By Ankur Paliwal

Samadhan is an outlier in his home village in western India. Last year, he became the first person from there to start a science PhD. Samadhan, a student in Maharashtra state, is an Adivasi or indigenous person — a member of one of the most marginalized and poorest communities in India.

For that reason, he doesn’t want to publicize his last name or institution, partly because he fears that doing so would bring his social status to the attention of a wider group of Indian scientists. “They’d know that I am from a lower category and will think that I have progressed because of [the] quota,” he says.

The quota Samadhan refers to is also known as a reservation policy: a form of affirmative action that was written into India’s constitution in 1950. Reservation policies aimed to uplift marginalized communities by allocating quotas for them in public-sector jobs and in education. Mirroring India’s caste system of social hierarchy, the most privileged castes dominated white-collar professions, including roles in science and technology. After many years, the Indian government settled on a 7.5% quota for Adivasis (referred to as ‘Scheduled Tribes’ in official records) and a 15% quota for another marginalized group, the Dalits (referred to in government records as ‘Scheduled Castes’, and formerly known by the dehumanizing term ‘untouchables’). These quotas — which apply to almost all Indian research institutes — roughly correspond to these communities’ representation in the population, according to the most recent census of 2011.

But the historically privileged castes — the ‘General’ category in government records — still dominate many of India’s elite research institutions. Above the level of PhD students, the representation of Adivasis and Dalits falls off a cliff. Less than 1% of professors come from these communities at the top-ranked institutes among the 23 that together are known as the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), according to data provided to Nature under right-to-information requests (see ‘Diversity at top Indian institutions’; the figures are for 2020, the latest available at time of collection).

“This is deliberate” on the part of institutes that “don’t want us to succeed”, says Ramesh Chandra, a Dalit, who retired as a senior professor at the University of Delhi last June. Researchers blame institute heads for not following the reservation policies, and the government for letting them off the hook.

Diversity gaps are common in science in many countries but they take different forms in each nation. The situation in India highlights how its caste system limits scientific opportunities for certain groups in a nation striving to become a global research leader.

India’s government publishes summary student data, but its figures for academic levels beyond this don’t allow analyses of scientists by caste and academic position, and most universities do not publish these data. In the past few years, however, journalists, student groups and researchers have been gathering diversity data using public-information laws, and arguing for change. Nature has used some of these figures, and its own information requests, to examine the diversity picture. Together, these data show that there are major gaps in diversity in Indian science institutions.

Early barriers

The challenge starts in schools and feeds through to university admissions. Adivasis and Dalits are under-represented in undergraduate science courses but not arts courses, higher-education survey data show.

That is not because arts courses are more popular, but because teachers and mentors specializing in science are rare in the rural high schools attended by these students, especially Adivasis, says Sonajharia Minz, a computer scientist and vice-chancellor of Sido Kanhu Murmu University in Dumka, eastern India. (Minz is the second Adivasi woman to hold a vice-chancellorship in India.)

Samadhan says that when he started a life-science bachelor’s degree in 2009, students from privileged castes often called him and other students from marginalized communities “free off” — a slur referring to students on government aid.

Another marginalized group, termed ‘other backward classes’ or OBCs, makes up around 44% of science students and 30% of medical students at the undergraduate level. India’s national proportion of OBCs is not known, because the country’s census does not count them. But a government household survey from 2006 suggests they make up around 41% of the population. (Reservation policies require academic institutions to have 27% of admissions or recruitments from OBCs.)

In 2012, Samadhan progressed to a master’s degree at a high-ranking university in western India. Student diversity at master’s level is slightly lower than at the undergraduate level, data show.

During his master’s, Samadhan often considered dropping out because he felt intimidated by the English-speaking culture and intense coursework that he wasn’t used to. This is a common experience among students from underprivileged communities, says Akash Gautam, a Dalit and an assistant professor of neuroscience at the University of Hyderabad. “Many of them are first learners in their families. They need more time and support from the universities, which they don’t get.”

PhD dip

At the PhD level, the proportion of marginalized communities dips further — particularly at elite institutions. Data for PhD courses in 2020 at five high-ranked IITs, collected by Nature, show an average of 10% representation for Dalits and 2% for Adivasis — slightly lower than the average for five mid-ranking IITs. India’s top-ranked university, the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru, fares badly too.

“Let’s face it, a PhD is somewhat of an elite pursuit” requiring financial support from families, says an IIT Delhi assistant professor from a privileged caste, speaking on condition of anonymity. Students from marginalized castes also often lack the recommendation networks and interview training to get recruited to PhD programs, the assistant professor says.

Even when they start a PhD, many still struggle to find a good mentor willing to take them on. It is “quite common” for privileged-caste professors not to supervise students from marginalized communities, says Kirpa Ram, who belongs to the OBC grouping and is an assistant professor of environmental sciences at the Banaras Hindu University in Varanasi.

An Adivasi PhD student from a science department at Delhi University, for instance, told Nature that in 2018, when she approached a privileged-caste professor to be her supervisor, he responded that she was a “quota candidate” and could find a supervisor anywhere.

Gautam and other scientists told Nature that sometimes privileged-caste professors don’t provide the extra mentoring that students from underprivileged backgrounds might need — leading some to quit before completing their PhDs. “It’s a tactic,” Gautam says.

Staffing fall

Very few doctoral students from marginalized castes reach staff positions in elite institutes (see ‘Faculty members in India’). At higher-tier IITs and the IISc, 98% of professors and more than 90% of assistant or associate professors are from privileged castes, Nature found. In the Mumbai-based Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), all professors are from the privileged castes, the data it provided to Nature suggest. TIFR belongs to a class of federally funded ‘Institutions of Excellence’ exempt from following reservation policies.

Some premier institutes are doing a little better. At the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, a group of 38 labs, 18% of researchers (combining senior staff grades) were Dalits and 4% Adivasis, according to data Nature received from 31 of those labs.

