Watch and the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ) at New
York University School of Law submit the following information to the Committee on the
Elimination of Racial Discrimination (Committee or CERD) for consideration in its review of
India’s fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth periodic reports under
the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination
(Convention or ICERD). This joint-submission is based on in-depth Human Rights Watch
investigations on caste discrimination in India and the findings of Indian governmental and
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on caste-based abuses.Discriminatory and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of over 165 million people in
India has been justified on the basis of caste. Caste is descent-based and hereditary in
nature. It is a characteristic determined by one’s birth into a particular caste, irrespective of
the faith practiced by the individual. Caste denotes a traditional system of rigid social
stratification into ranked groups defined by descent and occupation. Caste divisions in
India dominate in housing, marriage, employment, and general social interaction–divisions
that are reinforced through the practice and threat of social ostracism, economic boycotts,
and physical violence. This report focuses on the practice of “untouchability”–the
imposition of social disabilities on persons by reason of their birth in certain castes. This
practice relegates Dalits, or so-called untouchables (known in Indian legal parlance as
scheduled castes), to a lifetime of discrimination, exploitation and violence, including
severe forms of torture perpetrated by state and private actors in violation of the rights
guaranteed by the Convention. Although the practice has been condemned by many Indian
leaders, including most recently by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, unless the
government accepts responsibility to end the widespread prejudice, crimes against Dalits
will continue. India has consistently cited its numerous legislations and government
policies as a measure of compliance with its obligations to end caste-based discrimination,
choosing to ignore its failure to implement these measures which has resulted in continued,
and sometimes enhanced, brutalities against Dalits.Human Rights Watch and the CHRGJ respectfully request that the following issues be raised
in the List of Issues addressed to the State Party and in the State Party examination.
In response to the Committee’s request that the Government of India submit information on
issues pertaining to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, India’s periodic report states
that “`caste’ cannot be equated with `race’ or covered under `descent’ under Article 1 of the
Convention.” India’s position directly contradicts the Committee’s interpretation of Article 1
in General Recommendation XXIX that “discrimination based on `descent’ includes
discrimination against members of communities based on forms of social stratification such
as caste and analogous systems of inherited status.” However, we welcome Prime Minister
Singh’s comment on December 27, 2006 that:
We hope that this statement will prompt appropriate reforms in government policies.On the basis of this information, we respectfully request that the following issues be raised
with the State Party:
India’s failure to ensure that all public authorities and public institutions do not engage in
caste-based discrimination is widespread. Two examples exemplify this failure: treatment of
Dalits by the police and discrimination in the provision of disaster relief. India’s National
Human Rights Commission (NHRC)–a statutory government body that the Indian
government describes as the apex national institution to protect human rights and redress
grievances–has commented that the law enforcement machinery is the greatest violator of
Dalits’ human rights. According to the NHRC, widespread custodial torture and killing of
Dalits, rape and sexual assault of Dalit women, and looting of Dalit property by the police
“are condoned, or at best ignored.” This problem is not a recent one. In 1979 India
constituted the National Police Commission to analyze problems in police performance.
However, the Commission’s recommendations, which include recommendations specific to
police abuse of Dalits, have still not been adopted. While the Scheduled Castes and
Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act,1989 (hereinafter Prevention of Atrocities Act,
1989) and the Supreme Court guidelines set out in the
D.K. Basu
tools to prevent torture, illegal detention, or improper interrogation of Dalits, jurists, human
rights activists and civil rights groups claim that a lack of political will and immunity laws
that shield those responsible for human rights abuses from prosecution, allow the problem
of torture and other forms of custodial abuse to continue unchecked.Dalits are particularly vulnerable to arrest under draconian security laws. Additionally, under
a theory of collective punishment, the police often target entire Dalit communities in search
of one individual and subject the community to violent search and seizure operations. Dalit
women are particularly vulnerable to sexual violence by the police, which is used as a tool
to punish Dalit communities. Police also actively allow private actors to commit violence
against Dalits with impunity, and at times, collude with private actors in committing such
atrocities. Police systematically fail to properly register these crimes under the Prevention of
Atrocities Act, 1989 and the Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1995.According to separate investigations by the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights
(NCDHR) and Human Rights Watch, India failed to protect Dalits from discrimination in the
distribution of aid in the wake of two of India’s largest natural disasters in recent years: the
Gujarat earthquake in January 2001 and the Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004. India
has also failed to encourage integrationist movements or eliminate barriers between castes.
It has allowed segregation in schools and housing, and has failed to faithfully implement
constitutional and legislative abolitions of “untouchability” practices. Additionally, as Dalits
increasingly organize to protest their discriminatory treatment and claim their rights, the
government has consistently failed to protect Dalits against retaliatory attacks by upper-
caste groups, including the rape of Dalit women, and has failed to address social and
economic boycotts against Dalits, thereby further discouraging integrationist movements.On the basis of this information, we respectfully request that the following issues be raised
with the State Party:
The extreme marginalization and persecution endured by Dalits necessitate efforts by the
government to ensure their development and protection. Accordingly, under constitutional
provisions and various laws, India grants Dalits a certain number of privileges, including
“reservations” (quotas) in education, government jobs, and government bodies. Like many
of the protective measures adopted, the reservation policy has not been successfully
implemented for Dalits. Caste-based occupational distribution is reinforced in reserved
government employment, with Dalits assigned primarily to the posts of sweepers.
Reservations in higher education continue to be met with a great deal of resistance leading
to under-enforcement. Additionally, there has been widespread public opposition to
reservations for Dalits in local government bodies, often leading to acts of violence,
including the rape and murder of Dalit candidates.
Residential segregation of Dalits is prevalent across the country, and is the rule rather than
the exception. Segregation is also evident in schools, in access to public services, and in
access to services operated by the private sector (as described under Article 5). In his 1999
Annual Report, the Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial
Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance found “untouchability” to be “very
much alive” in rural areas, as reflected in caste-based segregation in housing, schools,
public services, public places, and in the prohibition against Dalits’ use of shared water
sources. A recently published survey investigating the extent of “untouchability” practices
in 565 villages in 11 Indian states found that the constitutionally abolished crime of
“untouchability” continues to profoundly affect the lives and psyches of millions of Dalits.
“Untouchability” practices were documented in almost 80 percent of the villages surveyed.
Dalits’ fundamental civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights are routinely
violated by state actors and private individuals.
In the administration of justice, police, prosecutors, and judges fail to properly pursue
cases brought by Dalits concerning discriminatory acts. This is evidenced by the high rate of
acquittals and the large number of cases involving offenses and atrocities against Dalits
still pending before the courts. Dalit women in particular lack sufficient redress for the
Dalits’ political rights, especially the right to vote freely and the right to stand for election,
have repeatedly been denied by upper-caste community members by booth-rigging and
booth capturing, denial of access to polls, intimidation, and violence.
In its periodic report, India cites to its constitutional provisions and legislative measures
(which constitutionally must apply to all people irrespective of caste) that open its courts to
victims of discrimination. In 2004 the NHRC released the findings of an in-depth
examination of the implementation of protective legislation for scheduled castes. The report
is a strong indictment of the government’s failure to carry out its promises to protect Dalits
from atrocities and violations of their fundamental rights and to grant remedies for rights’
violations. On the question of remedies, the NHRC found that even where cases are properly
registered, several states are not providing economic relief or compensation to victims of
atrocities as is required.On the basis of this information, we respectfully request that the following issues be raised
with the State Party:
There is a severe lack of public education and awareness of caste discrimination in India.
Treatment of caste discrimination in textbooks and curricula may strengthen caste division
and prejudice, as does the pervasive practice of segregation in government schools. Even
progressive curricula either exclude any mention of caste discrimination or discuss the
caste system in a way that suggests that caste inequities and discrimination no longer exist.
School textbooks may similarly fail to mention caste discrimination, may attempt to justify
the origins of caste discrimination, or may attribute the unequal situation of Dalits to the
Dalit community. The problem is compounded by inadequate media representation of Dalit
issues and the lack of Dalit journalists generally. Since caste-based discrimination is not as
highly visible in urban settings, opinion makers, particularly the media, do not pay
sufficient attention to the rampant and continuing practice in rural areas. The NHRC has
found that the media “provides negligible space to …plight/problems” of Dalits. Instead,
these communities mostly receive media attention only when the discussion is focused on
violent protests, backwardness, population growth, and lack of entrepreneurship and
productivity, thereby perpetuating caste-based stereotypes.On the basis of this information, we respectfully request that the following issues be raised
with the State Party:
Human Rights Watch and the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ) at New
York University School of Law submit the following report to the Committee on the
Elimination of Racial Discrimination (Committee or CERD) for consideration in its review of
India’s fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth periodic reports under
the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination
(Convention or ICERD).
CHRGJ is directed by Professors Philip Alston, Smita Narula, and Margaret Satterthwaite.
Jayne Huckerby is research director. CHRGJ aims to generate substantive, cutting-edge, and
sophisticated contributions to human rights research and legal scholarship, and to actively
engage in public affairs by making original and constructive contributions to ongoing policy
debates relating to human rights. It achieves these aims by undertaking rigorous legal
analysis and disseminating studies in five key research and project areas: Detainees and
the “War on Terror,” Discrimination and National Security, Economic, Social, and Cultural
Rights, Extrajudicial Executions, and Transitional Justice. In its work on Discrimination, the
Center and the International Human Rights Clinic (a program of the Center) have focused on
caste discrimination in South Asia, collaborating extensively with the International Dalit
Solidarity Network, of which Professor Narula is a co-founder. Professor Narula is also
former researcher for South Asia at Human Rights Watch where she investigated and
authored a number of Human Rights Watch’s reports on caste discrimination and
discrimination against religious minorities in India. Most recently, in August 2005, during
the meeting of the United Nations (UN) Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of
Human Rights, the Center released a 65-page report entitled
statement to the UN Committee Against Torture urging the Committee to investigate torture
against Dalits in its State Party examination of Nepal. All publications and statements of the
Center can be found at its website: www.chrgj.org.
Asia for almost a decade, but particularly since the 1999 publication of its report Broken People: Caste Violence Against India’s “Untouchables.”
Human Rights Watch is a founding member of the International Dalit Solidarity Network and collaborates extensively with a number of Dalit rights groups in South Asia. It has recently been advocating for the
protection of Dalits who are particularly vulnerable in situations of internal conflict. An
armed conflict involving Maoists in Nepal, and a similar uprising in several Indian states in
India by Maoist groups known as Naxalites, has placed Dalits at high risk of abuse from
security forces, vigilante groups often acting with the support of the government, and
militants. It has also documented the particular vulnerability of Dalits among children
employed in the worst forms of child labor and among those living with HIV/AIDS. Human
Rights Watch investigated the failure of the state to protect Dalits from discrimination in
receiving relief and rehabilitation after the 2006 tsunami; its recommendations were
submitted to the Indian government as it prepared its disaster management policy. All
reports, editorials, and statements of Human Rights Watch are available on www.hrw.org.
This report focuses solely on the issue of caste discrimination in India in response to its
conspicuous absence in the Government of India’s combined report to CERD. The practice of
“untouchability”–the imposition of social disabilities on persons by reason of their birth in
certain castes–discriminates against more than one-sixth of India’s population.
[1] Dalits, or so-called untouchables (known in Indian legal parlance as scheduled castes), are denied
access to land, forced to work in degrading conditions, and routinely abused at the hands
of the police and of higher-caste groups that often enjoy the state’s protection.
[2] In what has been called India’s “hidden apartheid,” entire villages in many Indian states remain
completely segregated by caste. In focusing on caste discrimination in India, this report
acknowledges, but does not explore, the other pervasive practices of discrimination in India,
including those that target religious minorities. In particular, Human Rights Watch has
extensively documented human rights violations against India’s Christian
and [3] Muslim community, including the state-sponsored massacre of over 2,000 Muslims in the state of
Gujarat in 2002. [4] While the Government of India’s periodic report cites specifically to Constitutional
provisions prohibiting discrimination by the State–including on grounds of a person’s
caste–and generally to the existence of legislation enacting these provisions,
[5] this elaboration of its de jure prohibition on caste discrimination does not reflect the daily reality of the continued practice of “untouchability” and persecution of Dalits in India. Dalits are systematically discriminated against and abused by public authorities and private actors, who act without any fear of punishment as they rarely face sanctions for their violations of Dalits’ fundamental rights.
In response to the Committee’s request that the Government of India submit information on
issues pertaining to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, India’s periodic report states
that “`caste’ cannot be equated with `race’ or covered under `descent’ under Article 1 of the
Convention.”
[13] As a result of this position, the periodic report contains no information on
Dalits in India and the State Party provides that “As a matter of courtesy to the members of
the Committee, if it so desires, the Government of India would be happy to provide
information relating to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes to them though not as a
reporting obligation under CERD.”
[14] India’s position directly contradicts the Committee’s interpretation of Article 1 in General
Recommendation XXIX that “discrimination based on `descent’ includes discrimination
against members of communities based on forms of social stratification such as caste and
analogous systems of inherited status.”
the reports submitted by India in 1996, the Committee affirmed “that the situation of the
scheduled castes and scheduled tribes falls within the scope of the Convention.”
[16] In support of this interpretation, the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism,
A. Condemn caste discrimination and undertake to pursue by all appropriate means a policy of eliminating caste discrimination
The Government of India has not refrained from committing and supporting discriminatory
acts against Dalits, and has failed to implement measures to end caste discrimination.
India has failed to encourage integrationist movements and has not provided for the
development and protection of Dalits, who as a result remain an extremely marginalized
social group.
Article 2 (1) (a): Each State Party undertakes to engage in no act or practice of
racial discrimination against persons, groups of persons or institutions and to
ensure that all public authorities and public institutions, national and local,
shall act in conformity with this obligation.
India’s failure to ensure that all public authorities and public institutions do not engage in
caste-based discrimination is widespread. The discussion below focuses on two examples
that exemplify this failure: treatment of Dalits by the police and discrimination in the
provision of disaster relief. Further examples of this failure are dealt with throughout the
remainder of the Report.
In 2004 the NHRC characterized the law enforcement machinery as the greatest violator of
Dalits’ human rights.
[35] This problem is not a recent one. In 1979 India constituted the
National Police Commission to analyze problems in police performance.
Commission’s recommendations, which include recommendations specific to police abuse
of Dalits, have still not been adopted. Police continue to detain, torture, and extort money
from Dalits without much fear of punishment.
killing of Dalits, rape and sexual assault of Dalit women, and looting of Dalit property by the
police “are condoned, or at best ignored …”
listen to casteist name-calling, unfounded accusations on their character, and threats
against their family and friends.
[39] While under-reporting of police treatment (including torture) of Dalits means that the real
magnitude is unknown, the national Preventing Torture project initiated by People’s Watch,
a Tamil Nadu-based NGO, asserts that Dalits suffer disproportionately at the hands of the
police and are at high risk of being subjected to torture while in police custody.
[40] The Prevention of Atrocities Act, 1989, and the Supreme Court guidelines set out in the D.K. Basu case (1997)
which the Ranvir Sena killed 61 Dalits, Naxalites (leftist guerrilla organizations advocating
the use of violence to achieve land redistribution) retaliated by killing nine people
suspected to be Ranvir Sena supporters. The police responded to the violence by harassing
Although there is no de jure policy of segregation in India, Dalits are subject to
de facto segregation in all spheres, including housing, the enjoyment of public services (see Section
VIII(F)(1)), and education (see Sections VIII(E)(5)(a) and VIII(F)(1)(c)). [135]
This widespread segregation has led to a description of the practice of “untouchability” as India’s “hidden
segregation, instead confining the information provided under Article 3 to India’s support
for the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa and its participation in the World Conference
against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance held in Durban
Tellingly, India lobbied furiously against the inclusion of any references to caste
discrimination, or discrimination on the basis of “work and descent,” in the final conference
Residential segregation is prevalent across the country, and is the rule rather than the
In the rural areas especially, the practice of untouchability is said to be very much alive and is reflected in segregated housing, with the Dalits forced to live at least 1/2 km from the rest of the villagers, and in the prohibition for them to use the wells, the shared water source. Segregation also reportedly exists in the schools, public services and public places (shops, hairdressers and public transport; in restaurants, dishes used by Dalits are sometimes separated from those used by the higher castes).
