Dalits in India live in a sorry state, whether it is spoken about or not

In the 21st century, while India plans to reach the Moon and Mars, Dalits cannot afford to go a hundred yards riding a horse. In a country that the Government wants to make self-reliant as a way out of its economic morass, Dalits dare not make themselves “aatma nirbhar”. What is a more unnerving aspect of our ultra-modern society is the inglorious fact that the Government authorities are, as we speak, formally searching for hamlets and villages where untouchability is still practised with two hoots to the law. The search follows two quick incidents of untouchability reported from the Koppal district of Karnataka within a fortnight. In the first instance, a Dalit family was fined Rs25,000 by upper caste village elders because their three-year-old child entered a temple. Dalits are banned from entering the temple in that village. In the second incident, a Dalit youth was asked to pay  Rs11,000 for entering a temple in another village. The fine would be used to purify the temple, the upper caste villagers told him. These incidents are not new. They happen dime a dozen in most Indian States. Dalits have no right to worship, believe, celebrate or cremate their dead on public property because the upper castes treat all public property as fief and the Dalits have none in their names.

However, what is startling is the Koppal administration telling the media that untouchability is still practised in 25-30 villages in that district. The very admission of such a fact is violative of the Constitution but all that the administration and the police are willing to do is search for those villages. Obviously, they are not going to find them because nobody will admit to practising untouchability. What is scary is the routinisation of the Indian, casteist social order, immune to the Constitution, even as the society claims to embrace modernity. The Dalit is so untouchable s/he can get killed for touching an animal. A youth was hacked to death in Gujarat in 2018 because he rode a horse. In 2019, a Dalit groom’s family was socially boycotted because he sat on a horse, again in Gujarat. In 2020, a Dalit youth found out being an army jawan does not make him immune to upper caste taunts as he was forced down from his horse, also in Gujarat. After dozens of similar cases were reported in Uttar Pradesh, a Dalit groom in Meerut managed to reach the bride’s home on his horse because of police protection. The only consolation for the poor Dalits is that even prosperous Dalits suffer the same insults. Young Dalits get a taste of the discrimination quite early, during mid-day meals in schools. Whom can Dalits turn to seek equality as human beings in everyday life and not be beaten or killed for wearing new clothes or walking on a paved street or drinking water from a public tap?