Funding mismatch

Most of India’s research funders don’t disclose data on funding by caste, or don’t collect them in the first place. But the Department of Science and Technology (DST), one of India’s two main science-funding government agencies, did share data with Nature on postdoctoral researchers whom it had awarded INSPIRE Faculty Fellowships — positions aimed at supporting young talent, which represent an important but small part of the DST’s total funding. Between 2016 and 2020, 80% of recipients were from privileged castes, just 6% were Scheduled Castes (Dalits) and less than 1% Scheduled Tribes (Adivasis). The DST says the selection was “strictly based on merit”. Funding given by the DST’s Technology Development and Transfer Division showed a similar pattern (see ‘Diversity in India’s research funding’). In both cases, the DST didn’t share application success rates.

In the past few years, groups of activists, students and researchers have been pushing institutions not only to follow quotas but also to better support researchers from underprivileged communities. “We are doing this to hold a mirror to these institutes to show how ugly they are,” says a spokesperson for Egalitarians, an organization that tries to collect and publish diversity data.

The issue is part of a wider recognition of how privileged-caste groups have been discriminating against marginalized communities — emboldened by India’s pro-Hindu Prime Minister Narendra Modi, say some academics who spoke to Nature but did not want their names on record.

Some minority religious groups in India, such as Muslims — who are present across a variety of social and caste divisions, including Dalits — also face structural inequities in society. According to the 2011 census, Muslims make up around 14% of the country’s population, but only 5.5% of those enrolled in higher education in 2019–20 were Muslims, survey data suggest.

Because no more detailed data were available, Nature asked IITs and other institutes for figures to do with Muslim representation. Most replied that they didn’t have the figures, but the sparse data that a few institutions shared suggest that Muslims are under-represented in elite academic institutes. In 2020, Muslims made up less than 5% of PhD students in IIT Madras in Chennai and less than 1% of science-teaching faculty in IIT Kharagpur; both are prestigious institutes. However, in IIT Dhanbad, a mid-ranking institute in a region where Muslims are not unusually numerous, 55% of PhD students were Muslims.

The rising criticism of under-representation and discrimination in academic institutions, particularly around caste, is prodding some institutes into action. India’s Ministry of Education, which didn’t respond to Nature’s request for an interview, has several times since 2019 told federally funded institutes, including the IITs, to comply with reservation norms when recruiting teachers.

In 2019, Modi’s government expanded the reservation quotas by 10% to cover lower-income people not part of marginalized castes or groups, who would otherwise fall in the ‘General’ category; they would be categorized under ‘Economically Weaker Sections’ of society. The extension is controversial but, after legal challenges, was upheld in a November 2022 ruling by India’s Supreme Court.

Representatives at four IITs talked on record to Nature for this story; others didn’t respond. “Equating under-representation with discrimination is incorrect. There is no discrimination,” said Neela Nataraj, a mathematician and dean of faculty affairs at IIT Bombay in Mumbai. She accepted that the institute had a shortage of students and faculty members from some social categories, but said it was on a mission to improve representation through recruitment without compromising on quality, and through encouraging more students from under-represented communities to start PhDs. Angelie Multani, a professor of literature who was appointed in August 2022 as IIT Delhi’s first dean to increase diversity on campus, says the institute recognized that, like others, it had “under-representation of marginalized sections of society” and was working to improve the situation through measures such as hiring drives. And Amalendu Chandra, dean of faculty affairs at IIT Kanpur, says that the institute had offered appointments to 48 teachers from marginalized communities in the past year. (The institute has 413 faculty members, according to its website).

At IIT Goa, Amaldev Manuel, a computer scientist and chair of PhD admissions in 2022, noted that the institution’s acceptance rate for PhD applicants from marginalized communities was higher (at above 1%) than for the ‘general’ category (below 1%), even though it received fewer applications from people of less privileged castes.

Some researchers, such as Ramesh Chandra, doubt that diversity initiatives by institutions will make a big dent until India’s government takes action against institutes for violating reservation policies. “You have to take punitive action against the [institutes’] directors,” says Chandra. “Remove them.”

At the very least, says Ram, the government should require universities to publicly disclose diversity data and monitor compliance. And Minz thinks that for the situation to change, support systems need to be created at every step from school education to high-level recruitments in academia — such as training on grant-proposal-writing and communication skills for researchers recruited from marginalized communities. “The playing field is not equal at any stage,” she says.

For Samadhan, the marker of change would be more personal. “The day I would be able to say my full name without hesitation in an institute, I will feel that equality has arrived,” he says.

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Courtesy: Nature (Received through email)

The post How India’s caste system limits diversity in science first appeared on Sindh Courier.

Suprakash Majumdar

KERALA, India

When devastating floods hit India’s western state of Kerala in 2018, Seena’s family had nowhere to go. After water submerged their home, Seena, her parents, and her brother walked three kilometers to the nearest relief center at a temple, only to be told they weren’t allowed to enter. In 2019, when Cyclone Fani ravaged Bijoy’s house in the eastern state of Odisha, the wage laborer walked to a relief shelter with his family and was also turned away.

Though these incidents took place on opposite coasts a year apart, they have a common denominator: caste. Both families come from the Dalit community, which – along with Adivasis, or Indigenous peoples – is the lowest rung in the world’s oldest social hierarchal system, which vertically stratifies Indian society. Fearing violence against them for speaking out, both Seena and Bijoy asked to be referred to by pseudonyms.

“Your caste determines what kind of treatment you will get during a disaster,” Sangram Mallick, an activist and co-founder of Ambedkar Lohia Vichar Manch, an NGO working on caste-based issues, told The New Humanitarian.

Historically marginalized, many of the 280 million Dalits that form 20 percent of India’s population today still live on the fringes of society. About a third of the population remains impoverished, according to the UN, and they often continue to be shunned by so-called oppressor castes who hold power at both the village and federal levels.

Viewed by members of the other castes as “untouchables”, Dalits particularly struggle during disasters, when community members bar them from accessing shared water and sanitation facilities: Since the Hindu religious belief operates on strict lines of purity, there is a belief that a Dalit touching a common water source will “pollute it”.

As climate change continues to bring worsening floods, droughts, cyclones and more to India, the government is being called upon to do more to protect against caste-based discrimination. A sweeping study released in September by the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights warned that “climate apartheid” was likely to hit Dalits and Adivasis the hardest, and outlined “systemic inadequacies and disregard in involving their participation in disaster/drought risk management.”

“[Indian] society has its dysfunctionalities, and disaster or any kind of crisis just accelerates these dysfunctionalities,” Sarbjit Sarota, a disaster risk reduction specialist at UNICEF India, told The New Humanitarian.