In its periodic report, India indicates that “[n]o cases have arisen under the…legislations for
The absence of such cases must be questioned in light of the existence and activities of the
Sangh Parivar , which serves as the umbrella organization for Hindu nationalist organizations in India,
including the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National Volunteer Corps, RSS), the Vishwa
Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council, VHP), and the VHP’s militant youth wing, the Bajrang
Dal. In addition to being responsible for discriminatory attacks against Dalits, [147] these
organizations disseminate propaganda targeting both Dalits and religious minorities. [148]
While these organizations bear collective responsibility for widespread violence against
India has failed in its duty to eliminate caste discrimination and ensure the full enjoyment
of the fundamental rights and equality before the law of Dalits guaranteed by Article 5. This
next section closely details the particular rights violations suffered by Dalits. As a general
point, it is important to highlight that the Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955, and the
Prevention of Atrocities Act, 1989 (two of the most important pieces of legislation for the
protection of Dalits), have been rendered increasingly ineffective in their ability to protect
Dalits from fundamental rights’ violations because of the failure of state governments to
properly implement the acts. [152]
areas where the practice of “untouchability” is prevalent, have done very little to make
public and known the provisions of the acts, and have failed to periodically survey the acts’
effectiveness. [153]
the acts’ implementation at any level. [154] Political leaders have also played a significant role
in hindering the implementation of the Prevention of Atrocities Act, 1989. [155]
Dalits are frequently the victims of discriminatory treatment in the administration of justice.
Prosecutors and judges fail to vigorously and faithfully pursue complaints brought by Dalits,
which is evidenced by the high rate of acquittals in such cases. Dalit women suffer
particularly as a result of the deficient administration of justice–rape cases are not
prosecuted in good faith and Dalit women suffer both caste and gender discrimination in
the courtrooms. Moreover, the number of Dalits appointed to judicial office remains low.
Instances of “untouchability” and discrimination against Dalit judges by their non-Dalit
peers have also been reported.
India’s obligation to ensure a person’s right to security and to protect against violence or
bodily harm applies to State and non-State actors. The nature and extent of abuse against
Dalits by the police has been set out above in Section V(A)(1)(a). This section focuses on
widespread violence against Dalits, including sexual violence against Dalit women, and the
failure of Indian government to protect Dalits and ensure their security of person.
For Dalits, the right to personal security has been seriously undermined because of rampant
Media, NGO, and government reports reveal that the police have systematically failed to protect Dalit homes and Dalit individuals from acts of looting, arson, sexual assault, torture, and other inhumane acts such as
stripping and parading Dalit women and forcing Dalits to drink urine and eat feces. [186]
The nature and extent of police abuse of Dalit women has been dealt with above in Section
V(A)(1)(a)(iv). Dalit women are also especially vulnerable to violence by private actors who
commit violent offenses with impunity. As the majority of landless laborers, Dalit women
come into greater contact with landlords and enforcement agencies than upper-caste
women, rendering them more susceptible to abuse. [206]
Landlords use sexual abuse and other forms of violence and humiliation against Dalit women as tools to inflict “lessons”
and crush dissent and labor movements within Dalit communities. [207]
For example, upper-caste groups will engage in mass rapes of Dalit women or in retaliation against Dalits who
strive for political empowerment or violate customary injunctions. [208]
In their attacks on Dalit communities, Ranvir Sena members committed acts of sexual violence against Dalit women.
Human Rights Watch has documented a massacre of Dalits committed in Laxmanpur-Bathe,
Bihar (see Section V(A)(1)(a)(i)), in which women were raped and mutilated before being
killed. [209]
and killed during caste riots. [210]
Dalit women also comprise the majority of victims of gang rapes in India. [211]
Human Rights Watch reported that on April 5, 2003, for example, four upper-caste men abducted a 14-
year-old Dalit girl from her home just outside Jaipur, Rajasthan, and gang-raped her over a
period of three days. Upon her return to her village, the village’s upper-caste community
threatened to remove her family if they reported the incident. [212]
Dalit women are also singled out for other indignities, like being paraded naked, even for petty disputes. [213]
These indignities have symbolic significance. For example, Human Rights Watch reported that on
November 3, 2003, a Dalit woman in Kishanganj, Bihar, was paraded half-naked by a group
of people who wanted to teach a lesson to her family for not relinquishing their claim to a
piece of land.
|
Box 5: Impunity and obstacles to prosecution of rape and killing of Dalit women
|
|
|
While women in India generally face obstacles in prosecuting rape, if a woman is poor,
belongs to a lower-caste, and lives in a rural area, it is even more difficult for her to gain
access to the justice system. [222] Those who are able to pursue cases of sexual assault face entrenched biases at every stage of the process. [223] These obstacles exist whether the acts are carried out by mobs or by individuals.For example, in October 2006, a mob of 60 upper-caste villagers stormed the Bhotmanges
home as they were preparing dinner in Kherlanji village in Bhandara district. Fourty-four-
year-old Surekha, her daughter Priyanka, and sons Roshan and Sudhir were dragged from
their home, stripped naked, beaten and taken to the village square. At the village square,
both women were raped for over an hour, after which all four family members were hacked
to death. More than a month later, the police have yet to take action against the primary
perpetrators of these crimes. [224]
Another case illustrative of the obstacles to justice was presented at the National Public
Hearing held in 2000 by the NCDHR. In this particular case, Ms. Gangawati testified that
after being raped at gunpoint in her own home, her unsuccessful attempts to get the local
police to register her case required her to petition the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh and
the NHRC. While the latter directed the district police to conduct an enquiry, the local police
officer avoided filing her case for months, and even after her case was finally registered, no
action was taken against her attacker. [225]
|
C.Ensure Dalits’ political rights
Article 5 (c): Political rights, in particular the right to participate in elections-to vote and to stand for election-on the basis of universal and equal suffrage, to take part in the Government as well as in the conduct of public affairs at any level and to have equal access to public service.
While Dalits now exercise their franchise in greater numbers than upper-caste community members,[226] their right to vote freely and to stand for election is still not fully guaranteed. These rights have repeatedly been impeded by booth-rigging and booth capturing, denial of access to polls, intimidation, and violence.
1.Booth-capturing and denial of entry to polling booths
Dalits’ right of political participation is denied through the decades-old practice of “booth-capturing,” whereby ballot boxes are stolen by hired hands.[227] For example, in the 1998 national parliamentary elections in Bihar, the Election Commission had to order re-polling in over 700 voting stations after more than 1,100 people were arrested for booth-capturing and tearing up of ballot boxes.[228] The Untouchability in Rural India survey found that in some 12.3 percent of villages, Dalits are still denied entry to polling booths.[229]
2.Intimidation and violence in voting, standing for election, and conduct of public affairs
The 1998 Bihar elections also demonstrate the role of violence and intimidation in elections: in the first phase of elections 15 people were killed and dozens more were injured going to the polls;[230] seven more deaths and further intimidation was reported during the second phase.[231] The violence in Bihar serves as but one example of a widespread practice: according to a 1996 Associated Press report, armies formed by local politicians have intimidated villages during every election in the underdeveloped farmland of northern India.[232] The Indo-Asian News Service (IANS) reported that on August 6, 2006, seven Dalit women from a village in Bihar were allegedly raped at gunpoint by upper-caste landowners for refusing to vote for an upper-caste landowner’s wife in the local elections.[233]
Violence and intimidation are also used to prevent Dalits from standing for election. In October 2005 a Dalit woman, Prabhati Devi, was burned alive for contesting a panchayat (village council) election against an upper-caste candidate in Mirzapur district in Uttar Pradesh in defiance of a local politician’s warning not to contest.[234] In June 1997 the Dalit leaders of the Melavalavu panchayat in Tamil Nadu-who were elected to seats constitutionally reserved for Dalits[235]-were murdered by members of the higher-caste Thevar community, signaling that the ceding of power would not be tolerated by those displaced from their positions on the council.[236] Thevars also threatened Dalits with “economic sanctions” should any of them file for the position of panchayat president, a sanction that would effectively leave Dalits without employment or access to economic or social services in villages in that area.[237]
Those Dalits who are in positions of public office are often unable to properly discharge their public functions. For example, in November 2006 the Asian Human Rights Commission reported that Prem Narayan, a Dalit village head of Vajidpur village in Uttar Pradesh, had been facing discrimination, intimidation, threats, and physical violence in his attempts to discharge his duties as a village head.[238]
3.Denial of entry to public offices
According to the Untouchability in Rural India survey Dalits are also denied entry to panchayat offices in some 14.4 percent of the 499 villages surveyed, which has the effect of denying them access and a right to be heard at the most immediate level of government.[239]
D.Ensure Dalits’ other civil rights
1.Ensure Dalits’ right to freedom of movement and residence within the border of the State
Article 5 (d) (i): The right to freedom of movement and residence within the border of the State.
Dalits’ right to freedom of movement and residence within India is curtailed by residential segregation, by conditions which make Dalits vulnerable to migratory labor, and by the forced displacement of Dalits in the aftermath of episodes of caste violence.
a.Forced Migration of Dalits
For Dalits, among the poorest and least powerful of India’s inhabitants, the choice of where to live is rarely a choice in any meaningful sense. Because Dalits are rarely able to own land (see Section VIII(D)(4)) they are unable to produce their crops for their own consumption or sale in the market.[240] Given the limited amount of jobs and resources in India, and other economic hardships such as droughts, Dalits are often forced to migrate in search of work.[241]
b.Forced displacement of Dalits
The right of Dalits to enjoy freedom of movement and residence is further eroded by large-scale forced displacements of Dalit communities following episodes of caste-based violence. In a typical scenario, Dalit villages are attacked by neighboring upper-caste villagers. Dalits are assaulted during the attack, while their homes and property are looted or destroyed.[242] Dalits then settle in and languish for months in temporary and inadequate homes on government property.[243] The police offer little in terms of security in these cases, either ignoring Dalit calls for help, or actively participating in the violence and looting.[244] Redress is not to be found from the local government either-aside from distributing nominal amounts in compensation or promising construction of new homes, little is done to help the displaced Dalits return home or to prosecute those responsible for the attacks.[245]
Box 6: Instances of Forced Displacement of Dalit VillagersThe 1997 displacement of Dalit villagers from Mangapuram, Virudhunagar district, Tamil Nadu, illustrates the general pattern of Dalit displacement following caste-based violence. Prior to 1997 Mangapuram was home to 3,000 higher-caste Thevar and 250 Pallar (Dalit) families. On March 7, 1996, Thevars attacked Pallars, 150 Pallar houses were set on fire, and a Pallar man was burned alive. Pallars later destroyed several Thevar houses. In retaliation, Thevars threw petrol bombs into the Pallar residential area. On June 10, 1997, the deputy superintendent, a Thevar, attempted to force Pallars out of the village, colluding with hundreds of Thevar villagers who attacked the Pallars and set their houses on fire. The displaced Pallars took refuge in nearby villages, with 300 individuals housed in 250 poorly constructed huts, and another 200 housed in 70 huts. No action was taken against the Thevar police officials or villagers responsible for the attacks and the ensuing displacement.[246]
In 2003 a mass displacement of all 275 Dalit families from Harsola village in Haryana’s Kaithal district followed an attack on the village by upper-caste men.[247] Congress leaders who brought the case to the attention of the NHRC cited the “irresponsible” statements of local officials, such as those indicating that Dalits “were enjoying the situation and were not interested in returning to their homes.”[248]
A fact-finding report by People’s Watch-Tamil Nadu and Dalit Human Rights Monitoring revealed that in 2004 the Dalits of Kalapatti village in Tamil Nadu were forced to flee after an attack by upper-caste Hindus in which over 100 Dalit homes were burned and other property was destroyed.[249]
2.Ensure Dalits’ right to leave any country, including one’s own, and to return to one’s country
Article 5 (d) (ii): The right to leave any country, including one’s own, and to return to one’s country.
Dalits’ right to leave India, while formally granted, is not substantively guaranteed, due to Dalits’ difficulty in acquiring relevant documents (such as birth certificates) and other proof necessary to get a passport.[250]
Dalits can suffer reprisal attacks against the families of those who are able to travel for employment abroad and send remittances back home. Caste-based prejudice has led to attacks against Dalits who become economically better off because of such remittances. Many Dalits in the village of Kodiyangulam, Tamil Nadu, for example, have been sending family members to work in Gulf states in an attempt to rise above their economic oppression at home. But according to the London paper The Guardian, on August 31, 2005, the Dalit villagers were assaulted by hundreds of rampaging policemen, who poisoned their well and destroyed the possessions accumulated over a lifetime of hard work.[251] In a similar episode in Tamil Nadu in 1999, Dalits returning with money from jobs in the Gulf states and elsewhere found themselves attacked by landlords and police when they tried to buy land for their families.[252]
3.Ensure Dalits’ right to marriage and choice of spouse
Article 5 (d) (iv): The right to marriage and choice of spouse.
Rigid social norms of purity and pollution are socially enforced through strict prohibitions on marriage or other social interaction between castes, in violation of Dalits’ right to marry and choose their spouse. These prohibitions on inter-marriage are a hallmark feature of the caste system. Inter-marriages between Dalits and non-Dalits are frequently the flashpoint for conflicts and violence.
a.Prohibitions on marriage between Dalits and non-Dalits
The Untouchability in Rural India survey concluded that “the most severely sanctioned public activity is a Dalit marriage procession passing through the village street.”[253] Wedding processions in northern India are symbols of joy, prosperity, and power, and often include large parties of family and friends accompanied by musical bands and dancing.[254] Dalit wedding processions were banned in more than 47 percent of villages surveyed, as were festival processions in more than 24 percent of villages.[255] The same survey also reported that in at least one village in Alwar district in Rajasthan, no marriage ceremonies for Dalits had taken place in several years as the upper-castes refused to allow any baraats (wedding processions) to come to the village.[256] Adding to Dalits’ humiliation, in 8.4 percent of villages surveyed in the study, Dalits must seek the permission of the upper-castes to marry, and in up to another 10 percent of the villages Dalits are compelled to seek blessings on their marriages from the upper-castes.[257] These acts of public subordination-informal sanctions surrounding marriage activities which upper-caste members are freely permitted to carry on in public-are one of the most harshly enforced and widespread “untouchability” practices to continue today. As a result of the bans on marriage celebrations, many Dalit weddings are carried out quietly without the traditional forms of celebration.[258]
Condemnation for marriage between Dalits and caste members can be quite severe, ranging from social ostracism to punitive violence, including large-scale attacks on Dalit communities.[259] Dalits who have married “above” their caste have reportedly been forced to break all ties with their families. In Attirpa, Kerala, a Dalit girl reported that although she was happy in her marriage she was no longer permitted to see her parents or her natal family.[260] It seems that in instances where marriage between Dalits and caste-members is permitted, the caste family may condition it on rejection of contact with the Dalit family.[261]
Marriages between Dalits and non-Dalits are frequent flashpoints for conflict. Upper-caste dominated panchayats (village councils) have been known to extra-judicially punish inter-caste marriages between Dalits and non-Dalits through public lynching of couples or their relatives, murder (of the bride, the groom, or their relatives), rape, public beatings, and other sanctions.[262] In May 2000 in Hardoi district in Uttar Pradesh, a police constable enraged by his daughter’s marriage to a Dalit was joined by other relatives in shooting and killing four members of his son-in-law’s family.[263] On August 6, 2001, also in Uttar Pradesh, an upper-caste Brahmin boy and a lower-caste Jat girl were dragged to the roof of a house and publicly hanged by members of their own families as hundreds of spectators looked on. The public lynching was punishment for refusing to end an inter-caste relationship.[264]
b.Forced prostitution and rape of Dalit women as an impediment to marriage
The rape of Dalit women by landlords and the caste-based practice of prostitution (see Section V(B)(4)(b)) deny Dalit women the right to marry as there are strong social taboos in India against marrying a woman who has had previous sexual relations; once a woman has been raped, she becomes unmarriageable.[265]
c.Child marriage
Although child marriage is illegal in India, the practice remains rampant, particularly in underdeveloped regions where economic pressure may force families into marrying off children at early ages in order to lighten the economic burden on families with daughters. This is often the case among Dalits. A 12-year old Dalit girl, Chenigall Suseela, was married off by her parents without her consent in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, in 2003.[266] Two years later she ran away from her husband, whom she claimed abused her, and threatened to commit suicide if forced to return. Suseela desired to return to school and sought help from the police and appealed to village elders. After initial refusal by elders from both her and her husband’s village, Suseela’s persistence and determination resulted in what is thought to be the first annulment of a child marriage in India in June 2005.[267] Suseela’s case is significant as she faced opposition to claiming her right to not be married in childhood and to choose her spouse due to her status as a Dalit and seemingly received little help from the police when she reported her situation.[268] Sadly, there are many more Dalit children who are forced into early marriage by economic need and do not have the resources to demand their rights.
