“You divided us in the name of caste, you do not allow us to drink water from wells in the name of caste, you do not allow us to ride horses in weddings in the name of caste, you do not allow us to get an education in the name of caste, you segregated us in workplaces in the name of caste, you quarantine us in hospitals in the name of caste, you burnt our’s houses and villages in the name of caste, you raped/killed us in the name of caste and eventually you named and portrayed us as BACKWARD.”

Discrimination and Atrocities Against Dalits.

Over the decade the crime against dalits does not seems to decline rather it is increasing day by day. Everyday 4 Dalit women are raped by upper caste people, every 16 minutes a non-Dalit commits a crime on a Dalit, 1574 Dalit women were raped and 671 Dalits murdered in 2012, as reported by NCRB data, Cases of crimes against Dalits pending police investigation have nearly doubled 99% from 8,380 cases in 2006 to 16,654 cases in 2016. In courts, crimes against Dalits pending trial have risen by 50% over the decade from 85,264 to 129,831 as of 2016. In 2016 alone, 40,801 new crimes against Dalits were registered under the Prevention of Atrocities Act, less than 15,000 cases completed a trial that year.

Let’s take one state of India-Gujarat-  has only 2.33% of India’s Dalit population but the crime against Dalits is very high. A survey was conducted by the Navsarjan Trust, an NGO that works with Dalits, between 2007 and 2010 in 1,489 villages across 14 districts. Seven years later, on August 15, 2017, Martin Macwan, the head of the NGO, has resumed the campaign against untouchability. Members of the NGO had made a handwoven national flag measuring 125 feet by 83.3 feet, but chief minister Vijay Rupani refused to receive it. Instead, the collector of Gandhinagar received the national flag, with a memorandum asking the chief minister to declare at least one village untouchability free by the year 2047.

Eventually, they concluded that untouchability is not just far from being eradicated, the practice may have even intensified in rural Gujarat. We found there are 98 forms of untouchability that are practised by ‘upper’ castes against Dalits. This is the condition of one state of secular, democratic India, it is beyond to imagine the conditions of Dalits across India.

Media and Opinion Formation

The genuine question emerges here that what amount of these heinous atrocities/ crime against Dalits are highlighted/featured by the fourth pillar of democracy?

Media being the fourth pillar of democracy plays a pivotal role in opinion making by which peoples make up their mind related that particular news. As the various survey found that motion pictures have a more prominent effect in the brain of individuals as opposed to print media. For your better understanding, I would like to highlight some of the examples here that how effective it is-

They made people believe that the activists and intellectuals Anand Teltumbde, Sudha Bharadwaj, Varavara Rao, Shoma Sen, Rona Wilson, Surendra Gadling, Mahesh Raut, Arun Ferreira, Sudhir Dhawale, Vernon Gonsalves, Gautam Navlakha etc were Urban Naxals but at the same time they made people believe that the terror accused Pragya Singh Thakur is the saviour of humanity.

They made people believe that the Phoolan Devi was terrorist but Nathuram Ghodse was not.

They made people believe that the Taz Mahal was actually a Tejo Mahal.

They made people believe that Reservation is the prime sources of casteism.

They made people believe that the currency note of 2000 has a nano GPS chip.

Whenever we go through the subject of Reservation for scheduled caste and scheduled tribe in my class the whole class except few will start shouting and discussing like “this is not correct, society is changed, there is no caste discrimination, look at the president of India he is also a Dalit, there are upper-caste Hindus who are also poor what about them” and so on. It does not mean they don’t have knowledge about the caste discrimination or reservation but the problem is the news material they are consuming in daily life does not feature/highlight the heinous atrocities which are being committed against Dalits in present society.

Indian media is no exception to casteism. Every Indian media houses can be termed as upper caste media as there is no representation of Dalits or Adivasis either as a reporter or in the editor.

This data clearly indicates that the democratic media houses of India lack diversity, there are no Dalit oriented voices in Indian media, they never tried or made the concentrated effort for inclusion, but the irony is they are not accepting this fact either. Since India got independence there is no Dalit or Adivasis oriented voice in media houses, the upper caste journalist keeps controlling and shaping our mind in daily life that is reason where everyone remembers the Jessica Lal murder case but you can hardly find anyone who can remember Kheralanji case where two women get brutally murdered or Kheralanji massacre or the case where Ranvir Sena brutally massacre Dalits in the state of Bihar. No doubt there are the journalists who are concerned about the caste-based bais and rising crime against Dalits and Adivasis but as rightly said by Pardeep Attri, “Nothing about Dalits without the participation of Dalits should be the mantra, and Dalit lives and stories should be shown through Dalit eyes and minds”.

Need of Dalit voices in mainstream media

There is an utmost necessary of Dalit voices in mainstream media, until and unless there are no Dalit voices in mainstream media the struggle of the marginalized community for surviving in this society will never going to be highlighted. The isolation and marginalization of Dalits from mainstream media is not the new thing, it existed way long before the newspaper “Kesari” refuses to publish an advertisement of Dr. Ambedkar’s newspaper “MOOK NAYAK”. The upper caste media does not isolate the Dalit voice but also successful in shaping the mind of people, they garlanded the Gandhi for running the newspaper “harijan” for the untouchables but they would never acknowledge and address Dr. Ambedkar’s works for running four newspapers for his people.

The survey done by Centre for the study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in 2006 found that  “of the 315 key decision-makers surveyed from 37 Delhi-based (Hindi and English) publications and television channels, almost 90% of decision-makers in the English language print media and 79% in television were from the ‘upper castes’.”  The upper castes constitute about 24% of India’s population while their share among key media personnel amounts to a staggering 88%. On the other hand, the Dalit community with a population of 16.6 % (201 million) has a 0% representation at the policy-making level in media organizations”.

The brilliant article written by Suraj Yengde on “Landlessness takes away Dalits’ legal and official validity as Indian citizens” – Observed,

“The Agricultural Census of 2015-16 reported that Dalits own only about 9% of the total agricultural land. According to the recent data published by the Census of India, 71% Dalits are landless labourers who work on land they do not own. In rural areas, 58.4% Dalit households do not own land at all. This gets grimmer in Dalit-dominated states such as Haryana, Punjab and Bihar, where 85% of them are at their landlords’ mercy”.

In contrary to this Indian youths are more concern and sympathetic about international crimes and injustice, they are raising voice for Palestinian refugee for their land while managing to ignore the caste-based injustice and landlessness is still surviving in our own society. This type of mindset in Indian youth is developed by the media houses who never highlighted the struggle concerning Dalits and Adivasis issue.

There are lots of factors which is directly affected the Dalit who aspire to be a journalist, Dalits are not only the victims of caste discrimination but also suffer political and economic exploitation. In present, social media is an amazing alternative we have, the Dalits who aspire to be a journalist they can utilize the social media platform to break the social chains.

The prevailing mainstream media who guarantee to be democratic and secular need a serious observation and have to labour towards social diversity in their casteist media houses. Inclusion of Dalits and Adivasis in the mainstream media is fundamental not only to highlight the struggles of Dalits or Adivasis or crime against Dalits but also to strike down the caste privileges which the upper caste people are comfortable enjoying in mainstream media.

Educate, Organise, Agitate

Jai Bheem.

Written by- Talim Ansari 

Twitter username-  @ambedkarite09

References:

Reservations in India: Myths and Realities – By Mulchand Savajibhai Rana

https://www.indiaspend.com/over-a-decade-crime-rate-against-dalits-rose-by-746-746/

https://thewire.in/caste/gujarat-dalits-untouchability