Discrimination and separation

When the floodwaters started rising in 2018, it didn’t take long for them to find Seena’s home.

“Our houses were submerged in water during the 2018 floods, as high as nine to 10 feet,” Seena told The New Humanitarian, showing the watermarks on her house, still visible four years after the disaster struck.

That her home was so badly hit was hardly a surprise. Dalits such as Seena and Bijoy are forced to live in segregated colonies that sit apart from the dominant caste settlements in their village. Such neighborhoods are invariably situated in areas more vulnerable to natural disasters. Seena’s Dalit-majority colony in Thiruvalla, Kerala, for instance, sits at a lower elevation and is more than three kilometers away from the main paved road.

Within rural villages, meanwhile, temples are typically built at high elevations and on strong foundations – making them ideal spaces for disaster relief. But because they are religious spaces, community members can wield a great deal of control over who enters. During the 2018 floods, Seena and her family were told that only members of the Nair community – a dominant caste – could seek shelter in the temple.

“We are not from the Nair community, so it is impossible for us to get a membership with the temple,” said Seena.

But even when disaster shelters sit in public spaces, Dalits are often barred by their neighbors. During Cyclone Fani in 2019, 36% were turned away from relief shelters in the Puri district of Odisha, according to a study jointly undertaken by the National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR) and Ambedkar Lohia Vichar Manch.

“Indian society has its dysfunctionalities, and disaster or any kind of crisis just accelerates these dysfunctionalities.”

After being blocked from entering the Nair temple, Seena had to walk another two kilometers to reach a school that was designated as a flood relief shelter by the Kerala government. They then had to move to another school two days later after the shelter began to flood.

In both Seena and Bijoy’s villages, only the dominant caste houses are connected to a paved road. “In my experience of more than 20 years, I have observed that where the road ends, Dalit settlements start,” said Ajay Kumar, executive director at RIGHTS, an organization that serves marginalized communities, particularly Dalits and Adivasis.

In another study, conducted by NCDHR and Kerala-based RIGHTS, 63% of Dalits said that quick and adequate rescue was mainly provided to areas that were more easily accessible. Policy lapses like these count as cases of discrimination by default since the areas that are most accessible are almost always occupied by dominant caste families.

In Narsinghpatana, a village in the Puri district of Odisha, Bijoy and fellow Dalit families managed to enter the cyclone relief shelter after they were stopped by neighbors from the dominant caste.

They “allowed us to enter the shelter on the condition that we would stay in a specific part of the shelter and would not come close to them”, said Bijoy.

Once there, they faced friction over their use of the single water pump. According to a study from Wayanad, Kerala, 50% of Dalit Christians reported that water sources and vessels for Dalits and dominant castes in relief centers were separate. This hinders water access, a particular obstacle amid humanitarian crises such as natural disasters.

“When we used the hand pump, [members of different castes] used to wash the hand pump with water and clean their hands before they used it,” Bijoy said, laughing.

In Kerala, Seena faced a similar experience when she and her family were crammed into a room with seven other Dalit families – separate from where the other castes were staying.

Poor planning, unfair compensation

Binni Kandi, 55, lives in Olarpur village in Odisha’s Puri district. Most of her neighbors are members of a dominant caste and live in well-built homes, whereas Kandi, who did allow us to use her real name, lives in a temporary hut made of mud and dry leaves.

When Cyclone Fani hit, Kandi and 13 other Dalit families had to seek shelter in a nearby government school. “Our whole roof flew away,” she told The New Humanitarian. “Brahmins (a dominant caste) watched from their windows as we struggled to pack our documents.”

Because it’s a Brahmin-dominated area, and they typically have well-built houses, there’s no multi-purpose cyclone relief shelter, while government planners ignore the needs of the marginalized.

“Since Dalits do not have representation that can influence hyperlocal policies, they usually get ignored in matters of relief or compensation,” explained Kumar, of RIGHTS.

In Narasinghpatana, a few miles south along the coast from Kandi’s home, one can easily tell who was impacted most by Cyclone Fani – even three years later. A group of houses with blue roofs made of tarpaulin sits at one end of the village. At the other end, the homes are all well-built structures. Every person living under a tarpaulin roof is Dalit.

The tarpaulin was meant as temporary relief, providing villagers with shelter while they waited for damage compensation from the state. But three years on, having yet to receive compensation, those have become permanent roofs. “We are the ones who have lost everything,” Bijoy said. “[The other castes] have rebuilt their homes, [they’re] back to their jobs, and here we are, living under the blue plastic.”

Others struggle to receive any support. Many Dalits are largely landless due to their historic inability to access land titles and documentation. According to the census, 71% of Dalits are laborers who work on land they do not own.

Kandi’s house was completely blown away by the cyclone, as she lived in what is called a kutcha house with mud walls and a thatched roof. She and her family stayed in the relief camp for over three months waiting for compensation or state support. When government officials finally arrived to assess the damage, she was refused compensation because her house didn’t exist anymore and she didn’t have land records.

It’s impossible to know how many like Kandi continue to live without relief or compensation because no government has ever released caste-segregated data on how natural disasters have affected Dalits. The NCDHR and RIGHTS have been advocating for the government to release such data for years.

“The other castes have rebuilt their homes, they’re back to their jobs, and here we are, living under the blue plastic.”

For Mallick of Ambedkar Lohia Vichar Manch, Dalit communities have been robbed of the right to a fair assessment. “Successive governments have failed to address landlessness, which is their responsibility,” he said.

Compounding the issue is the fact that compensation is structured in a way that tends to negatively impact Dalits. The compensation for loss of livestock stands at 30,000 Indian rupees (about $365) for the loss of a cow, 5,000 ($60) for poultry, and only 3,000 ($36) for a goat. While the cost of purchasing a cow is correctly estimated in these policies, the cost of a goat is at least six times that of the compensation issued by the state. Because cattle is an expensive animal to maintain, Dalits are far more likely to own small livestock.

“All of the people who are on the policymaking level consider themselves as ‘casteless’ even though most of them come from dominant caste communities,” noted Kumar.