The prevalence of rape in villages also contributes to the greater incidence of child marriage in these areas. Early marriage between the ages of 10 years and 16 years persists in large part because of Dalit girls’ vulnerability to sexual assault by upper-caste men and by parents’ fear that their daughter will not be marriageable once she is raped.[269]
d.Inequality of women in family law
India’s marriage and divorce laws still do not grant equality to women despite the Constitution’s guarantees to women of equal rights, liberty, justice, and the right to live with dignity.[270]
4.Ensure Dalits’ right to own property alone as well as in association with others
Article 5 (d) (v): The right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
The right to own property is systematically denied to Dalits. Landlessness-encompassing a lack of access to land, inability to own land, and forced evictions-constitutes a crucial element in the subordination of Dalits. When Dalits do acquire land, elements of the right to own property-including the right to access and enjoy it-are routinely infringed.[271] Land reform legislation is neither implemented nor properly enforced. Dalits’ efforts to secure land have been met with State violence or retaliation by private actors in the form of violence or economic sanctions.
a.Landlessness: lack of access to land, inability to own land, and forced evictions
Denial of the right to own property is at the very core of the caste system. R. Balakrishnan, then-Chairman of the Tamil Nadu State Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes told Human Rights Watch:
The caste system is an economic order. It prevents someone from owning land or receiving an education. It is a vicious cycle and an exploitative economic arrangement. Landowning patterns and being a high caste member are co-terminous. Also, there is a nexus between being lower-caste and landlessness… Caste is a tool to perpetuate exploitative economic arrangements.[272]
The Special Rapporteur on housing has also expressed his concern with the extreme violations of Dalits’ human rights, including with respect to land and housing rights. The Special Rapporteur’s 2005 Annual Report notes: “A majority of Dalits are still prevented from owning land and are forced to live on the outskirts of villages, often on barren land.”[273]
Denial of the right to own property is also practiced through forced evictions.[274] On February 2, 2003, for example, 7,000 Dalits were evicted from their residences at BeliliousPark, in Calcutta, West Bengal.[275] To make way for a development and beautification scheme envisioned for the park, an approximately 500-strong Rapid Action Force, accompanied by ambulances, fire brigades and two or three bulldozers, forcibly entered the Dalit community in Belilious Park, evicted 700 families, and demolished hundreds of brick houses, a school building, temples, and statutes.[276]
A lack of access to land keeps Dalits in a state of economic dependency. Most rural Dalits are agricultural laborers who are economically dependent on their employers and therefore less likely to report abuse.[277] Economic dependency on agricultural jobs also makes Dalits more susceptible to seasonal migratory work patterns (see Section VIII(D)(1)(a)).
b.Prevention of access to, and enjoyment of, own property
Even Dalits who do own land often do not have access to it, or are otherwise prevented from enjoying it. For example, a 1996 study by a NGO, which undertook a door-to-door survey of 250 villages in the state of Gujarat, found that, in almost all villages, many had no record of their land holdings, those who had title to land had no possession, and those who had possession had not had their land measured or faced illegal encroachments from upper-castes.[278]
c.Failure of land reform legislation and efforts
Land reform laws that were intended to provide reparations for the historic landlessness of Dalits[279] have failed due to a lack of political will and bureaucratic commitment, loopholes in the laws, the tremendous manipulative power of the landed classes, excessive interference of courts,[280] and problems in ensuring that oral tenancies are truthfully recorded in land records so as to enable implementation of the land to the tiller policy.[281] The Special Rapporteur on housing has also attributed this failure to the government, noting “weak legislative provisions, inadequate implementation, and a lack of State commitment.”[282] The evidence of this failure is clear; for example, Dalit landlessness is estimated at around 75 percent. Of surplus land collected pursuant to land reform laws, only 69.5 percent has been distributed, of which Dalits have received only 34.6 percent.[283]
d.State suppression of movements requiring land reform and retaliatory violence and economic sanctions against Dalits by private actors
See Sections V(A)(1)(a)(ii); VIII(B) and VIII(E) respectively.
5.Ensure Dalits’ right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion
Article 5 (d) (vii): The right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.
Dalits in India face a number of restrictions on their right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. Caste-based human rights violations that are the subject of this report are often given religious sanction under the theory that Dalits must live segregated lives and perform menial occupations because they are born into a caste outside of the Hindu varna system. As a result, Dalits are routinely denied entry into Hindu temples (see Section VIII(F)(2)(b)). Dalits have responded to ill-treatment by upper-caste Hindus by converting en masse to Buddhism, Christianity, and historically to Islam. The loss of constitutional privileges upon conversion, however, serves as a serious impediment to their freedom to choose their religion. Additionally, most Dalits are ultimately unable to escape their treatment as “untouchables” regardless of the religion they profess.[284] The introduction of anti-conversion legislation in several states has further made religious conversion extremely difficult if not impossible. Finally, Dalits may become targets of forced “reconversions” to Hinduism by sangh parivar groups.[285]
a.Loss of constitutional privileges upon conversion
While the Indian Constitution grants certain constitutional privileges to Hindu, Buddhist, and Sikh Dalits (see Section V(B)), the same benefits do not extend to those who convert to Christianity or Islam. Dalit Christians and Muslims lose their “scheduled caste” status even though they are unable to escape discriminatory treatment from Christians and Muslims. Many Dalit Christians must pray in separate or segregated churches, bury their dead in separate cemeteries, and endure discrimination by non-Dalit priests and nuns.[286]
Descendants of Dalit converts to Islam also face discrimination at the hands of Muslims who trace their ancestry to Arab, Iranian, or Central Asian origin.[287] Descendants of indigenous converts are commonly referred to as ajlaf or “base” or “lowly.”[288] Further, upper-caste Muslims often deny Dalit Muslims entry to graveyards for burial.[289] The continued practice of “untouchability” against Dalit Christians and Muslims undermines the argument that these communities should lose constitutional privileges upon conversion, and have led to charges that the Indian government’s practice of assigning scheduled caste status on the basis of religion amounts to religious discrimination.[290] Additionally, Dalit Christians and Muslims may be subject to multiple forms of discrimination on the basis of their caste and religion, a risk that has increased with the rise of Hindu nationalism in India.[291]
b.Anti-conversion legislation
Dalits’ right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion is explicitly denied through legislation that prohibits or impedes religious conversion. Seven states, a majority of them ruled by the Hindu nationalist BJP-Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Rajasthan, and Tamil Nadu-have introduced legislation designed to make conversion difficult or virtually impossible.[292] Four of the anti-conversion laws explicitly stipulate harsher punishments where the convert is a Dalit, tribal, female, or a minor.[293] Critics have argued that such bills represent a political move by Hindu nationalist groups to maintain their Hindu vote bank.[294] Notably, mass “re-conversions” to Hinduism engineered by VHP, often using threats and coercion, are allowed under these laws.[295]
6.Ensure Dalits’ right to freedom of opinion and expression
Article 5 (d) (viii): The right to freedom of opinion and expression.
Dalits’ right to freedom of opinion and expression is compromised by police abuse of Dalit activists (see Section V(A)(1)(a)(ii)), retaliatory attacks by private actors that are carried out with impunity (see Section VIII(B)), and social and economic boycotts against Dalits (see Section VIII(E)). These actions often result when Dalits refuse to carry out caste-based tasks or seek to defy the social order; they frequently entail punishment of entire communities.[296] As the National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes surmises: “Whenever Dalits have tried to organize themselves or assert their rights, there has been a backlash from the feudal lords resulting in mass killings of Dalits, gang rapes, looting and arsoning” of Dalit villages.[297]
7.Ensure Dalits the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association
Article 5 (d) (ix): The right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
Though the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association is enshrined in Article 19 of the Indian Constitution, Dalit protests are often met with police violence or arbitrary arrest and detention. Dalit activists have been detained and charged under draconian national security and anti-terrorism laws (see Section V(A)(1)(a)(ii)). In addition, police have made use of the Sedition Act, embodied under Indian Penal Code Section 124A, to prohibit peaceful meetings and protests.[298] A number of such protests emerge in response to the desecration of statues of prominent Dalit Dr. B.R. Ambedkar by upper-caste community members resentful of these statues in public spaces.[299] As one of the chief architects of India’s constitution and a Dalit leader, statues of Dr. Ambedkar represent to Dalits the potential for “education, success, contribution to the political world of India, courage, [and] empowerment through relationship to government”[300] When Dalits have protested such vandalism, the police and upper-caste community members have often responded with violent attacks and arbitrary arrests.[301]
In November 2006 the entire state of Maharashtra was engulfed in protests by Dalits after upper-caste community members desecrated a Dr. Ambedkar statue in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh.[302] While the mob violence, including the burning of a train, cannot be justified, the reprisals were extreme. In response to the protests, a Dalit youth was lynched, and the police opened fire in Osmanabad, killing two people.[303] Moreover, a curfew was declared in four cities, where large-scale violence had erupted.[304] In light of the violence, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has convened a meeting for the United Progressive Alliance-led government to review the progress of development projects for Dalits.[305]
The Ramabai Killings
The Ramabai killings of July 1997 are a notorious example of the use of excessive force by the police in response to peaceful and democratic protests.[306] On July 11, police opened fire on a crowd of Dalits protesting the desecration of a statue of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar in their settlement in Bombay.[307] According to Human Rights Watch’s investigations, the firings-in which 10 people were killed and 27 were injured-were both unprovoked and caste motivated.[308] The incident led to significant unrest throughout the state of Majarashtra, including rioting and social boycotts against protesting Dalits.[309] According to the Times of India, “the people owing allegiance to the ruling alliance parties had made determined efforts to terrorize and punish the Buddhists [converted Dalits] for having dared to protest against the shameful act of desecration of the Ambedkar statue.”[310] In one such instance, a Dalit woman was stripped and paraded naked around Karanja-Ghadge village in Wardha district, and later allegedly framed for murder by the police after she complained of her ill-treatment.[311]
E.Ensure Dalits’ economic, social and cultural rights
Article 5 (e): Economic, social and cultural rights.
Dalits’ economic, social and cultural rights are routinely infringed by State and private actors with respect to all elements of the right to work (including in particular the right to free choice of employment and just and favorable conditions), the right to form and join trade unions, the right to housing (through segregation, discrimination in urban environments and limits on the right to own property), the right to access particular servicesin a non-discriminatory manner, the right to education and training, and rights regarding equal participation in cultural activities, such as wedding processions.
Box 7: Use of economic and social boycotts against DalitsOne practice that particularly influences the overall enjoyment of economic and social rights is the upper-caste imposition of social and economic boycotts against Dalits as a form of retaliation for assertion of rights. These boycotts are reinforced by the panchayat (village council) who levy fines against upper-caste individuals who refuse to participate.[312]
In April 1998 upper-caste community members-reportedly angered by the election of a Dalit to the local panchayat and by Dalit attempts to increase their participation in village politics and activities-imposed a complete social boycott against Dalits in a village in Gujarat. Upper-caste community members were instructed not to supply anything, even basic necessities, to Dalits, and landowners were told to fire Dalit farmhands. Any upper-caste person found to be in violation of the boycott was fined and threatened. When Dalits tried to file a complaint for authorities to intervene, they were told that political pressure on police meant that a complaint could not be registered. Dalits continued to be denied basic necessities such as access to potable water, milk, and other daily needs even after the cases were filed.[313]
1.Ensure Dalits’ rights to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work, to protection against unemployment, to equal pay for equal work, to just and favorable remuneration
Article 5 (e) (i): The rights to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work, to protection against unemployment, to equal pay for equal work, to just and favorable remuneration.
The denial of the right to work and free choice of employment lies at the very heart of the caste system. Denial of free choice of employment and allocation of labor on the basis of caste are fundamental tenets of the caste system and are integral to sustaining caste inequality and hierarchy.[314] Dalits’ talents, merits, and hard work are of little consequence in a system where occupational status is determined by birth. Dalits are forced to work in “polluting” and degrading occupations such as manual scavenging and are subject to exploitative labor arrangements such as bonded labor, migratory labor, and forced prostitution. Dalit children are also vulnerable to child labor in these and other areas. Dalits are also discriminated against in hiring and in the payment of wages by private employers. Dalits’ attempts to enforce their rights are met with retaliatory violence (see Section VIII(B)) and social and economic boycott[315] (see Section VIII(E)).
In its combined Second and Third periodic reports to the CEDAW Committee, the Government of India reports that merely “stray cases [of bonded labor] are reported from time to time.”[316] This is in direct contradiction to the overwhelming amount of evidence of the Dalit community’s continuing vulnerability to bonded labor. The government neglects to even mention caste discrimination in discussing indebtedness among the Dalit community, instead pointing to their poverty and to alcoholism as one of the reasons for their continued indebtedness and exploitation.[317] Additionally, the effectiveness of the Government’s measures is not critically examined. While the government reports on the number of scavengers, bonded labors, and the like who have been “rehabilitated,” it fails to estimate the number of Dalits who remain victims to these dehumanizing practices. Still, the government does acknowledge that it “has a lot more to do to fulfill the Constitutional commitment of raising the status of [Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes] to that of the rest of the population.”[318]
a.Manual Scavenging
Manual scavenging is a practice by which Dalits remove excreta from public and private dry pit latrines and carry them to dumping grounds and disposal sites.[319] Though long outlawed, the practice of manual scavenging continues in most states,[320] and will continue as long as dry latrines are used.[321] In 2002-03 the Union Ministry for Social Justice and Empowerment admitted the existence of 6.76 lakh (676,000) manual scavengers in India and the presence of 92 lakh (9,200,000) dry latrines, spread across 21 States and UnionTerritories.[322] According to unofficial estimates, the number of manual scavengers in India may be as high as 1.3 million.[323] Manual scavengers are employed by private and public employers, including the military engineering services, the army, the railways, and other organs of the state.[324]
The occupation of manual scavenging is both caste-based and hereditary.[325] It is also the only economic opportunity available to many Dalit women hailing from scavenger sub-castes,[326] with the result that more Dalit women and girls work as manual scavengers than Dalit men.[327] Manual scavengers are at the very bottom of the caste hierarchy; they also face discrimination from other Dalits who treat them as “untouchables,” creating an unquestioned “‘untouchability’ within the ‘untouchables’”[328] The entrenched discrimination against manual scavengers makes it difficult to find alternative employment pursuant to government rehabilitation schemes, and even more difficult to convince scavengers that they are able to take on, or are “worthy of performing,” different occupations.[329]
Manual scavenging is characterized by hazardous working conditions and health hazards. A manual scavenger from Paliyad village, Ahmedabad district, Gujarat, described how in the rainy season, the “water mixes with the feces that we carry in baskets on our heads, it drips onto our clothes, our faces. When I return home, I find it difficult to eat food. But in the summer there is often no water to wash your hands before eating. It is difficult to say which [season] is worse.”[330] Manual scavengers are routinely exposed to both human and animal waste without the protection of masks, uniforms, gloves, shoes, appropriate buckets, and mops.[331] This has severe repercussions for their health; the majority of scavengers suffer from anaemia, diarrhea, and vomiting, with 62 percent suffering respiratory diseases, 32 percent suffering skin diseases, 42 percent suffering jaundice, and 23 percent suffering trachoma, leading to blindness. Many scavengers have also died of carbon monoxide poisoning while cleaning septic tanks.[332] In Mumbai, for instance, Dalits are lowered into manholes to clear sewage blockages-often without any protection.[333] More than 100 workers die every year due to inhalation of toxic gases or drowning in excrement.[334] The fear of being fired by municipality officials keeps manual scavengers from demanding higher wages or sanitary instruments.[335]
Manual scavenging is neither justly nor favorably remunerated, and several family members (usually women and girls) often have to be engaged to do the work assigned to one individual. As a result many families have to borrow money from their upper-caste neighbors and consequently go into bondage (see Section VIII(E)(1)(b)). In addition, almost no compensation has been delivered to the families of manual scavengers who are killed cleaning sewers.[336]
These problems have not been alleviated by the Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act, 1993, or its rehabilitation program. For example, an increase in the number of dry latrines since 1989,[337] ineffectiveness in the training program[338] and a lack of co-ordination among responsible ministries[339] mean that despite the fact that the Act was intended to be fully implemented by October 2, 2002,[340] only 151,930 out of the total 676,009 manual scavengers identified as of 2004 by the NHRC have been retrained and 394,638 have been rehabilitated.[341] These failures reflect a fundamental lack of political commitment in the effort to eliminate manual scavenging.[342] They have necessitated the filing of a public interest litigation petition on behalf of manual scavengers before the Supreme Court in 2003 seeking the enforcement of the Act.[343] This petition alleges that manual scavenging still exists, including in public sector undertakings, and urges the Court to issue time-bound directions to the Government of India and to state governments to take effective steps to eliminate the practice and to simultaneously formulate and implement comprehensive rehabilitation plans.[344] The lack of political will of state governments to implement the Act was evidenced in 2004 when the Supreme Court requested the court presence of Secretaries of seven states for failure to file responses to the petition.[345] In response to the Supreme Court order, many states reported to the Court that no dry latrines existed in their states.[346]
b.Bonded Labor
There are an estimated 40 million bonded laborers in India, of whom 15 million are children.[347] The vast majority of these laborers are Dalits or tribals.[348] Bonded labor is sustained by the caste system, in particular through the traditional expectation of free labor and/or inadequate remuneration for work, the lack of Dalit ownership of land, social and economic boycotts levied by upper-caste community members (see Section VIII(E)),[349] police extortion and looting (see Section V(A)(1)(a)(v)), and by acts or threats of violence that prevent Dalits from reporting abuses against them (including that they are being held in bondage).[350]
Bonded labor also results from indebtedness to employers or moneylenders on whom Dalits must rely because of inadequate wages[351] and because of the reluctance of institutional agencies to lend to the poor in general and to Dalits in particular. Under the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976, payment of less than minimum wage for the purposes of working off a debt also amounts to bondage. Most agricultural laborers Human Rights Watch interviewed for a report published in 1999 were paid between Rs. 15 and Rs. 25 (US$0.38 to $0.63), or two to three kilograms of rice, per day, well below the minimum wage prescribed in their state.[352] In 2002 Human Rights Watch interviewed Dalit villagers in Uttar Pradesh who weave saris on looms owned by traders and who are forced to labor on agricultural lands. “We have very little land, less than five acres,” a Dalit woman told Human Rights Watch. “Yes, of course we work on the landlords’ land.”[353] In exchange for a day’s labor, a worker receives five kilograms of wheat, worth about Rs. 40 (U.S.$0.83).[354] “They don’t even measure the five kilograms,” one man complained. “They just fill up a sack and bring it out to us.”[355]Another man explained that they couldn’t survive on the money earned from this and from sari weaving, so they had to take loans from the traders.[356]
While the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976 seeks to abolish all agreements and obligations arising out of the bonded labor system,[357] the extent to which bonded laborers have been identified, released, and rehabilitated in the country is negligible.[358] For example, out of the 3000 cases filed under the Act in Punjab since 1998, only 10 have completed the judicial process.[359] Debt relief legislation has been similarly ineffective, with the NHRC concluding that “the beneficial provisions of law, which could at least reduce debt burden of Scheduled Castes [,] have not been made use of to reduce the incidents of atrocities against Scheduled Castes related to indebtedness.”[360] Rehabilitation programs for individuals who have been released from bonded labor are not successful due to their failure to ensure substantial alternative employment,[361] implement rehabilitation immediately after release,[362] and ensure timely provision of benefits.[363]
c.Forced Migratory Labor
The susceptibility of Dalits to forced migration for work has been outlined in Section VIII(D)(1)(a). Migrant laborers are particularly susceptible to abuse and exploitation; they are seldom paid the minimum wage, work long hours, live in subhuman conditions, and suffer physical abuse if they try to escape their place of work.[364] These dangers have not been addressed by the Inter State Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Service Conditions) Act, 1979. Rather, the NHRC has identified this Act as the least successful of all labor laws.[365] The NHRC attributes this failure to legal loopholes and to the apathy of political leaders in both sending and receiving states.[366]
d.Forced Prostitution the Devadasi System
Dalit girls and women are additionally vulnerable to exploitative labor in the form of forced prostitution (see Section V(B)(4)(b)).
