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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Soldier’s Funeral Reveals India’s Outsize, Outcaste Problem -Himadri Ghosh

Soldier’s Funeral Reveals India’s Outsize, Outcaste Problem -Himadri Ghosh

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published Published on Jul 3, 2016   modified Modified on Jul 3, 2016
-IndiaSpend.com

Data demonstrate that discrimination against the SCs and STs in education, employment and property ownership continues despite affirmative action policies.

Earlier this week, when upper-caste villagers in the western UP district of Firozabad tried to prevent the funeral of a Dalit paramilitary soldier killed in a terrorist ambush, it was the latest manifestation of widespread discrimination against the 305 million Indians belonging to scheduled castes and scheduled tribes.

Upper-caste villagers refused to allow the funeral of Vir Singh, a Nat (a community of now-settled formerly nomadic acrobats who are Dalits) on public land, reluctantly relenting after many hours of cajoling by a local bureaucrat. A father of three, Singh, a 35-year veteran of the CRPF, died in Pampore, Kashmir, on June 26. His family lived in a one-room home with a tin roof, DNA reported.

More than 1,200 km to the east, in a Kolkata slum peopled exclusively by other outcastes like him, Dharmendra, a “manual scavenger” – an official term for those who manually clean toilets and sewers – for 33 years, explained how he was so used to discrimination that he was barely aware of it. He was not aware that manual scavenging is banned by law and he had not heard of job reservations for his clan, mathors, people who clean toilets, septic tanks and sewers, often immersed in excreta.

“I don’t even have papers,” said Dharmendra, a short, lean man whose real name is Kartik Nayak. He sings Hindi songs from the films of Bollywood actor Dharmendra, hence the name. “It is fate; no one can change my fate,” he said. “I am happy the way I am, still alive at 51 with a wife, a son and his family.”

After 68 years of independence, not only does discrimination endure against Indians from scheduled castes and scheduled tribes – 201 million and 104 million, respectively, according to Census 2011 – crimes against India’s most marginalised are rising (as the second part of this series will explore).

Despite progress, scheduled castes and scheduled tribes – who together constitute 25.2% of India’s population – continue to trail other Indians. To quantify the gap, IndiaSpend used four criteria: education, income, land and home ownership and government jobs.

Please click here to read more.

IndiaSpend.com/ TheWire.in, 3 July, 2016, http://thewire.in/48088/discrimination-soldiers-funeral-reveals-indias-outsize-outcaste-problem/


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