Seena, Bijoy, and Kandi are still struggling to recover from the disaster. While they should have received up to $3,700 each, three or four years on, their evaluations have yet to be completed. The cyclone or flood may have passed, but for them, and countless more like them, the disaster hasn’t ended.

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Suprakash Majumdar is Dalit journalist working on social justice issues in South Asia through the lens of caste.

Courtesy: The New Humanitarian (Published on Nov 29, 2022)

The post How India’s caste system keeps Dalits from accessing disaster relief first appeared on Sindh Courier.

Yoginder Sikand

Of the roughly 3 million officially classified ‘Hindu’ population of Pakistan, some 80 per cent are Dalits. There are 42 different Dalits castes in the country, the most numerous being Bhils, Meghwals, Odhs and Kohlis. Most Pakistani Dalits live in Sindh, with smaller numbers in southern Punjab and Baluchistan. Like their Indian counterparts, they are pathetically poor and largely illiterate and eke out a miserable existence mainly as agricultural laborers, menials and petty artisans.

A recent visit to Pakistan took me to lower Sindh, home to a large number of Dalits. Land ownership patterns are enormously skewed in this part of Pakistan. A small class of landlords, or waderas, owns most of the land, and some estates run into tens of thousands of acres. The conditions of the Sindhi peasantry or haris, who include both Muslims as well as Dalits, are pathetic. Many haris do not even own the mud huts in which they live. One can travel for miles at a stretch in rural Sindh without seeing a single habitation. The reason: much of the land is owned by absentee landlords who live in mansions in Hyderabad and Karachi, Sindh’s largest cities.

In lower Sindh, Dalits constitute up to 70 per cent of the agricultural workforce.

In much of lower Sindh, Dalits constitute up to 70 per cent of the agricultural workforce. According to Khurshid Kaimkhani, a leftist activist from Sindh, and author of what is probably the only book on the Pakistani Dalits, local landlords prefer to employ Dalits instead of Muslim haris because the former are less vocal and more docile. Hardly any Dalits own any land, he says, and they are entirely dependent on the landlords for their survival. Women earn a pathetic 60 rupees a day and men twenty rupees more than that. As in some parts of India, in parts of Sindh Dalits work as bonded laborers, prevented from escaping by private armies of powerful landlords. There are no special government development schemes for Dalits. This is hardly surprising, for the only significant presence of the state in large parts of rural Sindh appears to be roads, electricity poles and tall minaret-like police stations named after various ‘martyrs’, these being mainly policemen gunned down by dacoits.

‘Upper’ caste Hindu Rajput landlords, Brahmins and Banias routinely subject the Dalits, who form the overwhelming majority of the population, to various forms of discrimination. They are not allowed to enter Hindu temples.

Dalits in rural Sindh face other forms of oppression similar to their counterparts in India. Village eateries have separate utensils for Dalits, and small towns have separate Dalit restaurants. Generally, ‘upper’ caste Hindus and Muslims do not eat food prepared by Dalits. Cases of Dalit women being kidnapped by landlords are common. Often this results in the women being converted to Islam against their will. Dalit students routinely complain of being taunted in school by their classmates, which, in addition to their poverty, forces most of them to soon drop out. The perception that they would be discriminated against in the job market makes higher education too expensive a choice for many Dalit parents to consider. In the wake of the destruction of the Babri Masjid and the consequent massacre of Muslims in India, the conditions of Pakistan’s Dalits have become even more precarious. Some Dalits, as well as caste Hindus, were killed by mobs in Sindh and numerous temples were destroyed. To add to this is the influence of radical Islamist groups who are vehemently anti-Hindu and anti-India. All this has made Dalits even more scared to speak out. Says Himmat Solanki, a Dalit from Moenjodaro, ‘Our future here depends critically on how Muslims are treated in India. Each time there is an attack on Muslims there, we Pakistani Dalits and Hindus have to face the brunt. Our future critically depends on harmonious relations between India and Pakistan and Hindus and Muslims in south Asia as a whole’. Solanki tells me of how growing insecurity among Pakistani Dalits has led to an increase in migration to India. ‘Many Pakistani Dalits are originally from Rajasthan, having migrated to what is now Pakistan before 1947. So, naturally they want to join their relatives in India, and the growing fears among the minorities here has further exacerbated this trend’.

In Pakistan’s only Hindu majority district of Tharparkar, bordering Rajasthan and Gujarat, the conditions of Dalits are equally pathetic. According to Pirbhu Lal Satyani, a local social activist, ‘upper’ caste Hindu Rajput landlords, Brahmins and Banias routinely subject the Dalits, who form the overwhelming majority of the population, to various forms of discrimination. They are not allowed to enter Hindu temples, and, as in other parts of Sindh, are also often used as bonded laborers. At election time, Dalits who have dared to contest against caste Hindu candidates are routinely harassed and some have even been killed. As a protest against continuing discrimination, a number of Dalits have converted to Christianity, foreign-funded missionary groups being active in the area. Interestingly, there are no Islamic missionary organizations working among the Dalits.

Organizing the Pakistani Dalits for their rights is an uphill task, says Satyani. He attributes this to fear of reprisal, the fact of abysmal levels of Dalit literacy, the small Dalit middle-class and the difficulty of bringing the various Dalit castes together. ‘They have internalized the Brahminical logic of hierarchy’, he says, ‘as a result of which each caste considers itself superior to other castes’. Thus, in Tando Allah Yar, where I spent a week, the snake-catching Jogis have no contact with the Gurgulas, a caste that earns its livelihood by hawking cosmetic items to women. Says Sadhu Mal Jogi about the Gurgulas, whose sprawling settlement, hutments made of twigs and plastic sheets, lies just adjacent to his Jogi colony, ‘The Gurgulas are lower than us. We have nothing to do with them’.

