The Hindu : Will their scream of anger be heard?

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Dec 31, 2002

Opinion

Opinion - News Analysis

Will their scream of anger be heard?

By Mari Marcel Thekaekara

Hyderabad is hosting the Asian Social Forum from January 2-7 next. I could almost hear groans of not another one! I myself am a bit cynical about jetsetting social workers. So what does happen at these international ``do's''? And does anything get `done' as a result of all the sound and fury? What does it signify for the people on the ground? Those Dalits, adivasis, dowry death victims, the marginalised and the deprived?

I was invited to the Durban Racism Conference as a writer on Dalit issues. I had mixed feelings about the entire `tamasha'. Because, undoubtedly, there is an element of `tamasha' involved in huge global conferences. There are dozens of events, meetings and workshops all taking place simultaneously, and organisationally it appears shambolic. However, I buried my scepticism momentarily to examine one group, the Dalit campaign, closely from the perspective of the ordinary Dalit in the villages and hamlets of India. What, if anything, did the Dalit cause gain from all of this?

I documented the National Dalit Human Rights (NDHR) Campaign, following it from Tamil Nadu to Rajasthan, seeking opinions from the leaders of the campaign to grassroots workers. There were scathing comments and criticism concerning the role that Geneva and Washington has and the relevance of international level campaigns to the Dalit in a Karnataka village who has to deal with humiliation, insults and untouchability in her or his little village tea shop everyday. Yet, with the criticism, I gained certain insights. As a people, we in India are inured to atrocities on Dalits. We remain unaffected by them.

Everyday, newspaper items reporting horrendous human rights aberrations appear, and remain just that — everyday occurrences. And the average Indian eye skims over the atrocity story to cricket or the Miss World. Caste and dowry deaths have been with us for so long that we are blasé and cynical about them. Or fatalistic and philosophical.

It takes something new to make us look at the issues on our doorstep. Taking caste to Durban ignited tempers. Dalits were accused of washing their dirty linen in public. ``At least you admit that we have dirty linen and it needs washing,'' the national campaign convener retorted to the Indian Embassy officials who berated them in Geneva. The campaign gave the much-needed vigour to the Dalit movement, critics notwithstanding. It provided the impetus needed and important events and actions created milestones.

In Rajasthan, the Chief Minister, stung by criticism, insisted that the Superintendent of Police oversee the safe conduct of a Dalit marriage party with the groom on a horse. Anathema to the upper caste feudal elements in the State. A first in the district, supervised necessarily by the police chief complete with wireless, mobiles and a huge police force to ensure that the marriage party was not stoned by mobs.

In Tumkur, Karnataka, when the NDHR campaign took off, entire villages protested the centuries-old `two-tumbler' system and tea shops were forced to capitulate. To treat Dalits as normal human beings for the first time in their lives. For the first time in the history of the region. For the Dalits of Tumkur it is as significant as Rosa Parkes, an Afro-American woman, refusing to sit at the back of the bus.

So while global conferences generate a lot of hot air, something significant comes out of them sometimes.

The Asian Social Forum will use as a technique, a court of enquiry where victims of human rights violations will stand up and give testimony to the world at large, before human rights lawyers, judges, the media and ordinary citizens. Their stories will be told directly in sessions called the Voices of Victims.

The introduction to the Voices of Victims proclaims a solemn warning, ``The wheel of history is reaching a turning point. Our life and history indicts you as criminals of global generational homicide. Our testimonies here are only one of the signs of what is yet to come. The world you claim to fashion today neither suits our lives, nor is relevant for future generations. We want to design a new world. We have come here with the belief that Another World is Possible. But we do not want this to remain in the realm of possibilities. We are born in an unjust world, we do not want to leave it as it is for future generations.''

Theirs is not a cry for pity. It is a scream of anger. A demand for justice. Whether Hyderabad helps to achieve this will be judged by future historians. And the oppressed, the wretched of the earth.

(The writer is a social activist)

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