e.Child Labor
While a survey conducted by India’s National Sample Survey Organization between 1999 and 2000 calculated 10.4 million working children, unofficial estimates reach 100 million.[367] A majority of these children are Dalits.[368] Dalit children are more likely to end up as child laborers due to their extreme poverty, the discrimination they face in schools,[369] and the need to support their families, including after episodes of violence in which their families’ economic assets have been destroyed.[370]
A number of factors make Dalit children especially vulnerable to the types and effects of exploitative labor described above. For instance, migratory labor is especially pervasive amongst Dalits, and children are often expected to work alongside their parents in day-labor jobs.[371] Dalit children also perform bonded labor. Fourteen-year-old Ashish M. working in the silk industry told Human Rights Watch that he could not leave his loom owner because he was paying off an advance, which in two years he had reduced from Rs. 2,500 (U.S.$25) to Rs. 475 (US$9.90). “The owner pays, but deducts for the advance,” he said. “He deducts but won’t write off the whole advanceWe only make enough to eat.”[372] Dalit children, and girls in particular, are also exposed to the risks associated with manual scavenging both because of the hereditary nature of the work, and because they often must step in to assist their parents with their jobs.[373] The health risks for child manual scavengers are manifest (see Section VIII(E)(1)(a)). Health risks are also endemic to the practice of devadasi which is directed at the prostitution of Dalit girls (see Section V(B)(4)(b)).
While child labor laws (in particular the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986) are generally not sufficiently enforced, Dalit children remain especially vulnerable to bonded and other exploitative labor arrangements. The NHRC has found that, at least in Andhra Pradesh, there is a lack of credible efforts by political leadership to ensure exemplary punishment of employers who use child labor.[374] This lack of accountability results from a number of factors, including the fact that upper-caste community members dominate local political bodies, the police and the judiciary, bonded labor vigilance committees, and child labor committees responsible forenforcing relevant laws.[375] Apathy and corruption also contribute to a denial of the problem by many government officials.[376] In some cases, the violations against Dalit children result from gaps in the law. For example, Dalit children are forced to work in industries considered “polluting,” such as the leather industry, which is outside the Act because the Act does not cover home-based work or consider the leather industry hazardous.[377] Rehabilitation programs[378] accompanying the Act also fail to adequately address child labor because they suffer from a lack of political commitment, non-enforcement, and weaknesses inherent in the Act itself.[379]
f.Discrimination in hiring and wage payments
Private employers routinely discriminate against Dalits both in hiring and in the payment of wages. This discrimination is felt acutely by Dalit women (see Section V(B)(4)(a)). The Untouchability in Rural India survey revealed that in 36 percent of the villages studied, Dalits were denied wage-paid employment in agriculture and in one-third of the villages were excluded from construction labor on the grounds that upper-caste community members did not want Dalits to “pollute” their homes. In 25 percent of the villages, Dalits received less than the market wage rate for their labor. According to NCDHR, “untouchability” was also practiced in the payment of wages such that “the Dalits received wages in cash or kind from a respectable distance so that physical touch of a Dalit was avoided.”[380] Even well-educated Dalits are not immune from discrimination by private employers.[381]
Neither the Minimum Wages Act, 1948, nor the Equal Remuneration Act, 1976, sufficiently guard against these disparities. Specifically, the NHRC has concluded that the objectives of relevant laws have been soundly defeated by an inadequate and unresponsive enforcement machinery, the dominant social and economic position of the employer, a dilatory and ineffective adjudication process, the lack of alternative employment opportunities, and the absence of government support.[382] Additionally, gaps in protection derive from the fact that the Minimum Wages Act does not apply to employers who employ less than 1,000 workers[383] and employers do not need to pay the minimum wage in cash if their payment of wages in kind have been customary and their continuance is necessary.[384] The latter provision is particularly problematic for agricultural laborers, a majority of whom are Dalits.[385] Dalits seeking the protection of these labor laws also risk retaliation, including being fired or physically assaulted.[386]
2.Ensure Dalits’ right to form and join trade unions
Article 5 (e) (ii): The right to form and join trade unions.
Dalits’ right to form and join trade unions may be jeopardized in several ways. First, the Registrar of Cooperatives, the government agency in charge of overseeing the administration, working, and development of cooperatives,[387] has been unwilling to register a cooperative whose workers are illiterate-which Dalits often are, and in disproportionately greater numbers than the rest of the population (see Section VIII(E)(5)(c)).[388] Second, the Registrar will often “suspect” economic activities where no product is manufactured, and are unlikely to register such cooperatives. This negatively affects the millions of Dalits who are employed in various service-oriented occupations as rag-pickers, manual scavengers, cleaners, day laborers and the like.[389] Finally, Dalit workers are often excluded from the government’s employment classificatory schemes, which define “worker” as someone with an employer.[390] Dalits who do not have employers are not classified as workers, and are therefore unable to form or join any unions.
3.Ensure Dalits’ right to housing
Article 5 (e) (iii): The right to housing.
Despite the Committee’s clarification that States Parties must “[t]ake measures against discriminatory practices of local authorities or private owners with regard to residence and access to adequate housing for members of affected communities,”[391] Dalits’ right to housing is continuously undermined by deeply entrenched segregation, discrimination in housing in urban environments, and violations of their right to own property.
a.Segregation
See Section VI(A).
b.Discrimination in housing in urban environments
In urban environments, Dalits’ right to housing is compromised by caste discrimination. For example, the unwillingness of upper-caste urban dwellers to live near or with Dalits means that Dalits seeking housing in urban areas will typically face a litany of questions from potential landlords seeking to determine their caste status.[392] Similarly, housing developments built by Dalits or occupied by Dalit residents fare adversely in comparison with the demand and price for comparable housing.[393]
c.Violations of Dalits’ right to own property
See Section VIII(D)(4).
4.Ensure Dalits’ right to public health, medical care, social security, and social services.
Article 5 (e) (iv): The right to public health, medical care, social security and social services.
Caste-based occupations that Dalits are made to perform, such as manual scavenging (see Section VIII(E)(1)(a)), and forced prostitution, routinely expose Dalits to serious and sometimes fatal health hazards, including exposure to HIV/AIDS. In addition, Dalits are frequently refused admission to hospitals and denied access to health care and treatment.
Being refused admission to hospitals, health care and treatment is a key way in which the Dalits’ right to public health and social services is denied. The Untouchability in Rural India survey found that Dalits were denied entry into private health centers or clinics in 74 out of 348 villages surveyed, or 21.3 percent of villages.[394] Overall, the study found that in 30-40 percent of the villages surveyed, public health workers refused to visit Dalit villages.[395] In 15-20 percent of villages, Dalits were denied admission to public heath clinics, or if admitted received discriminatory treatment in 10-15 percent of the villages.[396]
The study also reported that Dalit women deal with government officials most frequently in attempting to access healthcare for themselves and their children and often encounter discrimination from auxiliary nurse-midwives and anganvadi workers (community development workers).[397] Dalits are denied entry to clinics, charged fees for services that should be free, and anganvadi workersmay even refuse to visit Dalit hamlets.[398]
In Uttar Pradesh, anganvadis (community centers) are known to practice “untouchability” and as a result pregnant women are forced to go without health care.[399] Doctors at the local hospital in Pandalam Thekkekara, Kerala, are seen to spend much more time treating upper-caste women than the Dalit women.[400] In Attirpa, Kerala, a non-Dalit anganvadi workerreportedly discriminated against her Dalit colleague.[401]
The general discrimination against Dalits in health care can also contribute to or exacerbate serious health problems such those associated with HIV/AIDS. Although HIV/AIDS affects a heterogeneous group of people in India, some of the risk factors (particularly “migration and mobility” and “low status of women”)[402] point to a disproportionate impact on marginalized groups such as Dalits.[403] Dalit women and girls who are forced to become devadasis are at particular risk of contracting HIV.[404] Existing inequities and the stigma that accompanies HIV/AIDS also mean that Dalits infected by HIV/AIDS are vulnerable to increased social stigma and discrimination in access to education, health care, and other services as compared both with other Dalits and with non-Dalits who are HIV-positive.[405]
5.Ensure Dalits’ right to education and training
Article 5 (e) (v): The right to education and training.
Dalit children face considerable hardships in schools, including discrimination, discouragement, exclusion, alienation, physical and psychological abuse, and even segregation, from both their teachers and their fellow students.[406] CERD has also noted the effects of this type of disparagement in stating “that the degree to which acts of racial discrimination and racial insults damage the injured party’s perception of his/her own worth and reputation is often underestimated.”[407] Caste discrimination persists even in institutions of higher education. Dalit children’s right to education is further eroded by their poverty and the generational repetition of under-education.[408] A majority of Dalit children must work to help ensure their families’ economic survival. In addition their parents are far more likely to be illiterate.[409]
While the Constitution requires free and compulsory education for all children until age 14, the right to education free from discrimination is not secured for Dalit children. 99 percent of Dalit students are enrolled in government schools with substandard facilities that lack basic infrastructure, classrooms, teachers, and teaching aids.[410] Dalit schoolchildren also face discrimination and discouragement from higher-caste community members who perceive education for Dalits as both a waste and a threat.[411] Their hostility toward Dalits’ education-which includes discrimination against Dalit teachers-is linked to the perception that Dalits are not meant to be educated, are incapable of being educated, or if educated, would pose a threat to village hierarchies and power relations.[412]
a.Segregation in classrooms and discrimination by teachers
Dalit children’s right to education free from discrimination is constantly undermined by the treatment they receive at school. Teachers maintain and impart discriminatory attitudes in their classrooms, forcing children to sit in the back of the room, segregating Dalit children from non-Dalits during lunchtime,[413] forbidding non-Dalit children from sitting next to Dalit children or touching their plates (see Section VIII(F)(1)(c)), expressly limiting Dalit student participation in class, requiring Dalit children to take on additional custodial duties, subjecting them to verbal abuse, and grading them with unjustifiably low marks.[414]
Additionally, Dalit children are often subjected to corporal punishment by their teachers. As the Special Rapporteur on the right to education noted in his report before the 67th session of the then-Commission on Human Rights, “teachers have been known to declare that Dalit pupils ‘cannot learn unless they are beaten.’”[415] These practices serve to discourage and alienate Dalit children, contributing to their high drop-out rates.[416] Even more perniciously such practices serve to instill and reinforce Dalit children’s sense of inferiority, erode their sense of personal dignity and force them to internalize caste distinctions.[417]
b.Low enrollment and high drop-out rates of Dalit students
As a result of their discriminatory treatment, large numbers of Dalit children drop out of school, especially in the early elementary stages. Though the Committee has made clear that States Parties should “[r]educe school drop-out rates for children of all communities, in particular for children of affected communities, with special attention to the situation of girls,”[418] the statistics for the enrollment of Dalit children, especially girls, are a cause for distress. According to the 2002 India Education Report, school attendance in rural areas in 1993-1994 was 64.3 percent for Dalit boys and 46.2 percent for Dalit girls, compared to 74.9 percent among boys and 61 percent for girls from other social groups.[419] According to a 2001-2002 report prepared by the Indian government, “the drop-out rate in Scheduled Castes during 1990-91 was as high as 49.35 percent at primary stage and 67.77 percent at middle stage and 77.65 percent at secondary stage.”[420] The statistics for higher education are no less alarming-the same government report states that enrollment of Dalit students at graduate, post-graduate and professional/research/PhD levels is “abysmally low,” at 8.73 percent, 8 percent, and 2.77 percent respectively.[421]
Discrimination in schools and the resulting drop-out rates for Dalit children are intimately linked to child labor.[422] A social worker in Karnataka told Human Rights Watch: “A child will say to his or her parents, ‘The teacher told me not to come tomorrow, that I am no good for studying.’ Instead of asking why the teacher has said this, the parents will send the child to work.”[423]
c.Low literacy rates for Dalits
Low literacy rates for the Dalit population are a clear indication of the ways in which the school system fails Dalit children. The 2001 population census shows that the literacy rate among Dalits is 54.70 percent compared to 68.81 percent among others.[424] Illiteracy in turn results in a lack of gainful employment options for Dalits.[425]
d.Labor patterns (migratory and child labor) affect Dalits’ access to education
Migratory labor serves as a hindrance to education in that it prevents Dalit children from being able to continuously attend school and, ultimately, from being able to advance with their class (once students miss 18 days, they are no longer allowed to advance in the same grade).[426] Dalit parents generally take their children with them while searching for labor, and older boys and girls are expected to either work alongside their parents or stay at home to care for younger siblings.[427] Though the attendant problems of migratory work are visited on non-Dalit agricultural workers as well, they are especially pervasive among Dalits, who are overwhelmingly landless and engaged in agricultural work, and thus uniquely susceptible to forces that push them into migrant labor[428] (see Section VIII(D)(1)(a)).