Another difficulty that Pakistani Dalits face in voicing their demands is the process of Hinduisation. Says Sonu Lal, a Meghwal from Tando Allah Yar, who identifies himself as one of the few radical Ambedkarites in Pakistan, ‘Before 1947, caste Hindus dominated the economy of Sindh, and we Dalits could readily identify them as well as the Brahminical religious as the principal source of our oppression. After the Partition, most caste Hindus left for India, so now the direct oppressors are the local Muslim landlords. But instead of mobilizing on the basis of our Dalit identity, many Dalits seek to deny that identity by passing off as super-Hindus. In this context, how can we retain our identity as Dalits, take pride in it and organize on that basis?’ ‘Hinduisation’, he says, ‘is not the answer to our problems because, inevitably, it will strengthen upper caste hegemony and weaken the Dalit struggle by making Dalits deny, rather than stress, their Dalit identity’. In this regard, he cites the case of Pakistan’s largest Dalit temple, a shrine in Tando Allah Yar, dedicated to Rama Pir, a Meghwal convert to the Ismaili Shia faith. Every year, during the annual mela of the Pir, several hundred thousand Dalits from all over Pakistan assemble at the shrine. ‘The shrine has been captured by a Brahmin priest now’, says Sonu Lal. ‘All the money that the Dalits give to them temple is taken by the priest and the Banias who dominate the management committee. Dalits have no role to play now in the shrine, which has been converted into a Brahminical temple, with idols of various Hindu gods, alien to the Rama Pir tradition, being installed therein’.

Pakistani Dalit activists routinely point out that caste Hindus take little or no interest in the plight of the Dalits. ‘They treat us as Hindus only at election time when they come to us to seek our votes’, says Panna Madho, a Dalit activist from Larkana. Madho says that most Hindu members of the state and national assemblies are caste Hindus, who are taken by the Pakistani state as representatives of all Hindus. Like most other caste Hindus, he says, they are ‘completely indifferent to Dalits and continue to treat them as untouchables’. M. Prakash, a senior lawyer from Hyderabad, Sindh, himself an ‘upper’ caste Amil Hindu, admits, ‘It is true that caste Hindus are as unconcerned about Dalits as others in Pakistan are, despite Hindus being a minority in the country. They have done nothing to help them organize for their rights’.

Yet, Dalits in Pakistan are no longer silent and attempts are being today to voice their demands, helped in part by non-government organizations and social activists, including some of Muslim background. Aslam Khwaja, a leftist activist, and his friends in Hyderabad have purchased a plot of land, which they have christened ‘Himmatabad’ (‘The Abode of Valour’), where they have resettled some 15 pathetically poor Bhil and Kohli families rescued from landlords and their private armies. Manu Bhil has been sitting on strike outside the Hyderabad Press Club for the last three years demanding the release of nine members of his family kidnapped by a Baloch landlord. Last year, Kishan Bhil, a member of Pakistan’s National Assembly, created a major stir when he slapped a Maulvi member of the Assembly for denigrating his religion. And in rural Sindh, some Bhils have even joined up with gangs of dacoits, consisting mainly of landless Muslim peasants.

‘We Dalits suffer the same plight no matter where we are. India or Pakistan, both are the same for us.’

Recent years have witnessed the emergence of some Dalit organizations in Pakistan. The Hindu Sudhar Sabha in Lahore is one such group, bringing together Bhangis or Lalbegis of the sweeper caste. In Sindh, the Pakistan Scheduled Caste Federation has sought to pressurize the state to reserve jobs for Dalits, treat them as officially separate from the caste Hindus, grant them land, institute special development programs for them and purge textbooks of contents that are derogatory of non-Muslims. Early this year, the International Dalit Solidarity Network, along with some local Dalit groups, organized Pakistan’s first ever Dalit convention that came out with a bold charter of demands. The recently held World Social Forum in Karachi brought together some 400 Pakistani Dalit activists, and provided them an opportunity to interact with their Indian counterparts. This has led to plans for a South Asian Dalit platform, based on the recognition that the plight of the Dalits in Pakistan is no different from that of their fellows in India and other parts of the subcontinent. As Nathu Ram, an elderly Meghwal I met at the dargah of Hazrat Lal Shahbaz Qalandar in Sehwan, says stoically, ‘We Dalits suffer the same plight no matter where we are. India or Pakistan, both are the same for us. We have only God and ourselves who can work to change things for us’.

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Courtesy: Dalit Network Netherlands (Published on 4-4-2006)

The post Pakistan’s Forgotten Dalit Minority first appeared on Sindh Courier.

By Ritwajit Das and International Dalit Solidarity Network

Caste-based discrimination affects more than 260 million Dalits worldwide who suffer from the hidden apartheid of segregation, exclusion and discrimination. This story depicts how the historic, institutionalized and systemic oppression of Dalit women from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal will make them one of the most vulnerable, susceptible and high-risk targets in the changing climate.

According to Isabel Wilkerson Pulitzer Prize Winner Journalist with New York Times in her recent article Americas Enduring Caste System, July 2020 – Caste is the powerful infrastructure that holds each group in its place. Its very invisibility is what gives it power and longevity. And though it may move in and out of consciousness, though it may flare and reassert itself in times of upheaval and recede in times of relative calm, it is an ever present through the line in the country’s operation. As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power – which groups have it and which do not. It is about resources – which groups are seen as worthy of them and which are not, who gets to acquire and control them and who does not. It is about respect, authority and assumptions of competence – who is accorded these and who is not.  As a means of assigning value to entire swaths of humankind, caste guides each of us often beyond the reaches of our awareness. It embeds into our bones an unconscious ranking of human characteristics and sets forth the rules.

The Dalits of South Asia constitute most victims facing this form of structural discrimination, which leads to marginalization, social and economic exclusion and limited access to basic services, including water and sanitation. Discriminatory practices include physical and social segregation, restrictions on occupation or enforcement of certain types of menial jobs, and widespread caste-based violence. Dalits are more vulnerable to both natural and climatic disasters compared to dominant upper caste people due to their marginalized social position; the location of their homes, usually in marginal lands in the periphery of settlements; their vulnerable occupations, such as rubbish and sewage disposal, casual farm labor and lagoon fishing; and the nature of their housing – Dalits often have little or no land rights.

While the climate crisis manifests globally, we need to acknowledge that indigenous peoples, low-income families, people of color, and other historically marginalized groups like the Dalits represent frontline communities who experience harmful climate impacts ‘first and worst’. To live our values of a truly sustainable future for all, we must commit to understanding and undoing the historical injustices which contribute to this reality and, in our solutions, address systemic inequities.

