Somnath Pati
The horrific incident of rape and murder of a resident doctor at R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital has sent shockwaves across the nation, intensifying public discourse around the topic of ‘rape.’ As commentators and observers—ranging from public intellectuals to common citizens—engage more deeply with this issue, some have even gone so far as to label the victim ‘Nirbhaya 2.’ Dr. Madri Kakoti, an Assistant Professor at the Department of Linguistics, University of Lucknow, expressed her outrage on X, posting: “IT IS NOT NIRBHAYA 2. THIS IS NOT A MOVIE SEQUEL. SHE WAS A WOMAN OF FLESH AND BONES. FLESH THEY TORE AT. BONES THEY BROKE. SHE IS NOT AN ABSTRACT IDEA. TAKE HER NAME. DO NOT ERASE HER LIKE THEY ERASED HER LIFE. TAKE HER NAME!”At this point, one might choose to ignore debates over nomenclature and instead focus on the trending topics on X. As of this writing, ‘#KolkataDoctor’ is trending at Number 1 with around 22k posts. Quite predictably, the beliefs and mindsets of Indians belonging to oppressor castes reek of hypocrisy. On one hand, they flood social media platforms demanding justice for rape victims, while on the other, they digitally unite to trend ‘Asuram Bapu Ji Is Innocent’ at Number 18, with around 37k posts.
In another instance, ‘#Hathras’ trends at Number 24 with around 13k posts—not because people are genuinely concerned about the Hathras incident, but due to the simmering political conflicts among liberals, conservatives, and communists in Indian society, particularly among those from oppressor caste communities. Liberals and communists, including Bollywood actress Swara Bhasker and Mayukh Biswas, All India General Secretary of the Students’ Federation of India (SFI), have jumped on the bandwagon. Bhasker compared institutional lapses in the Kolkata case to those in Hathras, while Biswas criticized the failure of Mamata Banerjee’s All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) government in West Bengal, claiming she is “copying the Hathras event!” While Bhasker’s comparison risks normalizing the Hathras incident by equating it with the recent one in Kolkata, Biswas goes a step further by reducing the Hathras incident to an “event.”Although Biswas’ tweet appears to have been deleted, his remarks can still be found through a Google search or by viewing archived versions of his tweets. For those from oppressor caste communities, the rape of a Dalit girl can indeed be dismissed as an “event,” with members of their communities diluting the seriousness of everyday caste violence in order to score political brownie points.
In response to the Kolkata incident, medical professionals have erupted in mass protests, leading to the shutdown of OPD services across the nation. The Federation of Resident Doctors’ Association (FORDA) has called off its strike after the Union Health Minister, Jagat Prakash Nadda, agreed to form a committee, with their involvement, to work on the Central Protection Act. However, other medical associations, such as the Federation of All India Medical Associations (FAIMA) and the Resident Doctors’ Association of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in New Delhi, have decided to “continue their indefinite strike until a written assurance is provided for the implementation of the Central Protection Act, suspension of the former Principal pending inquiry, and the fulfilment of other demands.” Several chapters of the Indian Medical Association (IMA) have also continued their protests, with representatives writing to Nadda, “seeking enactment of a special central law to curb attacks and violence against doctors as a ‘deterrence’ measure, besides the declaration of hospitals as safe zones.”It is crucial to remind the doctors currently protesting for justice that this is the same association whose President and General Secretary denied and dismissed the existence of casteism in the medical profession following the institutional murder (more aptly, suicide) of Dr. Payal Tadvi in 2019.
Since yesterday, I have noticed a strange digital phenomenon. Many of my connections on social media, both personal and professional, have been highlighting and calling out the silence of “non-medicos” on this issue. This implies that people not associated with the medical profession are not being vocal enough. Based on my observations, this narrative has been mostly pushed by individuals in the medical field, at least within my connections. However, much of their wilful ignorance is reflected in their tacit complicity in normalizing rape. These individuals often identify politically as liberal, centrist, neutral, or apolitical and usually belong to oppressor caste communities. Their deafening silence was evident when the rapists of Bilkis Bano were released, fed sweets, and welcomed with garlands. Their silence was also palpable when the Dalit girl in Hathras was forcibly cremated at midnight by an administrative apparatus that favoured the rapists, with individuals from the same oppressor caste communities defending the rapists’ actions. Suddenly, the discourse of “Law must take its own course” during the Hathras case transforms into “Hang the Rapists!” during the Kolkata case, as public representatives from the oppressor castes, across political factions and driven by vested interests, smell an opportunity to influence public sentiment and derive various benefits from it.