e.Discrimination in Higher Education
Caste bias erodes Dalit students’ right to education even in institutions of higher education. In September 2006 allegations of caste-based discrimination and intimidations surfaced at the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences, India’s premier medical institute. In written complaints submitted to the director of the Institute, two first-year Dalit students complained of casteist remarks and various forms of harassment and intimidation from senior upper-caste students.[429] The complaints were accompanied by a memorandum signed by 40 students, recounting similar incidents of harassment and intimidation.[430] Similarly, Dalit doctors at the GuruTegBahadurHospital have written about a “biased attitude towards reserved category junior residents.”[431] The incidents of caste-based discrimination in institutions of higher learning are illustrative of the depth and breadth of anti-Dalit sentiment in education, and show that such biases transcend the rural/urban divide and affect the entirety of the education system, from elementary schools to universities.
f.Discrimination against Dalit teachers
Like Dalit students, Dalit teachers also face rampant discrimination; they too are segregated for purposes of food and water consumption.[432] Discrimination against Dalit teachers has at times turned violent. In December 2005 Satyanarayan Prasad, a Dalit teacher, was assaulted in a village in Bihar by members of the dominant caste who could not accept the fact that their children were being taught by a Dalit. Prasad suffered serious head injuries as a result of the assault. When she attempted to lodge a complaint with the police, the police termed the incident as “insignificant.”[433]
6.Ensure Dalits’ right to equal participation in cultural activities
Article 5 (e) (vi): The right to equal participation in cultural activities.
a.Dalits prohibited from taking part in religious and cultural rituals and festivals
The denial of Dalits’ right to equal participation in cultural activities is a core component of the caste system. The very fact of being a Dalit signifies being in a subordinate position vis-vis the rest of Hindu society, and exclusion from cultural activities is a clear way of demonstrating this separateness. Consequently, Dalits are routinely prevented from taking part in religious and cultural rituals and festivals, with clashes ensuing if they chose to disobey the prohibitions.[434] The various ways in which the marriage ceremony is circumscribed are illustrative of such prohibitions; Dalit bridegrooms are not permitted to partake in the marriage tradition of riding a mare through the village, and Dalit marriages in general must be performed very quietly, without the public pomp and processions that usually accompany upper-caste weddings.[435] The Untouchability in Rural India survey found that out of the 483 villages surveyed, a ban on marriage processions on roads was in place in 47.4 percent of villages, while a ban on festival processions on public roads was in place in 23.8 percent of villages.[436]
b.Compulsory, exploitative, and degrading nature of rural Dalits’ participation in cultural activities
On the rare occasions when Dalits are included in village ceremonies and festivals, the compulsory and degrading manner of their participation also speaks to the inequality they suffer. For example, during the Marama village festival in Karnataka state, upper-caste Hindus force Dalits to sacrifice buffalos and drink their blood, and to then mix the blood with cooked rice and run into the village fields without their chappals (slippers).[437] Also, the participation of Dalits in the ceremonies of their villages often amounts to little more than exploitation, as village custom mandates that Dalits render free services in times of death, marriage, or any other village function.[438]
F.Ensure Dalits’ right of access to any place or service intended for use by the general public
Article 5 (f): The right of access to any place or service intended for use by the general public, such as transport, hotels, restaurants, cafes, theatres and parks.
The pervasiveness of residential segregation in violation of Article 3 of the Convention has been detailed in Section VI(A). Dalits are also denied equal access to a spectrum of places and services intended for use by the general public. They are excluded from or receive discriminatory treatment in private businesses, including tea shops, barber shops, village shops, and cinemas.[439] The extent to which these practices violate Article 5(f) was noted with particular concern by the Committee in 1996 in the following terms:
The Committee is particularly concerned about reports that people belonging to scheduled castes and tribes are often prevented from using public wells or entering cafs or restaurants and that their children are sometimes separated from other children in schools, in violation of article 5(f) of the Convention.[440]
The table in Appendix I of this report reveals the magnitude of the denial of Dalits’ access to places and services intended for use by the general public.
1.Denial of access to state-run places or services
Dalits are routinely denied access to police stations, government ration shops, post offices, schools, water facilities, and panchayat (village council)offices.[441]
a.Denial of Entry to Police Stations
The Untouchability in Rural India survey found that Dalits were denied entry into police stations in 27.6 percent of villages surveyed.[442] This denial also enables violations of other rights guaranteed by the Convention, including Article 2(1) (see Section V(A)), Article 5(a) (see Section VIII(A)), Article 5(b) (see Section VIII(B)), and Article 6 (see Section IX).
b.Denial of Entry to Government Ration Shops & Post Offices
The survey also found that in 25.7 percent of villages surveyed, Dalits were denied entry to government ration shops that sell food at affordable prices to the poor, thus depriving them of access to food.[443] Dalits were also forbidden to enter post offices in 19.2 percent of the villages surveyed.[444]
c.Segregation in schools
Segregation in schools undermines Dalit children’s right to education free from discrimination as guaranteed by Article 5(d)(v) of ICERD. Dalit children are routinely forced to sit in the back of the classroom, and are segregated from non-Dalit children during lunchtime.[445] Even Dalit teachers may be segregated from non-Dalit teachers in accessing food and water during lunchtime[446] (see Section VIII(E)(5)(a)).Segregation encourages high drop-out rates among Dalits[447] and perpetuates “untouchability” practices by teaching non-Dalit children that “untouchability” is both an acceptable and necessary practice. This segregation is particularly evident in the Mid-Day Meal Scheme.
The Mid-Day Meal Scheme was initiated following a Supreme Court order as a means of addressing hunger and malnutrition among schoolchildren.[448] However, according to a study conducted by the Indian Institute of Dalit Studies, the states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar-where a third of India’s Dalits live-have refused to implement the program.[449] Programs have also been closed because of upper-caste community opposition;[450] upper-castes have also opposed the hiring of Dalit cooks for the program.[451] Where the program is in place, Dalit students’ access to food has been restricted. In many places, the program has been organized in a higher-caste locality, away from the Dalit locality.[452] In two locales in Tamil Nadu, the meals are provided in a temple, “raising immediate questions of exclusion for Dalit children, who are generally forbidden entry into temples, as well as for other non-Hindu children.”[453] In October 2006 an article in the Indian Express quoted a primary school student, Shailesh Solanki, as follows: “We are not allowed to sit with children of the other castes. We are always asked to sit separately. This is done every time we are served food at noon. Even the food served to us is less in quantity.”[454] Objections to the segregation of Dalit students in the mid-day meal program have been dealt with punitively. For example, in December 2003, a school district in Gujarat transferred seven Dalit teachers out of the district for objecting to this segregation.[455]
d.Denial of access to water and irrigation facilities
One of the most basic and most harmful ways in which segregation through “untouchability” is imposed upon Dalits is through denial of access to water. Dalits are not allowed by their higher-caste neighbors to draw water from the same wells or hand-pumps as non-Dalits.[456] More than 20 percent of Dalits do not have access to safe drinking water, only 9.84 percent of Scheduled Castes households have access to sanitation (as compared to 26.76 percent for non-Scheduled Castes households),[457] and the vast majority of Dalits depend on the “goodwill” of upper-caste community members to allow them to access wells, which are almost always situated in upper-caste colonies and villages.
Denied adequate quantities of potable water, Dalit women may need to travel long distances to obtain the amounts necessary for the survival of their families, resulting in the infringement of other fundamental rights, such as the right to the highest attainable standard of health, the right to adequate food, and the right to gain a living by work.[458] Lack of sufficient water and adequate sanitation facilities devastates the health of entire communities.[459] Furthermore, for the large numbers of Dalits who are dependent on land for their sustenance, the inability to access water for irrigation purposes has enormous consequences on their livelihood and sustenance.[460] The Untouchability in Rural India survey found that in slightly more than a third of some 466 villages surveyed across 11 states, Dalits were denied access to irrigation facilities and thus prevented from tending to fields that they cultivate.[461] Finally, the deprivation of a basic human right such as water is a constant reminder of the inherent indignity of India’s caste system
2.Denial of entry to privately run places or services intended for use by the general public
Many privately run businesses, such as cafs, restaurants, cinemas, and hotels[462] practice forms of “untouchability.” Private individuals also enforce “untouchability” in their homes, as well as in public spaces, including public streets, market places, temples, and even in cremation or burial grounds.
a.Prohibition on Inter-Dining between Dalits and non-Dalits
The prohibition on inter-dining operates in restaurants, hotels, tea-stalls, and schools in addition to private homes. The Untouchability in Rural India survey found that in over 70 percent of villages surveyed, the prohibition against inter-dining is prevalent; the practice was reported in each of the 11 states studied.[463] In many tea-shops and dhabas (food stalls), separate crockery and cutlery are used for serving Dalits.[464] The “two-glass system,” whereby Dalits use a separate set of glasses for tea-drinking which they are then required to wash, is practiced in nearly a third of all villages surveyed in the report.[465]
Box 8: “Studying Together, Eating Apart”[466]Velmurugan, a Dalit boy, and Ramesh, a non-Dalit, are friends from school. Velmurugan is often invited to study with Ramesh at his home, as Velmurugan’s home in the Dalit colony does not have electricity and the street lamp outside his house is often broken. Velmurugan is the brighter student, and he helps Ramesh with his homework. However, Velmurugan must always sit outside the house on the floor below the elevated platform of the veranda, where Ramesh sits. At dinner-time, Ramesh is called inside to eat with his family. On the rare occasions on which Ramesh insists that his friend partake in the meal, his parents stipulate that Velmurugan must eat outside and off the plate that is kept for the Dalit housekeeper. Velmurugan is asked to wash the plate before and after he eats.
b.Denial of Dalits’ Entry to Temples
Denial of Dalits’ entry to Hindu temples by private individuals is pervasive; the Untouchability in Rural India survey documented this practice in each of the 11 states studied.[467] The rate of prevalence was as high as 64 percent on average, with the practice occurring in 94 percent of villages surveyed in the state of Karnataka.[468] This is the case despite the fact that the denial of temple entry is one of the most strongly resisted forms of “untouchability”, in relation to which numerous campaigns and court cases have been waged.[469] Denial of access to temples implicates the right to free exercise of religion (see Section VIII(D)(5)) and access to public activities that are held in temples, such as the Mid-Day Meal Scheme discussed above (see Section VIII(F)(1)(c)).
c.Untouchable even in death
In one incident recorded in the Untouchability in Rural India survey, upper-caste community members constructed a wall to divide the village cremation ground (ghat) of Gwali Pallasia (Indore district, Madhya Pradesh) that had once been shared by Dalits and non-Dalits, forcing Dalits to use another ghat some distance away. This segregation is strictly enforced; an attempt by Dalits to use the village ghat resulted in beatings, ransacking and looting, followed by a boycott, denied participation in village activities, and evictions after Dalits registered complaints with the police.[470]
d.Discrimination in public streets and market places
Dalits are perpetually subjected to humiliation and degradation through informal but strictly imposed caste codes that regulate their dress and their behavior in the presence of upper-caste community members. Dalits are denied equal access to public streets and areas by upper-castes. Dalit men are often forced to stand in the presence of upper-caste men on roads, or to bow to them.[471] Dalit women often adopt a humble demeanor and maintain a submissive posture to show respect to upper-castes.[472] Dress codes are imposed by upper-castes, which forbid Dalits from wearing new or brightly colored clothes. Clean clothes are also often forbidden by the upper-caste in rural India.[473] In some upper-caste neighborhoods, Dalits are expected to remove their shoes and dismount from bicycles when on public streets.[474]
Previous
Foot Notes
[152] NHRC Report, Section IV, pp. 25, 45.
[153] Ibid.
[154] Ibid.
[155] Leaders of Hindu nationalists groups have been engaged in a vilification campaign against the use of the Prevention of Atrocities Act, 1989 since it was first passed. For example, members of both the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Shiv Sena have called for the repeal of the act, the former on the ground that it was being used as a political tool, the latter as part of an election strategy in 1995 in Maharashastra. In Mulayam Singh Yadav, the head of the Samajwadi Party and the current Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, spoke out against the use of the Act and accused the then-Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh of casteism in enforcing the act. These actions have a direct effect on the registration of cases-through state governments withdrawing already registered cases, as the Shiv Sena did with over 1,100 cases in Maharashastra in 1995, and an indirect effect by sending a clear message to the police that cases are not to be registered and that the Act is not to be taken seriously. NHRC Report, Section VI, pp. 113-114.
[156] Annual Report on the Prevention of Atrocities Act for the years 2001-2002, p. 12.
[157] Human Rights Watch, Broken People, p. 166.
[158] Ibid., p. 17.
[159] Ibid., p. 170 (citing Rupande Panala, “When a Poor Woman Gets Raped,” Manushi (New Delhi) September – October 1990, p. 36).
[160] Ibid., p. 172.
[161] Ibid., p. 170.
[162]Ibid., pp. 170-171 (citing National Crime Records Bureau (Ministry of Home Affairs), Crime in India 1994, as quoted in Sakshi, “Gender and Judges: A Judicial Point of View” (New Delhi, 1996), p. 9).
[163] Ibid., p. 171 (citing National Crime Records Bureau (Ministry of Home Affairs), Crime in India 1994, as quoted in Sakshi, “Gender and Judges: A Judicial Point of View” (New Delhi, 1996), p. 9).
[164] Ibid.
[165] Annual Report on the Atrocities Act for the year 2002-2003, p. 37.
[166] Ibid., p. 43.
[167] Human Rights Watch, Broken People, p. 175.
[168] Ibid., p. 176 (citing “In Brief: Recent Rape Cases,” in Kali’s Yug (New Delhi), November, 1996, p. 20).
[169] Ibid., p. 176 (citing K. S. Tomar, “Atrocities Against Rajasthan women on the rise: Report,” The HindustanTimes, May 28, 1998).
[170] Kavita Srivastaya, a women’s rights activist who has been at the forefront of the campaign to get justice for Bhanwari Devi recently underscored the effects of judicial discrimination in this case: “It’s the 10th year of that appeal and not a single hearing has taken place yet. We twice appealed for an early hearing but both were rejected.” Saira Kurup, “Four Women India Forgot,” Times of India, November 20, 2006.
[171] Cited in R.D. Sharma, “Crime against Women,” The Hindu, May 15, 2001, http://www.sarid.net/religious-dimension/gender-and-religion/04-30-crime-agaist-women.htm (accessed February 7, 2007).
[172] A 1996 case involving the rape of a three-year-old girl by her father provides a telling example of both the tendency to blame women for the actions of men and the freedom with which judges express overtly discriminatory sentiment in their opinions. In Shri Satish Mehra v. Delhi Administration and Another, the Supreme Court found that there was insufficient evidence to proceed to trial, remarking on the “seemingly incredulous nature of the accusations against a father that molested his infant child”, and accusing the mother of leveling false accusations as revenge for an unhappy marriage. The Supreme Court further ignored the probative value of the mother’s testimony about the fact that the father was an alcoholic and prone to inflicting severe physical violence on her, finding instead that the testimony was proof of the mother’s “vengeful” attitude. Human Rights Watch, Broken People, p. 177, citing the Supreme Court of India, Criminal Appellate Jurisdiction, Criminal Appeal No. 1385 of 1995, p. 6.
[173] NCDHR Response to the Special Rapporteur’s Questionnaire, p. 27 (citing statistics from The National Commission on Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes – Fourth Report (2001-2002), p. 129).
[174] “President’s No on Chhattisgarh Judges,” Indian Express, February 3, 2002.
[175] Gospel for Asia, “Facts about Dalits,” undated, http://www.gfa.org/gfa/dalit-facts (accessed February 7, 2007).
[176] Human Rights Watch, Broken People, p. 24 (citing “LS Concerned at “purifying” act by HC judge,” Times of India (Bombay), July 23, 1998). The resignation of Sushila Naggar, the first female Dalit judicial officer in Rajasthan is also illustrative of the pervasiveness of caste and gender discrimination among the judiciary. Sushila Naggar reported sexual harassment from a colleague shortly after starting at her job, and was finally forced to resign from the services in 2001, after her seniors continued the harassment by leveling baseless charges against her. “Woman Judicial Officer Quits,” The Statesman (India), May 1, 2001.
[177] NCDHR Response to the Special Rapporteur’s Questionnaire, p. 25 (citing statistics from The National Commission on Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes – Sixth Report (1999-2000 & 2000-2001) and Seventh Report (2001-2002), p. 128).
[178] CERD General Comment XXXI – Prevention of racial discrimination in the administration and functioning of the criminal justice system, para. 19.
[179] NCDHR Response to the Special Rapporteur’s Questionnaire, p. 26 (citing the National Commission on Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Third Report (1996), pp. 211-13).
