On May 18th, 2013, Chitralekha (the dalit woman autorickshaw driver from Payannur, Kerala, who has been fighting CITU/CPM men and who has faced repeated attacks from them in the past) and her family were attacked at her home by a mob of 30 plus men, including her neighbors. This article is her account of what transpired on that day.

Eramangalathu Chitralekha

On May 18th I was on my way to the railway station to take my daughter to her hostel in Trivandrum. We wanted to catch the Malabar express at night. It is because I am afraid to keep her here that I am sending her so far off to study. The time would have been around 8, 8.15. Some Bengali workers were there in my house as some construction work was happening in my house that day.

We had just got out from the house into the narrow road in front of my house. Suddenly Ravi, Manoj, Pradeepan and a few others came forward to attack us. When my brother resisted they started beating him up. I took the auto and ran inside with my daughter. My husband Sreeshkanth was in the house as he was sick with diabetes. My brother also came running in. By then they had called people over the mobile and a crowd gathered in front of my house.

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Structural overhaul to end violence rooted in multiple forms of discrimination and inequalities

AIDMAM

New Delhi, May 2, 2013.

The UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, its Causes and Consequences, Ms. Rashida Manjoo has highlighted the fact that without addressing root causes of structural inequality and oppression, India cannot hope to address violence against women. 

In her media statement issued yesterday, Ms. Manjoo, has raised critical questions to the Government of India on the swift law and order approach that has been adopted to deal with issues of violence against women. With reference to the new rape legislation following the Justice Verma Committee report, she has not minced words in saying, "It is unfortunate that the opportunity to establish a substantive and specific equality and non- discrimination rights legislative framework for women, to address de facto inequality and discrimination, and to protect and prevent against all forms of violence against women was lost" 

Her statement recognizes the deeply entrenched structural causes of discrimination and violence and the varied manifestations on girls and women. This includes multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination and violence based on socio-­economic situations. Her mention of caste based discrimination in this regard, clearly highlights the multiple barriers faced by Dalit women in accessing justice and fundamental freedom. Ms. Manjoo has further reiterated that the notions of male superiority combined with realities of social exclusion and marginalization, power and powerlessness, economic dependence and religion and cultural practices are at the core of violence faced by women from excluded communities.

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Note from the interviewers -This is the transcript of a conversation between Dalit transgender feminist writer and theater artist Living Smile Vidya, who lives and works in Chennai, with her transgender brothers Kaveri Karthik and Gee Ameena Suleiman from Bangalore. This conversation took place on a late night after 11 pm in the basti where Kaveri and Gee live, following a day-long discussion between the transgender men and intergenders and lesbian community of Bangalore with a group of visiting Dalit activists and intellectuals from Tamil Nadu. After the other ladies in the basti left the common space on the footpath and went to sleep, the following conversation unfolded:

Kaveri: "Can you tell us a little bit about gender and caste dynamics in your own life while growing up?

Living Smile Vidya: Actually, though we settled in Chennai, we belong to the Arunthatiyar caste in Andhra Pradesh and migrated from there a few generations ago. Our caste is the lowest of the Dalits because occupationally we did manual scavenging. So, my mother would have a job everyday doing street cleaning as a government worker, then do domestic work on the side, in several houses for a couple days of the week each. 50% of her earnings would go to her husband. She had to do both house work in our own house as well as work in many jobs outside to make ends meet. My father was an alcoholic and his income contribution to the family was only 40%. But since he had physical control over her income also, I would have to get my school fees from him, though it was actually my mother's earnings. My father would drink and physically and verbally abuse my mother and the rest of us. The whole colony knew about this because the houses are close by and small. In big houses belonging to savarnas also, women suffer but that cannot be seen or heard by us because it happens in the privacy of the thick walls of their house. But at least you can hear Dalit women shouting back, threatening to hit their drunk husbands etc when these fights happen in our colonies which most of the modest, "good wives" of upper/middle caste families cannot even imagine doing.

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Via Rupesh Kumar

Sabitha: A Woman And A Day

This documentary by Rupesh Kumar was screened on August 22, 2012

At Friday club, Ernakulam, Kerala.

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The documentary 'Sabitha: A Woman And A Day', tries to trace the postive aspects of an adivasi woman's life. It is shot in the Ambedkar colony in Kambalakad, Wayanad, Kerala. This documentary exposes the 'patronship 'of the adivasis by the media and the other established groups. Such patronship goes unquestioned in Kerala, even as it systematically denies the voices of adivasis and promotes non-adivasi interests.

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- An interview with Pushpa Balmiki

[This interview was first published as "My restlessness grew and started taking form quite early" in the March-April 2005 issue of Insight magazine. R. B. Rawat conducted the interview]

Pushpa Balmiki is the founder of Adharshila, an NGO working in the Tarai Region of UP. She has represented Dalit issues on various national and international foras. She has been instrumental in mentoring many grass-root level Dalit activists.

Tell us something about your background?

I was born in a Dalit family. My parents were safai karmis (sanitation workers) and faced a lot of hardships in bringing us up. Their daily work was to clean and carry human excrement out of private latrines. They used to get leftovers or half-eaten food, or some times, paltry sums of money on which all of us survived. After my four older brothers, I was the fifth child in the family. All our uncles,too, had only male children. In the entire family, I was the first girl child. For this reason, everyone doted upon me and I enjoyed a lot of attention. However, in the social world outside the family, I was an object of contempt. I could not play with the children of our upper-caste neighbors. It was with longing eyes that I watched them play and have fun.

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Savari

(Round Table India thanks Savari for sharing this article)

Universally, the imagery of a whip evokes the reality of violence throughout human history. The whip is inseparable from violence against slaves, dalits, women, animals and children. Almost all histories of protest against injustice, be it feminism, anti-slavery, anti-caste or anti-apartheid movements have protested and continue to protest the symbolic violence in imagery that uses instruments of violence such as the whip, noose or chains.

 In recent weeks, an almost seamless coming together of Indian scholars, feminists and educators to defend and uphold a textbook cartoon with whipping as the central theme is perhaps one of the finest commentary on caste violence.

Caste violence is a broad handle for inter-operating kinds of violences that dalits and lower castes experience from those who are situated in the higher order. This violence that we are witnessing now comes from the most educationally qualified members of our society, largely upper caste, and hindu. The cartoon defense by upper caste scholars and feminists has presented us an unique opportunity to tease apart a few distinct forms of violence including secular violence, punitive, verbal and visual violence, all of which coalesce together to construct the pedagogic violence that frames the textbooks and classrooms of this country.

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