Climate justice encompassing voices of women and indigenous groups but usually it fails to articulate the perspectives of Dalit and their ecological positions, and their relationship with nature remains constricted from the ambit of dominant environmental framework. Dalit women and girls are the most discriminated, systematically excluded and historically oppressed group in the sub-continent. Dalit women lag behind in most of the areas of human development indicators. Unequal access to resources and opportunities makes Dalit Women more socially vulnerable and frequently exposes her to the chance of being a victim to caste, class and gender-based violence.

The vulnerable socio-economic and political conditions of Dalit women make them highly susceptible and prone heinous violence and hate crime. Dalit women and girls are forced to spend more time on the field or travel longer distance to pick fodder due to increased drudgery associated with climate change.   As a result of this, they are becoming an easy target of rape and other forms of sexual and physical violence. Most of the physical and sexual violence against Dalit women goes unreported. In caste affected countries of the South Asia more than 15 Dalit Women and girls are raped and sexually violated every day.

A woman’s caste in South Asia can increase her exposure to mortality as a result of factors such as poor sanitation and inadequate water supply and health care, says a report by the UN Women. It states that the average age of death for Dalit women is 14.6 years younger than for higher caste women. Dalit women are often discouraged from accessing water, food and accommodation due to ingrained, discriminatory societal norms that lead to a separation of common water sources, common dining and common shelter areas according to caste status.

Dalit women are fighting caste, patriarchy and survival against climate change in an inhospitable environment and therefore being the most vulnerable inhabitants in rural India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal. Dalits are historically prohibited and prevented from owning land. Dalit women are almost landless. Dalit women and girls are mostly working as farm laborers in other people’s land and face caste-gender based abuse; much of it is unreported.

Climate change is going to exacerbate their vulnerabilities by adding more drudgery farm related work.  Dalit women have to negotiate with local dominant upper caste institutions to lease tenure and basic irrigation facilities. The dominant upper caste farmers lobby inhibit the flow of rainwater into the farmlands belonged to Dalit women and prohibit them from walking through their piece of land to reach theirs. When landless Dalit women becomes cultivators, it is seen as an act of defiance and face resentment. The dominant upper caste villagers try to subjugate them with violence. Dalit women routinely face humiliation whenever they went even to a roadside to get fodder for animals and always under risk of physical violence. Supported by age-old patriarchy and rigid social systems, land ownership has always had a clear hierarchy, mostly determined by economic class which, of course, is inexorably linked to caste. And when gender is thrown into the mix, the Dalit woman ends up on the lowest rung of the ladder.

Caste based discrimination and heightened acute water shortage crisis due to climate change combine to torment Dalit women every summer. Dalit women and girls sometime walk long distances to fetch water, exposing them to incidents of physical and sexual violence. They are most vulnerable to implicit and explicit violence and occupy a very dismal position in the social hierarchy.  In rural hinterland of India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh ‘water riots’ are breaking out – the dominant upper caste women are not allowing the Dalit women to use the government hand pumps and wells amid of water crisis. Dalit women are beaten up if they try to access these institutionalized potable water sources. To escape physical violence Dalit women are travelling for more than a kilometer outside of their villages to collect water. This is not an isolated incident.

In India, with its grave water crisis, Dalit women are restricted from drawing water from a public well located at the foothills of Otthakadai Yanamalai, as untouchability is still practiced in this village. Locals said that the well is “sacred” and more than 150 people use the water from this well for drinking purposes. During climatic crisis, the issues that are being overlooked are different communities’ vulnerabilities, inequitable distributional impacts and social justice. In over 100 villages affected by drought in India, Dalit women are being denied access to water sources in 48.4% of villages because of segregation and untouchability practices. More than 20% of Dalits do not have access to safe drinking water.

Dalit women are more exposed to climatic natural disasters than other groups, and less likely to receive humanitarian aid. Laws that are meant to protect them are not properly implemented, and humanitarian agencies do not always understand the particularly vulnerable situation of Dalit Women.

Even prior to any extreme weather events like drought, floods, typhoons or cyclones, Dalit women are more vulnerable and exposed to disasters. Their social exclusion means they often live outside of main villages, with less access to the amenities and information of administrative centers. In some contexts, this less desirable land will be more exposed to floods or hazards and have less developed infrastructure like drains, drinking water or flood barriers.

The livelihood situation of Dalit women, dependent on wage labor and on dominant upper caste groups, is particularly vulnerable to shocks and stresses like extreme weather events. Critical issues concerning Dalit women in recent humanitarian crises include unequal or denied access to health services, shelter and housing, clean water and education; no compensation or restitution due to e.g., lack of documentation to claim entitlements related to land and property; lack of protection of rights of Dalit women who after major natural disasters embark on inter-state migration or are displaced internally.

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Ritwajit Das is a global climate change and human rights professional with a total of more than twelve years of cross-functional experience. He has worked on a range of core climate change and sustainable development projects in 24 countries across Asia, Africa, Europe and South America. He is associated with International Dalit Solidarity Network and Global Call For Climate Action. He belongs to the most historically oppressed, systematically discriminated and excluded ‘untouchable community’ outcaste groups in India called Dalits. He is also a recipient of Youth Professional Award at UN Habitat 2020 on climate change and sustainability issues.

Courtesy: Youth4Nature (Published on September 23, 2021)

(All the photos used for this story belong to International Dalit Solidarity Network. Photos were taken in India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh)

The post CASTE AND CLIMATE CHANGE first appeared on Sindh Courier.

Shaista Abdul Aziz Patel

On September 29, Manisha Valmiki, a 19-year-old Dalit girl succumbed to her injuries from a gang rape committed by four Thakur (upper-caste) men in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. News of the incident caused outrage across India and the rest of the world, including in Pakistan and the diaspora.

I and many fellow Pakistanis have actively participated in social media campaigns demanding justice for Valmiki. But few of us have said much about another horrendous death of a Dalit woman.

On September 30, just a day after Valmiki’s death, 17-year-old Momal Meghwar took her own life in the village of Dalan-Jo-Tarr in Sindh province, Pakistan. A year earlier, she had been brutally raped and filmed by three men who have remained at large.

Meghwar was the 58th woman to take her own life this year in Thar alone. There is a multitude of reasons for this macabre statistic and all are at the intersections of gender, religion, class, and caste.

Yes, caste – a word which many of us Pakistani feminist scholars and organizers, especially those with sectarian, caste, and class privileges in the diaspora, remain unfamiliar with, whether willfully or out of ignorance.