[180] Ibid., p. 26 (citing Dalits and the Law by Girish Agrawal and Colin Gonsalves, Human Rights Law Network, 2005, New Delhi, p. 13).
[181] Ibid., p. 26 (citing the National Commission on Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes – Seventh Report (2001-2002), p. 128).
[182] Ibid.
[183] Annual Report on the Prevention of Atrocities Act for the years 2001-2002, p. 12.
[184] “Dalits safer in UP, says Govt Report,” CNN-IBN Live, Posted December 12, 2006, http://www.ibnlive.com/news/up-handles-atrocities-on-dalits-better/28242-3.html (accessed February 7, 2007).
[185]According to the National Human Rights Commission, “reports in the press about atrocities against persons belonging to these groups and the frequency with which they occur is a cause for disquiet.” NHRC Report, p. vii.
[186]Arya, Alka, “Rights-India: Prosperity for Lower Caste Sharpens Animosity,” IPS-Inter Press Service, 19 September 2005 [p. 1]; “Caste Hindus, Dalits clash in Hassan District,” The Hindu, October 13, 2005, p. 8; “Inquiry ordered into molestation before cop,” The Statesman, December 20, 2004, p. 18; Sainath, G., “Sarpanch paraded half-naked for confining ex-employee,” The Hindu, July 7, 2004, p. 43; “Contractor tortures Dalit youths in medieval age re-run,” The Statesman, June 26, 2003, p. 10; “Dalit academic,” Vishwanathan, S., “A Tale of Torture,” Frontline, August 2-15, 2003, p. 61;Vishwanathan, S., “Members of the denotified tribes continue to bear the brunt of police brutality,” Frontline, June 8-21, 2002, p. 63.
[187] Annual Report on the Prevention of Atrocities Act for the years 2001-2002, pp. 9-10.
[188] Human Rights Watch, Broken People, p. 41.
[189] Ibid., p. 29.
[190] Prevention Of Atrocities Act, 1989, Section 3.
[191] “Dalit leader abused for daring to sit on a chair,” Indo-Asian News Service,July 10, 2006.
[192] “Dalit worker beaten on suspicion of theft,”Indo-Asian News Service,June 23, 2006, Friday.
[193] “Dalit Lynched While Gathering Grain,”Indian Express,April 25, 2006.
[194] “Dalit beaten for entering temple,”Indo-Asian News Service,February 22, 2006.
[195] “UP Dalit girl resists rape, loses arm as a result,”Hindustan Times,February 13, 2006.
[196] “Dalit tries to fetch water, beaten to death,”Indo-Asian News Service,February 4, 2006.
[197] Special Rapporteur on Contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, Annual Reports to the Commission on Human Rights, 2005 (61st session) CHR, E/CN.4/2005/18/Add.1, Summary of cases transmitted to Governments and replies received, para. 17.
[198]Report by the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, Mr. Doudou Dine, Addendum, Summary of cases transmitted to Governments and replies received, February 23, 2005 (61st Session) E/CN.4/2005/18/Add.1, para. 17. No reply to his communication had been received from the Government of India at the time this report was finalized. The Special Rapporteur stated that he intended to follow up on this case, and if no response was received from the Government, he would no longer treat the case as a mere allegation but would include it in his next general report.
[199] Human Rights Watch, Broken People, p. 24.
[200] “Bant Singh can still sing!” Forum for Democratic Initiatives. The attack on Bant Singh took place in January 2006.
[201] Thevars are a marginally higher-caste non-Dalit community.
[202] Human Rights Watch, Broken People, p. 85 (citing “Clashes in TN result of caste disparities: Report,” The Statesman (Delhi), July 2, 1997).
[203] Ibid., p. 112.
[204] “Dalit girl burnt to death by man accused of rape,” November 24, 2006, http://www.dalitnetwork.org/go?/dfn/news/2006/11/ (accessed February 7, 2007).
[205]Tejeshwi Pratima, “Dalits Thrown Out of Their Village For Raising Their Voice Against Discrimination,” June 29, 2006, http://www.ndtv.com/template/template.asp?category=National&template=dalitatrocities&slug=Dalits+boycotted+for+raising+voice&id=89587&callid=1 (accessed February 7, 2007). The incident took place in June 2006.
[206] Human Rights Watch, Broken People, p. 166.
[207] Ibid.
[208] NHRC Report, Section VIII, p. 161.
[209] Human Rights Watch, Broken People, p. 166.
[210] Ibid., p. 113 (Citing Human Rights Watch interview with Burnad Fatima, Tamil Nadu Women’s Forum, Madras, February 14, 1998).
[211] Ibid., p. 167.
[212] Human Rights Watch, World Report 2003, p. 240.
[213] NHRC Report, Section VIII, p. 161.
[214] Human Rights Watch, World Report 2003, p. 240.
[215]NHRC Report, Section VIII, p. 161.
The National Human Rights Commission has reported that Dalit women are forced to turn to prostitution in times of extreme hardship, such as natural calamities, in order for the family to survive. Moreover, in certain communities, prostitution is an integral part of social survival for Dalit women.
[216] NCDHR Response to the Special Rapporteur’s Questionnaire, p. 15.
[217] Ibid.
[218] Ibid.
[219] Human Rights Watch, Broken People, p. 166.
[220] Ibid., p. 115.
[221] Ibid., p. 166.
[222] Ibid., p. 170.
[223] Ibid., p. 170.
[224] Yogesh Pawar, “Dalit killing: No action taken against accused,” NDTV, November 4, 2006, http://www.ndtv.com/template/template.asp?category=National&template=dalitatrocities&slug=Dalit+killing%3A+No+action+against+accused&id=95838&callid=1 (accessed February 7, 2007).
[225] Police Protect Rapist of Dalit Woman, National Public Hearing, April 18-19, 2000, Chennai-Tamil Nadu, Case Papers: Summary Jury’s Interim Observations & Recommendations, Vol. 1, p. 184.
[226] Shah, et al., Untouchability in Rural India, p. 155. “Dalits increasingly exercise their franchise. They participate more vigorously and in larger numbers compared to caste Hindus in the state assembly and parliamentary elections.”
[227] Human Rights Watch, Broken People, p. 56, fn. 121 (citing Arthur Max, “Private Armies,” Associated Press, April 22, 1996).
[228] Ibid., pp. 55-56, fn. 120 (citing “Repoll in 700 booths in Bihar ordered,” Indian Express, February 19, 1998).
[229] Shah, et al., Untouchability in Rural India, p. 71.
[230] Human Rights Watch, Broken People, pp. 55-56, fn. 120 (citing “EC cracks whip, scraps Patna polls,” INDOlink New from India, February 21, 1998.
[231] Ibid., pp. 55-56, fn. 120 (citing “Second phase: 55% voting, nine deaths,” Indian Express, February 23, 1998).
[232] Ibid., p. 56, fn. 121 (citing Arthur Max, “Private Armies,” Associated Press, April 22, 1996).
[233]When men from the women’s community rushed to save them, they were humiliated, beaten and threatened with being killed. Police reportedly refused to register their complaint and downgraded the charges from rape to assault. “Seven Bihar women victims of rape seek justice,”Indo-Asian News Service,August 22, 2006.
[234] “Dalit woman burnt alive for contesting panchayat elections,” Hindustan Times, October 23, 2005.
[235] In September 1996 the village of Melavalavu was declared a reserved constituency under Article 243D of the Indian constitution. This meant that there would be seats reserved for Dalits on the Melavalavu panchayat (village council), which covers eight villages and 1,000 Dalit families.
[236] Human Rights Watch, Broken People, p. 90. As observed by Dr. George Mathew of the New Delhi Institute of Social Sciences, who visited the area soon after the murders: “[T]he violence was basically a result of a shift in the power equations from the haves and the have nots.” Ibid. (citing “Melavalavu violence due to shift in power equations,” The Hindu, August 16, 1997).
[237] Ibid., p. 91 (citing “6 Dalits hacked,” Times of India. As reported in the Times of India, “they were warned that they would lose their jobs as farmhands and not be allowed to graze cattle or draw water from wells located on ‘patta’ [unutilized] land held by the dominant castes.”).
[238]“Dalit village head faces constant intimidation due to caste discrimination in Uttar Pradesh,” Asian Human Rights Commission, Urgent Appeal, November 22, 2006.
[239] Shah, et al., Untouchability in Rural India, p. 70. (Table 2.2).
[240] NCDHR Response to the Special Rapporteur’s Questionnaire, p. 10.
[241] Ibid.
[242] Human Rights Watch, Broken People, p. 99.
[243] Ibid.
[244] Ibid. see also infra Section V(A)(1)(a)(v).
[245] Ibid.
[246] Ibid., pp. 99-100.
[247] “NHRC to Probe Kaithal Dalits Issue”, Indian Express, June 5, 2003.
[248] Ibid
[249] People’s Watch and Dalit Human Rights Monitoring fact-finding team report (2004), http://www.ahrchk.net/ua/pdf/kalapatti-fact-findings.pdf (accessed February 7, 2007).
[250] Dalits in Pondicherry, for instance, were unable to gain employment through the reservations policies aimed at their rehabilitation because they were not able to produce birth certificates relating to the pre-1964 period. “Bhim Sena Seeks Rehabilitation of Displaced Dalit Workers,” The Hindu, June 26, 2003.
[251] “Raid Hits ‘Uppity Untouchables,’” Suzanne Goldenberg, The Guardian (London), October 19, 1995.
[252] “Brutality used to keep India’s underclass down,” Suzanne Goldenberg, The Guardian (London), April 13, 1999.
[253] Shah, et al., Untouchability in Rural India, p. 69.
[254] Ibid.
[255] Ibid. See also Ibid., p. 65 (Table 2.1).
[256] Ibid., p. 63.
[257] Ibid.,p. 66 (Table 2.1); p. 85 (Table 2.7).
[258] Ibid., p. 81.
[259] Human Rights Watch, Caste Discrimination: A Global Concern, p.11.
[260] Shah, et al., Untouchability in Rural India, p. 130.
[261] Ibid.
[262]Human Rights Watch, World Report 2006: India, p. 2, http://hrw.org/wr2k6/pdf/india.pdf (accessed February 7, 2007).
[263] Human Rights Watch, Caste Discrimination: A Global Concern, p 11. .; Ramdutt Tripathi, “Arrests Over India Caste Deaths,” BBC News,May 8, 2000, http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_740000/740701.stm (accessed February 7, 2007).
[264] Stephanie Nolen, “Cross-caste teen lovers brutally slain Families charged in torture, killing of Indian couple who defied ingrained tradition,” Globe and Mail (Toronto), August 9, 2001.
[265] Human Rights Watch, Broken People, p. 31.
[266] Omer Farooq, “Indian girl, 14, wins a divorce: A 14-year-old girl in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh has won a battle to have her two-year marriage to a teenage boy annulled,”BBC News, June 22, 2005, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4120238.stm (accessed February 7, 2007).
[267] Ibid.
[268]Chenigall Suseela received a national bravery award for her courage in fighting her child marriage and for insisting on continuing her education. See, “Bravery award for gutsy Dalit girl,” The Hindu, January 25, 2006, http://www.hindu.com/2006/01/25/stories/2006012521620500.htm (accessed February 7, 2007).
[269] Ibid., p. 31.
[270] Ibid., p. 39, fn. 55 and accompanying text.
[271] Ibid., p. 29.
[272] Ibid., p. 27.
[273] Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living, and on the right to non-discrimination in this context, Annual Report 2005 (61st CHR session), Report E/CN.4/2005/48, para 62.
[274] Human Rights Watch, Broken People, p. 99.
[275] OMCT/HIC-HLRN, “Joint Urgent Action Appeal: Forced Eviction of 7,000 Dalits in India,” July 24, 2003, http://www.hlrn.org/cases_files/IND-FE%20%20240703.doc (accessed February 7, 2007).
[276] Ibid.
[277] Human Rights Watch, India, Small Change: Bonded Child Labor in India, Vol.15, No.2(C), January 2003, p. 42 [hereinafter Small Change].
[278] Human Rights Watch, Broken People, p. 29.
[279] NCDHR Response to the Special Rapporteur’s Questionnaire, p. 23.
[280] NHRC Report, Section V, p. 85.
[281] Ibid., Section VI, p. 125.
[282] Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living, and on the right to non-discrimination in this context, Annual Report 2005 (61st CHR session), Report E/CN.4/2005/48, para. 62.
[283] NCDHR Response to the Special Rapporteur’s Questionnaire, p. 23.
[284] Human Rights Watch, Broken People, p. 27.
[285] In one notable incident in the state of Orissa, seven Dalit women, who had embraced the Christian faith of their own volition, were physically abused and forcibly tonsured before being forcibly “reconverted” to Hinduism. http://www.pucl.org/Topics/Religion-communalism/2004/kilipal.htm (accessed February 7, 2007).
[286] In a village in Tamil Nadu, for instance, discrimination on the basis of caste has been practiced by Christians for decades. In the village’s church Dalit Christians are made to sit apart from other Christians and must stand while talking to the priest. Like upper-caste Hindus, Christians in this village mete out severe punishment against Christian Dalits who question discriminatory traditions. In February 1999, when a Dalit priest attempted to conduct a funeral procession for his late mother through the main street of his town, Christians attacked the procession with guns, homemade weapons, and stones and verbally abused the Dalits with derogatory caste remarks and threats; more than 100 people were injured. Caste Christians Discriminate against Dalit Priest, National Public Hearing, April 18-19, 2000, Chennai-Tamil Nadu, Case Papers: Summary Jury’s Interim Observations & Recommendations, Vol. 1, p. 259.
[287] Salil Kader, “Muslims Infected by Caste Virus,” March 14, 2006, http://www.indianmuslims.info/articles/others/salil_kader_muslims_infected_by_caste_virus.html (accessed February 7, 2007).
[288] Yoginder Sikand, “The Dalit Muslims and the All-India Backward Muslim Morcha,” December 16, 2004, The South Asian, available at: http://www.thesouthasian.org/archives/2004/the_dalit_muslims_and_the_alli.html (accessed February 7, 2007).
[289] Salil Kader, “Social Stratification Among Muslims in India,” June 15, 2004, Counter Currents, http://www.countercurrents.org/dalit-kader150604.htm (accessed February 7, 2007).
[290] See Yoginder Sikand, “Muslim Dalit and OBC Conference: A Report,” November 30, 2005, The Milli Gazette, http://www.milligazette.com/dailyupdate/2005/20051130-muslim-dalits.htm (accessed February 7, 2007) (arguing that the Indian government’s practice of assigning scheduled caste status on the basis of religion amounts to religious discrimination). See also Yoginder Sikand, “The Dalit Muslims and the All-India Backward Muslim Morcha,” December 16, 2004, The South Asian, http://www.thesouthasian.org/archives/2004/the_dalit_muslims_and_the_alli.html (accessed February 7, 2007). For the same claim with respect to Christian Dalits, see Minority Rights Group, “India’s Dalit Christians face caste discrimination and loss of government assistance,” March 3, 2004, http://www.minorityrights.org/news_detail.asp?ID=230 (accessed February 7, 2007); see alsoAppeal to Join Hands to End Discrimination Against Dalits, All India Christian Council, http://www.aiccindia.org/newsite/0804061910/resources/appeal_to_join_hands.htm (accessed February 7, 2007).
[291] Human Rights Watch, We Have No Orders to Save You, pp. 39-40; see also Human Rights Watch, Politics by Other Means: Attacks Against Christians in India, Vol. 11, No. 6, September 1999.
[292] “Dalits to burn anti-conversion laws at Nagpur rally,” Indian Catholic, October 11, 2006, http://www.theindiancatholic.com/newsread.asp?nid=3859 (accessed February 7, 2007); “Dalits in conversion ceremony,” BBC News, October 14, 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6050408.stm (accessed February 7, 2007).
[293] Daniel Blake, “100,000 Dalit Christians to Attend ‘World Religious Freedom Day’ Rally in India,” Christian Today, October 11, 2006, http://www.christiantoday.com/article/100000.dalit.christians.to.attend.world.religious.freedom.day.rally.in.india/7943.htm (accessed February 7, 2007).
