Chennai
However, when FIRs were booked against four Dalit children, all less than nine years, for allegedly committing sexual offences against children their age at Usilampatti near Madurai on Monday, all those voices have turned stoically mute, the same silence BR Ambedkar had famously called ‘conspiracy of silence’ over half a century back.
That the majority of political fraternity and civil society is silent on Usilampatti is a grim reminder of general apathy towards Dalits. Nearly two days since the incident, only the Tamil Nadu Untouchability Eradication Front, a wing of the state CPM, and a couple of Dalit political outfits have condemned the developments in Usilampatti.
The same political parties and civil societies, which marched for peace, picketed embassies and blocked roads here for ethnic Tamils in Sri Lanka, are disturbingly silent now. Perhaps, they deem it fit to react only when a major caste conflict would snowball like it did in Divya-Ilavarasan or murders of Gokul Raj and Udumalpet Sankar.
Rights activist and retired professor A Marx says, “Major parties fear losing intermediate caste votes when they speak in support of Dalit victims during caste conflicts. They do not treat it as even human rights violation. No single party speaks about atrocities committed against Dalits in its manifesto.”
However, it could be more than politics. It could more be a socio cultural problems, argues Punithapandian, editor of Dalit Murasu.
“The flawed system teaches kids that untouchability is bad and not caste. Be it temples or elsewhere, they grow up applying caste discrimination as is dictated by their religion. So, for Hindus, they are only doing what their religion teaches them to do. They appropriate it and apply it later as bureaucrats and politicians. When you follow a flawed system, it will only result in such stoic silence,” Pandian reasoned, wondering why other intermediate castes had not intervened or prevented it when Vanniyars attacked Dalits in Dharmapuri.
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