A random Google News search for the phrase “Dalit rape” reveals a barrage of recent incidents. The most recent case, on 12th August, involves Gajendra Singh, an Agriculture Development Officer in Bulandshahr, Uttar Pradesh, who raped a 10-year-old Dalit girl and also committed bestiality by sexually assaulting a goat. Earlier, on 19th July, a 16-year-old Dalit girl was gang-raped by two men in Gonda, Uttar Pradesh. In Madhubani, Bihar, the gang rape and murder of an 18-year-old Dalit woman on 18th July bears striking similarities to the Hathras case. In this incident, the victim’s body was exhumed by the Madhubani police, leading her mother to file a complaint, accusing a local resident, his father, and a ward councillor of involvement. Mayawati, President of the Bahujan Samaj Party, expressed her concern and demanded strict action regarding this case, as well as the subsequent rape and murder of another Dalit girl in Muzaffarpur.
Based on the victim’s postmortem report and her family’s claims, journalists on social media investigating the Kolkata case reported that approximately 150 mg of semen was found inside the victim’s hymen, suggesting a strong possibility of gang rape.On 25th June, a 28-year-old Dalit woman accused seven persons of raping her after kidnapping her while she was purchasing medicines in an area under the jurisdiction of the Sushant Golf City police station in Lucknow. Two days earlier, on 23rd June, a 13-year-old Dalit girl was raped and murdered by six people, including a close aide of Uttarakhand BJP leader Aditya Raj Saini. Her critically injured body was dumped on the Haridwar-Delhi highway, where she was later run over by a vehicle. One must wonder if such meticulous quantification by journalists occurred during these horrific incidents perpetrated by individuals from oppressor caste communities.
A few days ago, a video circulated on leading journalism platforms worldwide highlighted a mob of Zionists protesting the arrests of several Israel Defence Forces (IDF) soldiers accused of raping Palestinian prisoners at the Sde Teiman detention facility in the Negev desert, Southern Israel. I came across another video in which Zionist mobs celebrated the release of three IDFprisoners, reminiscent of the celebration surrounding the release of the rapists of Bilkis Bano. Zionist mobs, including several Israeli ministers, claimed the arrested soldiers were “best heroes” who “deserve respect.” Professor Joseph Massad, in his recent article, writes: “The pretence that the Israeli army is a “moral army,” let alone the “most moral army in the world”, as Israeli racism often claims, is nothing more than another public relations attempt to cover up Israel’s genocidal crimes against the Palestinian people.” This scenario unsurprisingly echoes the Indian context.C.K. Raulji, the incumbent BJP MLA of the Godhra Vidhan Sabha, defended the release of the rapists, stating: “They were Brahmins, and Brahmins are known to have good sanskaar. It might have been someone’s ill intention to corner and punish them.” Notably, there was a lack of widespread outrage and mobilization from individuals in oppressor caste communities across the political spectrum, including those aligned with liberal, centrist, and communist ideologies. While some were quick to criticize the BJP and its commentators, there was a conspicuous lack of condemnation or disassociation from the deeply entrenched and discriminatory ideology of ‘Brahminism.’ This silence perpetuates the false and harmful narrative of moral and ethical superiority that continues to influence the attitudes and actions of many within these communities. By failing to challenge the underlying caste-based hierarchies that fuel such delusions of superiority, these individuals inadvertently reinforce the very structures of oppression they claim to oppose.Thus, one can draw similarities between the Jews and Brahmins, as the ironies become self-evident when oppressor-caste communities compare themselves and identify as “victimized people.” No wonder academics like Professor Vamsee Juluriclaim: “The Brahmin, and often even “the Hindu,” of the “progressive” imagination is little different from the “Jew” of the Nazi imagination in art and popular culture. And both have a long, painful past in the history of Islamic and Christian imperialism around the world.”