[294]One such bill was the controversial Prohibition of Forcible Conversion of Religion Bill, passed in the state of Tamil Nadu on October 31, 2002. The law was widely criticized for making it more difficult for poor people, persecuted minorities, and those ostracized under the caste system to convert to another religion. Human Rights Watch, World Report 2003, p. 240. The law nevertheless found support with the BJP-led federal government (Ibid.), and remained in force until June 7, 2006, when it was repealed by the Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Forcible Conversion of Religion (Repeal) Act, 2006 (Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Forcible Conversion of Religion (Repeal) Act, 2006 – www.tn.gov.in/acts-rules/law/ACT_10to12_131_07JUN06.pdf (accessed February 7, 2007). More recently, on September 19, 2006, the state of Gujarat passed a law that classifies Jainism and Buddhism as branches of Hinduism, even though the Indian constitution classifies the two as separate religions. The new law makes conversion from Hinduism to Buddhism or Jainism easier, because the conversion is deemed to be an “inter-denominational” one. However, the purpose of the bill, according to government critics, is to ensure that Dalits do not convert to Islam or Christianity, and that those who convert to Buddhism or Jainism remain a part of Hinduism and thus remain likely to vote for the Hindu nationalist BJP, which heads the state of Gujarat. The leader of Gujarat’s opposition Congress party said that the BJP-led government of Gujarat was using the law as a “tool” to maintain its bedrock of votes. Rajeev Khanna, “Anger Over Gujarat Religion Law,” BBC News, September 20, 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5362802.stm (accessed February 7, 2007). Dalit leader Udit Raj, chairman of the All India Confederation of SC/ST Organization poignantly asserts: “[Hindu extremists are trying to assimilate] Buddhism and Jainism into Hinduism. Where is the freedom to choose your own faith?” “Dalits to Burn Anti-Conversion Laws at Nagpur Rally,” The Indian Catholic, October 11, 2006.
[295] “VHP orchestrates mass reconversion in Orissa,” Deccan Herald, May 2, 2005, http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/may22005/national13399200551.asp (accessed February 7, 2007).
[296] Human Rights Watch, Caste Discrimination: A Global Concern, p. 20. A June 1997 fact-finding mission by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, India’s largest civil rights organization, found that in caste clashes in Madurai district, Tamil Nadu, “Dalits were the worst affected in terms of property loss and physical injuries sustained… due to violent attacks on them” and that it was their “increased political consciousness…regarding their fundamental social, political and economic rights expressed in terms of demands for social equality [and] equitable distribution of resources” that played a major role in the attacks against them. Human Rights Watch, Broken People, p. 85 (citing People’s Union for Civil Liberties, “Final Report of the PUCL-Tamil Nadu Team that Inquired Into Caste Disturbances in Southern Districts of Tamil Nadu,” (Madras: PUCL, 1997)).
[297] Human Rights Watch, Broken People, p. 29 (citing National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, Highlights of the Report of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes for the Years 1994-95 & 1995-96 (New Delhi, Government of India, 1997), p. 2).
[298] Ibid., p. 161.
[299] Shah, et al., Untouchability in Rural India, p. 150. The late Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, the architect of the Indian constitution and a Dalit, is seen as a champion of Dalit rights and is a hero to many Dalits.
[300] Dalit groups mobilize to get local authorities to allocate land for statues of Dr. Ambedkar, and even poor Dalits will contribute the little they have to build memorials of him. Ibid.
[301] See, e.g., Ibid., pp. 150-51 (describing one such incident beginning in 1994 in Karanai village in Chengai district, Tamil Nadu, which resulted in ongoing conflict between Dalits and non-Dalits that lasted until 1997); Human Rights Watch, Broken People, p. 127; “What makes Dalits angry?” IBN Live, December 1, 2006, http://www.ibnlive.com/news/what-makes-the-dalits-of-maharashtra-angry/27440-3.html# (accessed February 7, 2007).
[302] “What makes Dalits angry?” IBN Live, December 1, 2006, http://www.ibnlive.com/news/what-makes-the-dalits-of-maharashtra-angry/27440-3.html# (accessed February 7, 2007).
[303] Ibid.
[304] Ibid.
[305] Mukesh Ranjan, “UPA to review progress of projects for SC/STs on Dec 9,” Financial Express, December 3, 2006, http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=148015 (accessed February 7, 2007).
[306] NHRC Report, Section VI, p. 116.
[307] Human Rights Watch, Broken People, p. 127.
[308] Ibid., p. 135.
[309] Ibid., p. 129.
[310] Ibid., p. 129 (citing “Dalit woman Stripped and paraded naked, says IPHRC report,” The Times of India (Bombay), November 1, 1997).
[311] Ibid. A commission of inquiry, established almost immediately after the killings, determined that the police firing on the mob was “indiscriminate, unwarranted, unprovoked and unjustified.” “Gundewar Commission Report Submitted,” Indian Express,August 8, 1998. Nevertheless, the Police Sub-Inspector, who ordered the firing, was not criminally charged until four years later, in 2001; the charge against him was culpable homicide not amounting to murder. “Kadam will be Prosecuted in Ramabai Nagar Case,” Times of India,August 25, 2001. While he was finally arrested in 2002, he was released on bail in January 2003. “Sessions Court Grants Bail to Manohar Kadam,” Economic Times,January 5, 2003. There have been no publicly available reports on his case since then.
[312] Human Rights Watch, Broken People, p. 30.
[313] Directions for relief were made only after the intervention of the NHRC. Social Boycott in Devalia, National Public Hearing, April 18-19, 2000, Chennai-Tamil Nadu, Case Papers: Summary Jury’s Interim Observations & Recommendations, Vol. 1, pp. 252-54.
[314] Human Rights Watch, Small Change, p. 41.
[315] Ibid., p. 43, citing Human Rights Watch interview with Joy Maliekal, Mysore, Karnataka, March 30, 2002.
[316]India’s Combined second and third periodic reports to CEDAW, Oct. 19, 2005, CEDAW/C/IND/2-3, para. 101.
[317] Ibid. para. 104.
[318] Ibid para. 113.
[319] Massachusetts Institute of Technology, From Promise To Performance: Ecological Sanitation As A Step Toward The Elimination Of Manual Scavenging In India, September 2006, p. 6, http://mit.edu/phrj/dalit_report_final.pdf (accessed February 7, 2007).
[320] Human Rights Watch, Broken People, p. 141.
[321] According to Bejawada Wilson, national convener of the Safai Karamchari Andolan: “as long as dry latrines remain in existence, the scavengers to clean the same will also remain.” Annie Zaidi, “India’s shame,” Frontline, vol. 23, issue 18, September 9-22, 2006.
[322] Ibid.
[323] Ibid.
[324] NCDHR Response to the Special Rapporteur’s Questionnaire, p. 24.
[325] Human Rights Watch, Broken People, p. 142. C. Narayanama, working in Anantapur municipality, Andhra Pradesh, explained how she inherited her job of manual scavenging:
My elder sister, Mariyakka married C. Kadirappa, but had no children. She brought me from Itukalapalli (my native place) and made me marry her husband. She died after three years due to severe whooping cough. (Could it have been due to the practice of manual scavenging?) I had to adopt her work of manual scavenging because of heredity. My sister adopted the work of manual scavenging from her mother-in-law.
“Safai Karamcharis in Anantapur District,” Case Papers: Summary Jury’s Interim Observations & Recommendations, National Public Hearing, April 18-19, 2000, Chennai-Tamil Nadu, Vol. 1, pp. 39-40. See also: As Meena, a manual scavenger in her mid-twenties, explained to Frontline in 2006:
This is what we’ve been doing for generations and nobody gives us other work. In fact, my mother was married to my father based upon the fact that he lived in a busy, crowded area and there was that much more to carry.
Annie Zaidi, “India’s shame,” Frontline.
[326] Massachusetts Institute of Technology, From Promise To Performance: Ecological Sanitation As A Step Toward The Elimination Of Manual Scavenging In India, September 2006, p. 6, http://mit.edu/phrj/dalit_report_final.pdf (accessed February 7, 2007).
[327] NCDHR Response to the Special Rapporteur’s Questionnaire, p. 15.
[328] Human Rights Watch, Broken People, pp. 145-46 (citing Human Rights Watch interview with Bejawada Wilson, Bangalore, July 26, 1998, in which Wilson told Human Rights Watch, “Even other scheduled-caste people won’t touch the safai karamcharis [manual scavengers]. It is ‘untouchability’ within the ‘untouchables,’ yet nobody questions it.”).
[329] Ibid., p. 142 (citing a Human Rights Watch interview with Martin Macwan, New York, October 15, 1998. Martin Macwan is founder of Navsarjan, an NGO that has led the campaign to abolish manual scavenging in the western state of Gujarat describing what happens when Navsarjan had attempted to rehabilitate scavengers).
[330]Ibid., pp. 142-43, (quoting Leelaben of Paliyad village from Mari Marcel Thekaekara, “A continuing social outrage,” Frontline, October 417, 1997).
[331] Massachusetts Institute of Technology, From Promise To Performance: Ecological Sanitation As A Step Toward The Elimination Of Manual Scavenging In India, September 2006, p. 20, http://mit.edu/phrj/dalit_report_final.pdf (accessed February 7, 2007).et al.,
[332] Annie Zaidi, “India’s Shame,” Frontline.
[333] Human Rights Watch, Broken People, p. 141.
[334]Kamdar Swasthya Suraksha Mandal files PIL in 2001, http://www.amrc.org.hk/5304.htm (accessed February 7, 2007).
[335] Human Rights Watch, Broken People, p. 146 (citing Human Rights Watch interview, Ahmedabad district, Gujarat, July 23, 1998, “When we ask for our rights from the government, the municipality officials threaten to fire us. So we don’t say anything. This is what happens to people who demand their rights”).
[336] Kamdar Swasthya Suraksha Mandal files PIL in 2001, http://www.amrc.org.hk/5304.htm (accessed February 7, 2007).
[337] NCDHR Response to the Special Rapporteur’s Questionnaire, p. 24.
[338] For example, the training program it establishes is ineffective because it offers a low stipend and an inadequate period of training. A shortage of training instructions and lack of viable training programs further compound the problem. NHRC Report, Section V, p. 55.
[339] Ibid.
[340] Ibid., p. 54.
[341] Ibid., p. 54.
[342] Ibid., p. 126.
[343] Safai Karamchari Andolan filed a public interest litigation petition in the Supreme Court in 2003. Viswanathan, S. , “Exposing An Abhorrent Practice,” Frontline, February 15, 2006, http://www.countercurrents.org/dalit-viswanathan150206.htm (accessed February 7, 2007).
[344] Ibid.
[345] Venkatesan, J. , “Manual Scavenging: Court Summons Principal Secretaries”, The Hindu, September 14, 2004, A2004091410E-933F-GNW.
[346] Viswanathan, S. , “Exposing An Abhorrent Practice,” Frontline, February 15, 2006, http://www.countercurrents.org/dalit-viswanathan150206.htm (accessed February 7, 2007). Petitioner-organizations countered such claims by Tamil Nadu with evidence that manual scavenging was still prevalent in the state. Due to such conflicting reports, the Supreme Court ordered the Government of India and state governments in April 2005 to “verify the facts and indicate within six months a time-bound programme if the existence of manual scavenging is confirmed.” Ibid. At this writing, the petition was still pending before the Supreme Court.
[347] Human Rights Watch, Broken People, p. 139.
[348] According to one estimate 83.2 percent of bonded laborers belong to scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. NHRC Report, Section V, p. 64. Almost all bonded children interviewed for a 2003 Human Rights Watch report on bonded child labor in the silk industry were either Dalit or Muslim. Human Rights Watch, Small Change, p. 6.
[349] Human Rights Watch, Small Change, p. 9.
[350] Ibid., p. 10.
[351]Ibid., p. 43 (citing Human Rights Watch group interview with Dalit villagers, Varanasi District, Uttar Pradesh, March 14, 2002).
[352] Human Rights Watch, Broken People, p. 140.
[353] Human Rights Watch, Small Change, p. 42. (citing Human Rights Watch group interview with Dalit villagers, Varanasi District, Uttar Pradesh, March 14, 2002).
[354] Ibid. According to a local activist, workers in the community were receiving five kilograms of wheat solely because they had organized themselves; elsewhere workers received only two kilograms. Human Rights Watch, Small Change, p. 42 (citing Human Rights Watch interview with Lenin Raghuvanshi, People’s Vigilance Committee for Human Rights, Varanasi District, March 14, 2002).
[355] Ibid.
[356] Ibid.
[357] The Act aims to release all laborers from bondage, cancel any outstanding debt, prohibit the creation of new bondage agreements, and order the economic rehabilitation of freed bonded laborers by the state. It also punishes attempts to compel persons into bondage with a maximum of three years in prison and a Rs. 2,000 (US$50) fine.
[358] Human Rights Watch, Broken People, p. 140.
[359] NCDHR Response to the Special Rapporteur’s Questionnaire, p. 24.
[360] NHRC Report, Section V, p. 89.
[361] Ibid., p. 67.
[362] While the process of rehabilitation is supposed to immediately follow the release of a bonded laborer, this is rarely the case. In some cases the Certificate of Release from bonded debt is not issued, and there is a huge time lag between release and rehabilitation operations, resulting in many released laborers being unable to survive after their release and being forced to return to their captors. NHRC Report, Section V, p. 67-68.
[363] Ibid., p. 67.
[364] NHRC Report, Section V, p. 78.
[365] NHRC Report, Section V, pp. 79-80.
[366] According to the NHRC, “Political leadership has shown no concern for the plight of migrant labourers. In the recipient States, it is directly responsible for virtually freezing the law on migrant labour in collusion with powerful land owners and other employers. In the home States, the political leadership has shown total apathy as it has not taken their case with the recipient States for enforcement of law and has also taken no steps to stop distress migration.” Ibid., Section VI, p. 125.
[367] Ibid., Section V, p. 72.
[368] NCDHR Response to the Special Rapporteur’s Questionnaire, p. 12. In the Bellary district, Karnataka, for example, 70 to 80 percent of the child labor population in iron ore and granite mines are Dalits. NCDHR Response to the Special Rapporteur’s Questionnaire, p. 13.
[369] Human Rights Watch, Small Change, p. 43.
[370] Ibid. Child labor, especially in domestic and hotel work, also increases following upper-caste raids on Dalit villages. Human Rights Watch interview with Gilbert Rodrigo, Director, Legal Resources for Social Action (LRSA), Chengalpattu, Tamil Nadu, March 20, 2002. Ibid., p. 43.
[371] “Economic, Social and Cultural Rights for Dalits in India: Case Study on Primary Education in Gujarat,” WoodrowWilsonSchool of Public and International Affairs, p. 18.
[372] Human Rights Watch, Small Change, p. 31. (citing Human Rights Watch interview with 14-year-old boy, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, March 13, 2002).
[373] Human Rights Watch, Broken People, p. 148.
[374] NHRC Report, Section VI, p. 125.
[375] Human Rights Watch, Small Change, p. 42.
[376] Ibid., p. 6.
[377] NCDHR Response to the Special Rapporteur’s Questionnaire, p. 12. Domestic labor and restaurant jobs were recently banned under the 1986 law, but predictably, a lack of implementation has made little difference. While a bill on providing benefits to unorganized labor, including domestic labor, may soon be tabled in Parliament, it is unclear whether or not this bill will increase the protection afforded by child labor legislation. Oineetom Ojah, “Govt may table unorganised sector Bill in winter session,” TheFinancial Express, November 21, 2006, http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=146944 (accessed February 7, 2007).
[378] NHRC Report, Section V, p. 73. Rehabilitation programs involve the establishment of special schools to provide non-formal education, vocational training, supplementary nutrition, a stipend, and health care; further, over 100 national rehabilitation projects are under implementation.
[379] NHRC Report, Section V, p. 74. In 2005, the Supreme Court issued notice to the Central government regarding the present Child Labour Act which it considers to be unconstitutional in the light of the right to education. “Notice issued to Centre on pleas against child labour,” The Hindu,December 13, 2005, http://www.hinduonnet.com/2005/12/13/stories/2005121301720900.htm (February 7, 2007).
[380] Shah, et al., Untouchability in Rural India, pp. 94-95.
[381] Despite earning a Masters degree in economics from GujaratUniversity, the best job 24-year-old Arvind Vaghela could get was as a road sweeper. Vaghela’s story underscored the experience of many other university-educated Dalits. In his city of Ahmedabad, “[n]early 100 of its council sanitation workers have degrees in subjects ranging from computing to law, but cannot get better jobs because they are Dalits.” Dalit sweeper, Prakash Chauhan, had been hired by an accounting firm, but the firm subsequently fired him upon learning his caste from his school certificate. Chauhan, 32, expressed the frustration that Dalits with his educational achievements share: “Our parents had a dream that education would mean we would not have to do the jobs they did. It did not turn out that way.” Randeep Ramesh, “Untouchables in new battle for jobs,” The Observer, Oct. 3, 2004, http://www.netphotograph.com/bartholomew.tv/PDF/obs_041003_new_26_3413213.pdf (accessed February 7, 2007).
