Hathras, untouchability, and Ambedkar's vision of social democracy

In the early 20^th century, Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, a schoolboy from the Ratnagiri district, would enter his classroom. He would have to go to a corner and sit all by himself, instead of sitting with his other classmates. Bhimrao would also have to get a piece of gunny cloth over which he could sit. He would take the cloth back home everyday as the servant employed by the school would refuse to touch the cloth.

When all other students of his class felt thirsty, they would only need to take the permission of the teacher before going to the tap and drinking water. When Bhimrao felt thirsty, he would hope that the school peon was available. He was not allowed to touch the tap himself, and could quench his thirst only if the peon would open the tap for him. If the peon was absent, he would not get any water, and would remain thirsty.

This schoolboy rose to become the architect of independent India’s Constitution, and the first Law Minister of independent India.

As an innocent schoolboy, Bhimrao had to face this discrimination only because he belonged to the Mahar community – which was one of the communities who were treated as ‘untouchables’ in the Bombay Presidency. Many of us may naturally think that the trauma and discrimination that young Ambedkar had to face as an ‘untouchable’ no longer exists today. Didn’t Article 17 of our Constitution abolish all forms of untouchability?

The gangrape and murder of a 19-year old Dalit girl in Hathras village, Uttar Pradesh proves us wrong. The girl was allegedly gangraped and murdered by her upper-caste neighbors, who had a prolonged feud with her Dalit family.

Beyond the obvious caste-based fault lines that led to the rape and murder, we must also not forget that the 19 year-old girl’s Dalit family were also treated as untouchables in their own village. The family members pointed out that no Brahmin or Thakur of the village would enter their house, and would only send a messenger if they had to convey a message.

Whenever the family visits a shop in the village, the shopkeeper sprinkles water on the money they hand over, as if to ‘purify’ the money given from the hands of an untouchable. Even 70 years after all forms of untouchability were outlawed through our Constitution, untouchability still continues to exist in practice – and the Hathras incident gives us yet another reminder. Although untouchability has been abolished in form, it has continued to exist in practice, as upper castes refuse to give up on the privileges that they receive through this status quo.

Upper castes benefit from this status quo – as the notion of untouchability allows them to prevent Dalits from accessing public goods like water and land. Almost every day, we come across news reports of Dalit men and women getting beaten up for innocuous acts like drawing water out of a well. Incidents of this nature show that young Ambedkar’s humiliation as a Mahar Dalit still cannot be relegated to the dustbins of history, or to social norms of the previous century.

Such practices tend to continue even after legislations such as the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 have been implemented – which aim to provide speedy justice to victims of caste-based atrocities. Even prior to this, the Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955 made the practice of any form of untouchability a penal offence. The mere enactment of progressive legislations has not brought much change, as executive authorities and the police force may, on multiple occasions, have an inherent bias against the oppressed classes.

After the gangrape and murder in Hathras, the Police cremated the girl’s body at 2 AM, without even giving her parents the chance to see the mortal remains for one last time. Would the Police ever deny dignity during death in this manner, if the victim belonged to a so-called ‘upper caste’? This inherent confidence of ‘getting away’ arises only because of the victim’s caste – and it is this mindset that we need to change.

As the architect of India’s Constitution, Dr. Ambedkar was conscious of the damage that caste discrimination could do, even after India adopts its Constitution and becomes a political democracy. On 25^thNovember 1949, in his final speech before the Constituent Assembly, Ambedkar stated – 

“We must make our political democracy a social democracy as well. Political democracy cannot last unless there lies at the base of it social democracy. What does social democracy mean? It means a way of life which recognizes liberty, equality and fraternity as the principles of life…..how long will 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”.

Ambedkar’s prescient warning reminds us that political democracy weakens when we continue to deny social and economic equality – by allowing practices such as untouchability to prevail. It is this social and economic inequality that allows the State to get away after tapping the phones of the Dalit victim’s family, who had just been denied the right to see their daughter for one last time. It also imbibes in us a culture where we treat oppressed communities as our inferiors, or turn a blind eye towards their humiliation - without realizing that they belong to the same brethren.

The fight against caste-based discrimination must hence begin from within. As Ambedkar observed – “In the fight for Swaraj (freedom from British rule), you fight with the whole nation on your side. In this [fight against caste] – you have to fight against the whole nation, and that too, your own”.