When discussing “painful histories,” it is difficult to imagine the ordeals of Kashmiri women during the mass rapes and massacres at KunanPoshpora, committed by the Indian Army. It would be dishonest to claim that such injustices do not continue to this day, with the wide immunity and impunity granted to Indian soldiers under the controversial Armed Forces Special Powers Act, 1990. The stereotypical understanding of the Indian state of Chhattisgarh often romanticizes it as a region dominated by Maoist armed forces. However, one must look beyond this perception to recognize that violent brutalities by armed forces and police officials continue unabated in the state Numerous Adivasi women, such as Soni Sori, MadkamHidme, and ‘Mukay Oram,’ have suffered such brutalities, and Soni Sori is one of the few who survived. However, survival introduces a new set of adversities, as these women must continue defending themselves against the ongoing onslaught of oppressor caste communities, keen on silencing their voices of resistance.
As evidenced, the rapes and murders of Dalit, Muslim, and Adivasi women are often perpetrated and defended by individuals from oppressor caste communities. The purpose of describing such incidents is not to engage in academic knowledge production about the forms of ‘victimization’ faced by oppressed caste communities. Such a dishonest exercise is often practiced by unconscientious individuals from oppressor-caste backgrounds who view these incidents as opportunities to capitalize on the victims’ plight, guided by vested interests. Nor is the intention to normalize the occurrence of rapes—such an interpretation would be a deliberate and dishonest misreading of my observations. Instead, my focus is on capturing a broader context and embodying a sense of solidarity with the victims and survivors of these heinous acts.
In India, the historical claim to social superiority by Brahmins and similar oppressor castes has been intricately linked to the ‘Varnashrama Dharma’ system. As Babasaheb Ambedkar writes in his seminal work, Riddles in Hinduism, the two dogmas of “Varna Dharma” and “Ashrama Dharma” are collectively known as “Varnashrama Dharma.” He highlights that the justification for this system by oppressor caste communities is rooted in the “explanations” offered in Hindu literary texts, which he describes as “effusions of the imbeciles.” Dr. Ambedkar further critiques these explanations, pointing out how Brahmins struggled to provide a consistent, rational defence of the Varna system, of which they were ardent proponents. He views the Ashrama Dharma as an “ancient attempt at planned economy” devised by Brahmins, which is “so stupid that it is a riddle to understand the causes and motives behind it.” The motivation behind such literature was to provide oppressor caste communities with a framework to exercise power, control, and domination in society, at the expense of others.
In light of this context, it is not unjustified to examine the broader implications of rape in society. For centuries, perpetrators have used rape to forcibly violate another individual’s autonomy, driven by a psychological desire to impose control and domination. The parallels between this and the oppressor caste communities’ desire for power and control are evident. Babasaheb Ambedkar also wrote: “The caste system is marked not merely by inequality but by graded inequality. All castes are not on a par. They are one above the other. There is a kind of ascending scale of hatred and a descending scale of contempt.” This contempt and hatred manifest in the injustices perpetrated by oppressor caste communities. When individuals from these communities internalize and perpetuate this contempt and hatred, they do little to dismantle and annihilate the caste system.
If women from oppressor caste communities express outrage on social media against rape but fail to denounce discriminatory texts like the Manusmriti—which degrades women to the core—or approve of inter-caste marriages, it reflects where their true loyalties lie. Selective outrage from individuals in oppressor caste communities becomes a roadblock to meaningful discussions on rape, as long as they fail to acknowledge their communities’ complicity and recognize themselves as part of the problem. As another Independence Day dawns upon this nation, the narrative of questioning whether women are truly free will likely be echoed by the same individuals—masters of selective outrage.
In contrast to such selective outrage, my understanding of human society is guided by the profound remarks of Dr. Ambedkar in his final speech to the Constituent Assembly, which remain relevant today. He warned: “On the 26th of January 1950, we are going to enter into a life of contradictions. In politics, we will have equality, but in social and economic life, we will have inequality. In politics, we will recognize the principle of one man, one vote, and one vote, one value. But in our social and economic life, we shall continue to deny the principle of one man, one value. How long shall we continue to live this life of contradictions? How long shall we continue to deny equality in our social and economic life? If we continue to deny it for long, we will do so only by putting our political democracy in peril. We must remove this contradiction at the earliest possible moment, or else those who suffer from inequality will blow up the structure of political democracy which this Assembly has so laboriously built up.”
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Somnath Pati is an independent researcher and former political consultant with an M.A. in Modern History from the Jawaharlal Nehru University. He writes on identities and social conflict. He can be reached @rebel_academic and somnathpatijnu@gmail.com.