[382] NHRC Report, Section V, p. 84.
[383] Minimum Wages Act, 1948 [Act No. 11 of Year 1948, dated 15th. March, 1948] Section 3(1A) cited in NHRC Report, Section V, p. 81.
[384] Ibid.
[385] NHRC Report, Section V, p. 81.
[386] Ibid., p. 83.
[387] Krishan K. Taimni, “Cooperatives in the new environments: Role of the Registrar of Cooperative Societies in South Asia,” Sustainable Development Department, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, February 9, 1998, http://www.fao.org/sd/rodirect/ROre0010.htm (accessed February 7, 2007).
[388] “On the Magic of Being Work Sisters,”Business Line,February 18, 2006.
[389] Ibid.
[390] Ibid.
[391] CERD General Comment XXIX – Article 1(1) regarding descent, para. 39.
[392] “Identity crisis for educated dalits?” The Hindu, April 14, 1999.
[393] For example, Gaurav Apartments, a housing development in a middle-class neighborhood in east Delhi, offers two or three bedroom apartments that would normally appeal to professionals seeking housing in the area. However, because the development was built by Dalits and because 60 to 70 percent of it is occupied by Dalits, the demand for the units and their price is significantly lower than it is for comparable units in the area. The price of a unit in Gaurav Apartments is Rs.1.7 million (US$38,041) whereas a comparable apartment in the neighborhood costs around Rs.2 million (US$44,749). “No takers for homes in Dalit apartments,” Indo-Asian News Service, October 3, 2004. As a Dalit property dealer from the area explains: “Many clients have declined to buy or even rent a flat soon after looking at the huge portrait of B.R. Ambedkar at the entrance.” “No takers for homes in Dalit apartments,” Indo-Asian News Service, October 3, 2004.
[394] Shah, et al., Untouchability in Rural India, p. 104 (Table 2.9).
[395] Ibid., p. 65 (Table 2.1).
[396] Ibid.
[397] Shah, et al., Untouchability in Rural India, p. 127.
[398] Ibid.
[399] Ibid.
[400] Ibid.
[401] Ibid.
[402] The World Bank, HIV/AIDS South Asia- India; Risk Factors, updated December 2006, http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/SOUTHASIAEXT/EXTSAREGTOPHEANUT/EXTSAREGTOPHIVAIDS/0,,contentMDK:20288516~menuPK:568874~pagePK:34004173~piPK:34003707~theSitePK:496967,00.html (accessed February 7, 2007).
[403]NESA Life with Dignity, HIV/AIDS Sector Support Team, http://www.nesauniverse.org/focusarea/hivf (accessed February 7, 2007).
[404] Human Rights Watch, Broken People, p. 151.
[405] Human Rights Watch, Future Forsaken: Abuses Against Children Affected by HIV/AIDS in India, (Human Rights Watch, July 2004), pp. 8-9 (explaining that several groups that already experience discrimination, including sex workers, children of sex workers, street children, children from lower-castes and Dalits, are vulnerable to increased discrimination when tested HIV-positive.) http://hrw.org/reports/2004/india0704/FutureForsaken.pdf (accessed February 7, 2007). See also Stigma and HIV/Aids- A Pervasive Issue, The Synergy Project, December 2004, p. 2, http://www.synergyaids.com/documents/BigIssues_StigmaRevDec04.pdf (accessed February 7, 2007).
[406] NCDHR response to the Special Rapporteur’s Questionnaire, p. 10.
[407] CERD General Comment XXVI – Article 6, para. 1.
[408] “Economic, Social and Cultural Rights for Dalits in India: Case Study on Primary Education in Gujarat,” WoodrowWilsonSchool of Public and International Affairs, p. 18.
[409] NCDHR response to the Special Rapporteur’s Questionnaire, p. 10.
[410] “Economic, Social and Cultural Rights for Dalits in India: Case Study on Primary Education in Gujarat,” WoodrowWilsonSchool of Public and International Affairs, p. 14. Dalit schoolchildren are by and large poorer than other students, and cannot afford either private tutoring or access to private education, which is generally of better quality. Ibid.
[411] NCDHR response to the Special Rapporteur’s Questionnaire, p. 10.
[412] Ibid., citing A.R. Vasavi, et al., “Blueprint for Rural Primary Education: How Viable?” p. 3184, Economic and Political Weekly, 1997.
[413] “Economic, Social and Cultural Rights for Dalits in India: Case Study on Primary Education in Gujarat,” WoodrowWilsonSchool of Public and International Affairs, p. 17.
[414] Ibid., p. 16.
[415]The Special Rapporteur on education also noted, “Other studies have documented absenteeism, irregular attendance and negligence by teachers, who have in addition used Dalit and Adivasi children to do work for them, corporal punishment and fear of teachers – one reason cited by parents for not sending their children to school.” Report submitted by the Special Rapporteur on the right to education, Mr. V. Muoz Villalobos, February 8, 2006 (62nd CHR session) E/CN.4/2006/45, paras. 84-85.
[416] NCDHR response to the Special Rapporteur’s Questionnaire, p. 10. A study of Dalit schoolchildren in Rajasthan revealed that fear of teachers as well as corporal punishments are factors that parents (especially of Dalit children) cite as constraining regular school attendance. Mona Jabbi and C. Rajyalakshmi, “Education of Marginalized Social Groups in Bihar,” in A. Vaidynathan and P.R. Gopinathan Nair (Eds.), Elementary Education in Rural India: A Grassroots View, Sage Publication, New Delhi, 2001.
[417] “Economic, Social and Cultural Rights for Dalits in India: Case Study on Primary Education in Gujarat,” WoodrowWilsonSchool of Public and International Affairs, pp. 15-17.
[418] CERD General Comment XXIX – Article 1(1) regarding descent, para. 45.
[419] “Economic, Social and Cultural Rights for Dalits in India: Case Study on Primary Education in Gujarat,” Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, p. 14 (citing India Education Report — A profile of Basic Education, Ed. by R. Govinda, Publishers: Oxford University Press, Delhi. March 2002).
[420] NCDHR Response to the Special Rapporteur’s Questionnaire, p. 10 (citing Report, National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, pp. 151-183, Government of India, New Delhi, 1999-2000 & 2000-2001).
[421] Ibid.
[422] Joy Maliekal, director of the Rural Literacy and Health Programme and national convenor of the Campaign against Child Labour told Human Rights Watch: “It is important to make the link between child labor and discrimination in school. In our experience, Dalit children are made to sit in the back and are asked to do work [i.e. chores rather than schoolwork].” Human Rights Watch, Small Change, p. 44.
[423] Ibid.
[424] Dalits and Primary Education, p. 3.
[425] Ibid., p. 14.
[426] “Economic, Social and Cultural Rights for Dalits in India: Case Study on Primary Education in Gujarat,” WoodrowWilsonSchool of Public and International Affairs, p. 19.
[427] Ibid.
[428] Ibid.
[429] In the complaint, one of the students recounts the nature of the harassment he suffered at AIIMS:
I have been subjected to mental and physical torture from my very first day in this institute…I was abused on my caste and…in the last few days my room had been locked from outside because of which I was unable to attend classes.
Abantika Ghosh, “Dalit students ‘abused’ at AIIMS,” The Times of India, September 12, 2006.
[430] Ibid.
[431] As a member of Medicos Forum for Equal Opportunities said:
Students and doctors of the reserved category are now being forced to stay in isolated groups and are increasingly feeling unsafe in an environment where there is discrimination and a failure of the local administration and the Health Ministry to redress specific instances of caste discrimination.
Bindu Shaja Perappadan, “Reserved Category Medicos Facing Discrimination,” September 19, 2006, http://www.hindu.com/2006/09/16/stories/2006091616430400.htm (accessed February 7, 2007).
[432] “Economic, Social and Cultural Rights for Dalits in India: Case Study on Primary Education in Gujarat,” WoodrowWilsonSchool of Public and International Affairs, p. 17. In the village of Kumbhana in Gujarat, for instance, a Dalit teacher named Jignasha was told by the school principal to keep her water pot separate from the water pots of other teachers. Ibid. Such segregation results from the belief held by non-Dalit teachers that Dalits are “polluted” and will therefore “pollute” their food and water.
[433] Prakash Singh, “Dalit teacher assaulted in Bihar village,” NDTV, January 19, 2006, http://www.ndtv.com/template/template.asp?category=National&template=dalitatrocities&slug=Dalit+teacher+assaulted+in+Bihar+village&id=83877&callid=1 (accessed February 7, 2007).
[434] NCDHR Response to the Special Rapporteur’s Questionnaire, p. 7.
[435] Human Rights Watch, Broken People, p. 25; NCDHR Response to the Special Rapporteur’s Questionnaire, p. 7.
[436] NCDHR Response to the Special Rapporteur’s Questionnaire, p. 8 (citing Shah, et al., Untouchability in Rural India).
[437] Human Rights Watch, Broken People, p. 27.
[438] Ibid., p. 27.
[439] Shah, et al., Untouchability in Rural India, p. 76.
[440] Consideration of Report by India to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, CERD/C/304/Add.13, September 17, 1996, para 23.
[441] NCDHR Response to the Special Rapporteur’s Questionnaire, p. 6.
[442] Shah, et al., Untouchability in Rural India, p. 71.
[443] Ibid., p. 70 (Table 2.2).
[444] Ibid.
[445] Human Rights Watch, Broken People, p. 26; “Economic, Social and Cultural Rights for Dalits in India: Case Study on Primary Education in Gujarat,” WoodrowWilsonSchool of Public and International Affairs, p. 17.
[446] “Economic, Social and Cultural Rights for Dalits in India: Case Study on Primary Education in Gujarat,” WoodrowWilsonSchool of Public and International Affairs, p. 17.
[447] NCDHR response to the Special Rapporteur’s Questionnaire, p. 10 (citing Report, National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, pp. 151-183, Government of India, New Delhi, 1999-2000 & 2000-2001, “the drop-out rate in Scheduled Castes during 1990-91 was as high as 49.35 percent at primary stage and 67.77 percent at middle stage and 77.65 percent at secondary stage”).
[448]As a result of public interest litigation on the right to food, the Supreme Court of India directed State Governments and UnionTerritories to implement a scheme providing every child in every government and government-assisted primary school with a prepared mid-day meal. See Right to Food Campaign, Mid-Day Meals, http://www.righttofoodindia.org/mdm/mdm_scorders.html (accessed February 7, 2007).
[449] NCDHR response to the Special Rapporteur’s Questionnaire, p. 10; See also Joel Lee & Sukhadeo Thorat, Dalits and Right to Food: Discrimination and Exclusion in Food Related Government Programs, unpublished document on file with World Prout Assembly, September 2005,http://www.worldproutassembly.org/archives/2005/09/dalits_and_the.html (accessed February 7, 2007).
[450] Additionally, in a village in Tamil Nadu, the program was closed down because upper-caste community members opposed the scheme because it would benefit Dalit and tribal children. Lee, et al., Dalits and Right to Food.
[451] A working paper by the Indian Institute of Dalit Studies explains the repeated acts of discrimination Dalit cooks in the mid-day meals program face:
First, when local administrators are putting the MMS [mid-day meal scheme] into place, dominant caste community members intervene to block the hiring of Dalit cooks, favoring dominant caste cooks instead. Where a Dalit cook has been hired, dominant caste parents then begin sending their children to school with lunches packed at home, or require their children to come home for lunch, in any case forbidding their children to eat food prepared by the Dalit cook. In the third stage, dominant caste parents or community members pressure the local administration to dismiss the Dalit cook, on any pretext, and hire a dominant caste cook instead. Where this is ineffective, or sometimes without the intervening step, the dominant caste parents campaign to shut down the MMS in the village school altogether. Finally, some dominant caste parents react to the hiring and keeping of a Dalit cook by withdrawing their children from the school, and sometimes admitting them in a different school where the cook is not Dalit.
Lee, et al., Dalits and Right to Food.
[452] NCDHR response to the Special Rapporteur’s Questionnaire, p. 10; See also Lee, et al., Dalits and Right to Food.
[453] Ibid.
[454] “Discrimination Divide Untouchability Still Alive in Gandhi’s Land,” Indian Express, October 5, 2006.
[455] “These Kids Told: You Are Dalit, Go Eat Elsewhere,” Indian Express, December 16, 2003.
[456] Human Rights Watch, Broken People, p. 25
[457] NHRC Report, Section VIII, p. 159.
[458] Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, General Comment 15 – The right to water (arts. 11 and 12 of International Covenant of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights), paras 4 and 6.
[459] For the effects of water deprivation on individuals and communities, see Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, General Comment 15 – The right to water (arts. 11 and 12 of International Covenant of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights), para. 6.
[460] Shah, et al., Untouchability in Rural India, p. 98.
[461] Ibid. See also Ibid., p. 104 (Table 2.9).
[462] NCDHR Response to the Special Rapporteur’s Questionnaire, p. 6.
[463] Shah, et al., Untouchability in Rural India, p. 90.
[464] National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, Highlights of the Report for the Years 1994-95 & 1995-96 (New Delhi: Government of India, 1997), p. 2; Human Rights Watch, Broken People, p. 26, fn 22.
[465] Shah, et al., Untouchability in Rural India, p. 79.
[466] This case study was reported in Shah, et al., Untouchability in Rural India, p. 90.
[467] Ibid., pp. 84-5.
[468] Ibid.
[469] Overall, the average occurrence of this practice was 64 percent in the 11 states included in the study. Ibid., p. 87.
[470]Ibid., p. 89.
[471]Ibid., p.65 (Table 2.1).
[472] Shah, et al., Untouchability in Rural India, p. 124.
[473] Ibid., p. 83.
[474] Ibid.
In its periodic report, the Government of India cites to constitutional provisions and legislative measures that open its courts to victims of discrimination.[475] These measures include legal services for the indigent and the setting up of people’s courts.[476] While the government has enacted such measures, their utility is belied by the insidious nature of caste-based discrimination that has been documented throughout this report, and by the country’s own National Human Rights Commission[477]-a body that India characterizes as the apex national institution to protect human rights and redress grievances.[478] On the particular issue of lack of effective remedies for Dalits, the Commission has found that even where cases are properly registered under the Prevention of Atrocities Act, 1989 several states are not providing economic relief to victims of atrocities as is required.[479] The NCDHR has also found that Dalit victims have often been unable to benefit from this requirement because police will purposely downplay charges and register atrocities against Dalits under the Indian Penal Code instead of the Act, in order to circumvent the compensation requirement.[480] These are but a few examples of the systematic discrimination Dalits endure before all institutions of law enforcement-the very bodies responsible for ensuring their protection (see Section VIII(A)).
In its Periodic Report, India indicates that it has devoted “considerable attention and space to constitutional provisions related to fundamental rights” in curricula[481] and in developing policy guidelines for media “to ensure that racial or other prejudices are not propagated.”[482] The treatment of the caste system in textbook and curricula, along with inadequate media representation of Dalit issues and the lack of Dalit journalists generally, suggest that the government’s efforts have so far been inadequate. In addition, the widespread practice and acceptance of caste-based segregation in government schools (see Sections VIII(E)(5)(a) and VIII(F)(1)(c)) may send the strongest and most intolerant message of all.
The treatment of caste discrimination in textbooks and curricula can strengthen caste division and prejudice. For example, a report by the Mumbai-based NGO KHOJ found that even progressive curricula either exclude any mention of caste discrimination or discuss the caste system in a way that suggests that caste inequities and discrimination no longer exist.[483] School textbooks may similarly fail to mention caste discrimination, may attempt to justify the origins of caste discrimination[484] or may attribute the unequal situation of Dalits to their “ignorance, illiteracy and blind faithbecause they still fail to realise [the] importance of education in life.”[485]
While Dalits, together with tribals, make up nearly 25 percent of the country’s population, the NHRC found that the media “provides negligible space to their plight/problems.”[486] Beyond reports of major instances of violence, there is a lack of any sustained reporting of their problems and efforts to include their voices.[487] Instead, these communities mostly receive attention when the discussion is focused on backwardness, population growth, lack of entrepreneurship and productivity, thereby perpetuating caste-based stereotypes.[488] Part of the problem of representation of Dalit issues in the media lies in the lack of Dalit journalists. There is only one nationally prominent Dalit journalist, Chandrabhan Prasad, who has written about the structure of discrimination against Dalits.[489]