Of course, due to the untiring work of mostly (but not exclusively) Indian-origin Dalit feminists and organizations such as Equality Labs, those of us Pakistanis who have not thought about caste before are learning about caste in India and its diaspora.

However, concerns raised by Dalit and anti-caste thinkers from Pakistan often remain ignored and outright dismissed, especially by caste and class privileged Pakistani Muslims who refuse to see caste, let alone the caste dominance and caste terror prevalent in Pakistan and its diaspora.

Pakistanis need to stop believing that Dalits live only in India. There are about 40 castes, 32 of which were listed as scheduled castes under the November 1957 Presidential ordinance of Pakistan. Meghwars are one of these listed castes, along with Bheels, Kolhis, Baghris and others.

While there are Dalit Muslims in Pakistan, because of the belief that there are no caste hierarchies among Muslims, the castes mentioned as scheduled are necessarily read as Hindu only. It is important to point out the infusion of upper-caste Brahmin supremacy that has coerced and contained lower-caste people into the category of Hindu. Many Dalit-Bahujan people see themselves as part of Indigenous cultures and traditions and reject Hinduism as their religious identification.

Moreover, the majority of Christians in the country are also Dalit – pejoratively labelled as Chuhra. As a recent New York Times article on Dalit Christians taking up scavenging jobs in Pakistan notes, according to the 1998 census, Christians made up only 1.6 percent of the population but filled 80 percent of the sweeper jobs. This caste apartheid is prevalent in Pakistan and yet there is no authentic caste census available.

Just like in India, Dalits face discrimination by society at large and by the state. In a 2007 report on the condition of scheduled castes in Pakistan, a journalist points out that a 6-percent government job quota for scheduled castes from urban and rural areas put forward in 1948 was never ethically implemented and was simply scrapped in the 1990s.

In other words, no political or economic security measures are extended to scheduled caste people who continue to be seen simply as “religious minorities” in Pakistan and marked for violence with impunity.

That is why it is important to call Momal Meghwar’s rape and death by suicide what it is: caste-based sexual violence. While Pakistani mainstream media has mostly stayed silent, in some instances where the incident was discussed, it was made into a case of her being Hindu, a religious minority, effectively erasing caste which is also one of the main factors legitimizing violence against lower-caste people by both upper-caste Muslims and Hindus.

The murder of social media celebrity Qandeel Baloch in 2016, which was widely covered by the media, was also linked to caste, but journalists and scholars overwhelmingly ignored that aspect. One of the people who drew attention in public to the role caste played in the killing was anti-caste activist, Auwn Gurmani.

As he explained in a July 2020 tweet: “We remember Qandeel and we also remember she was killed because of her gender, class and most importantly caste background: Qandeel’s caste was Mehra (ماہڑا in Siraiki). Mahar, Mehra, Mehar, Mahara – all these castes have the same origin, scheduled caste in Madhya Pradesh.”

Caste dismissal in Pakistan often comes from the belief that because we are Muslim, caste does not exist in our communities and societies. Unlike Hindu scriptures, the Quran does not establish and condone a caste system. Moreover, unlike India, Pakistan does not have Brahminical cis-heteropatriarchy and Islamophobia governing the nation-state.

The ritualistic, religious, familial, social, economic, political and gendered aspects of caste have their own tones in Pakistan. It is not saffron-tinted, as Hindu nationalism is, but rather it takes a green, Islamic traditional, hue. This is not to say that the importation and translation of Hindutva ideology are not happening across the border and do not affect Pakistani Muslims’ conception of caste.

As Sindhi anti-caste scholar Ghulam Hussain, who has contributed ground-breaking work on caste relations in Sindh, notes, Sayedism and Brahminism are infused with each other. Sayed supremacy – which Hussain labels as Sayedism – comes from the (unproven) belief that Sayeds are genealogical descendants of Prophet Muhammad and therefore have a more authentic grasp on Islam and all social and political matters.

Another anti-caste researcher, Haris Gazdar, points out that “the public silencing on caste contrasts with an obsession with it in private dealings”. There is always violence attached to caste hierarchies of which Gazdar names several examples, such as having pejorative labels to strict taboos around eating and drinking together and sharing of utensils to stealing land to beatings and rapes of men and women of lowered caste people with impunity, all to “keep them in their place”.

Islam is often evoked by upper-caste Muslims as the reason for some of these practices. Pakistani Muslims would argue that lowered caste people from Hindu and Christian minorities eat “haram” (forbidden by Islamic law) food. However, eating with upper-caste Hindus and Christians is not frowned upon.

These Brahminical notions of ritual purity become aligned with concepts of “paak” (pure/clean) and “naapak” (impure/unclean) under Muslims’ casteist interpretations of Islam. Even when lowered caste people from religious minorities convert to Islam, they continue to meet with the same caste-based violence. Conversion to Islam in Pakistan does not de-casteise the lowered caste people who continue to be treated as “untouchables”.

There is also the commonly circulated argument that caste exists only in rural areas of provinces like Sindh and Punjab. But caste dangerously circulates as common sense in large cities as well.

A recent example of this, even among young people who are usually understood as more progressive than their parents’ generation, is a student-led survey at the University of Lahore in Punjab in which students were asked on camera questions about how caste informs choices they make about romantic relationships and friendships. Every single one of these students knew their caste from Sayeds to Arains (a predominantly agricultural caste) to Sheikhs (a lower caste stereotyped as having a business acumen). In the almost nine-minute-long video, it is quite clear that caste is an active and everyday experience for university students in an urban setting.

More survey work needs to be done in urban and rural areas, as well as in the diaspora to fully understand the forms which caste takes at our dinner tables, in our kinships, our attachments, workplaces, and every other aspect of our lives.

As many of us diasporic Pakistanis become invested in liberatory projects of Black Lives Matter and Indigenous sovereignties in the west and educated about caste politics in India, it appears that this is indeed the right time to turn inwards and explore our own experiences with caste. Sayedism – a prime example of upper-caste dominance and hegemony – is quite prominent among us and should be studied both in Pakistan and in the diaspora.

