The one-day protest against the alleged dilution of the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act – has left a vast trail of mayhem in the Hindi belt. The Supreme Court had on March 20 “diluted” the provisions of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, ruling that government servants should not be arrested without prior sanction and private citizens, too, be arrested only after an inquiry under the law. Opposing the verdict, several Dalit organisations had called for a ‘Bharat Bandh’ yesterday in which several violent incidents and blockades of roads and rail tracks were reported from several states. What ails the community? Do such reactions justify the widespread damages caused in terms of life, property and inconvenience? Though Centre has moved the Supreme Court seeking a review of its recent judgment in the matter, clashes with the police, attacks on buses and government property, and blockades of trains and roads were reported across states including Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Punjab and Bihar. The Bharat Bandh showed that there is severe resentment among the Dalits over several issues. So, there could be objective basis for a perception that the state is not doing enough to ensure justice in such cases. Atrocities against Dalits are not isolated events. Caste-based discrimination is ingrained in Indian society. A 2016 survey conducted in Rajasthan, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Mumbai shows that a disconcertingly large proportion of non-Dalit people (or their families) admitted to practising untouchability, which is explicitly forbidden by law. That the socio-economic condition of Dalits has improved over time is true. But this advance has also created aspirations and hence insecurities. The feeling of being discriminated on the basis of caste was bigger among graduate Dalits than in the community as a whole. A cocktail of growing feelings of denial of justice, persistence of caste-based oppression and heightened sense of discrimination among educated Dalits, rather than conspiracy theories can help understand what led to these protests. But somewhere the social divide has widened much more in recent times which has furthered intolerance in the society more. Economic deprivation, by birth in a lower caste or in a weaker section should not be criteria for injustice in a democracy.