In our pursuit of understanding caste, however, we also need to be very careful, particularly us western-educated, class- and caste-privileged diasporic scholars. Some of us go to Pakistan to focus on caste violence in the menial jobs lower castes are relegated to, such as scavenging or sanitation work.

While I think these anthropological studies have their place and must be done, I am also reminded of scholar Joby Mathew’s remarks in the book Hatred in the Belly: “If any intellectual wants to emphasize the pathetic condition of Dalits through these derogatory images [of scavenging], that itself amounts to symbolic violence”.

Furthermore, when looking into caste-based, gender-based violence and trying to understand a figure such as Baloch in all her complexities, our analysis needs to move beyond the binaries of lower-caste women as either vulnerable victims or heroes. Therefore, it is urgent that we engage with Dalit feminist theory.

And finally, we also have to remain aware and mindful of how Islamophobia and anti-Pakistan violence can be disruptive in our critical work on complicity in various structures of domination. To talk about violence in Pakistan is difficult because of how quickly nationalist non-Muslim Indians – and even those Indian Muslims invested in the idea of Brahminical India – latch onto our critiques to further malign Pakistan as a terrorist Muslim state.

But the intense Islamophobia, casteism, and colonial violence – in relation to Kashmir, for example – in India should not be a reason not to have these important conversations and studies in Pakistan and the diaspora. After all, these violent paradigms are interconnected and know no borders.

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Shaista Abdul Aziz Patel is Assistant Professor of Critical Muslim Studies at the University of California, San Diego.

Courtesy: Al-Jazeera

The post It is time to talk about caste in Pakistan and Pakistani diaspora first appeared on Sindh Courier.

Our world has changed. So has Bengal. A lot of savage behavior of people, of a disturbing nature—particularly in rural areas, is noticed only in West Bengal. During the ongoing election season, even women candidates were attacked by men.

By Nazarul Islam

I am sure Geneticists have never found any special streak of violence in Bengali genes – except when it comes down to a serious, armed struggle for Liberation. Born and raised in Dacca, I often wondered why Bengal has witnessed so much poll violence on the western front.

I remember a half century ago, such incidents were widespread in North India where the upper castes used to stop Dalits and OBCs (other backward classes) visiting the booths. Twenty-five years ago, violence was still rampant in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Kerala and Bengal.

But, our world has changed. So has Bengal. A lot of savage behavior of people, of a disturbing nature—particularly in rural areas, is noticed only in West Bengal. During the ongoing election season, even women candidates were attacked by men.

The question has remained: Why does it happen only in Bengal? And the answer is simple. Unlike in other states, the elections in Bengal engulf the vested interests of a large number of people dependent on the ruling party for their livelihood, legal or illegal.

Let’s examine how wide and deep, the rot of the land of our forefathers has stemmed…

In Bengal, people not loyal to the ruling party won’t be enrolled in the rural job scheme, set for  National Rural Employment  And those who are active workers of the party may get half the wages (with the other half going to the party) even without having to toil or work in the project.

Quite expectedly, the benefits of government schemes are unlikely to reach those who are known to be supporters of opposition parties. The money for housing will go to a core supporter who may have a good shelter, but not to those without a proper roof over their heads, if they are marked as ‘opponents’.

Again, regardless of all such government schemes, living in rural or semi-urban areas — a daily wage earner like a hawker or a vegetable vendor, a schoolteacher or a professor or an ordinary farmer — will face different kinds of hardships, if they were recognized as supporters of the Opposition party.

One could face harassment while trying to obtain necessary certificates from the panchayat or the MLA. If a disaster strikes, say a flood or a cyclone, relief materials are first distributed among party supporters (even if they are not impacted), and the remaining will go to passive supporters.

To run such a system of absolute control, the ruling party of the state (or, at times, the party that controls the district panchayat or the block panchayat) needs a network of cadres in every neighborhood.

And … how does this evil system function?   First, by distributing ‘favors’, and second, by employing ‘harmads’ (armed criminals)

In several states, jobs such as that of teachers, professors and government employees are sold for money. In Bengal, one cannot just buy a job by paying bribes.

Here, most of the jobs are distributed among active workers of the ruling party and their children. The rest of the cadres survive on money collected mostly illegally and often through coercion.

Across the state, there are lakhs of such ‘political parasites’ whose survival depends on the return of the ruling party to power. Reportedly, often take the help of seasoned criminals to silence and terrorize opposition supporters.

The ongoing situation has roots therefore it is unlikely to change. The seeds of this system were sown during the days of Siddharta Shankar Roy, the last Congress chief minister (1972-1977) of Bengal.

But it grew to a menacing proportion in the last 20 years of the Left Front’s 34-year (1977-2011) regime, which was then taken forward by the Trinamool Congress (TMC), ruling the state for the last decade.

Watch the video: Violence in Bengal

The irony is that such a system cannot satisfy the majority of people, which results in some always revolting against it. When the number grows to a dangerous level, the ruling party’s well-oiled mechanism takes recourse to violence and terrorization of people.

Such violence was noticed only in the last 10 years of the Left Front government, and has been revived  now in the last three years (from the time of panchayat elections of 2018, when the polls were reduced to a farce) of the present TMC regime.

When the disgruntled section tries to veer around the Opposition, a section of the ‘cadres’, particularly hooligan elements, breaks ranks to join the Opposition party stronger in the region. But the process becomes intense when the index of voters’ polarization towards a single Opposition force throughout the state goes up. And it becomes a do-or-die situation for both the main rivals. This type of vested interest does not exist in any other state, which is why they are often unable to rid of political violence and killings.

We must understand that the collective fear stimulates herd instinct and tends to produce ferocity towards those who are not regarded as members of the heard. Perhaps….An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind. Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Sometimes you have to pick the gun up to put the Gun down.

This disturbing situation in the west side of Bengal is unlikely to change, should the BJP come to power in Bengal. The saffron party, too, will be happy to continue with the system, for the deep and wide rot is an easy and tested strategy and a recipe for clinging on to power, as long as possible.

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About the Author

The Bengal-born writer Nazarul Islam is a senior educationist based in USA. He writes for Sindh Courier and the newspapers of Bangladesh, India and America. He is author of a recently published book ‘Chasing Hope’ – a compilation of his 119 articles.

The post Is Bengal changing at the grassroots? first appeared on Sindh Courier.