Hathras ‘rape’ case isn’t the first. But, in a long while, the outrage is. Dalit women, their identity and self-respect have been shredded since time immemorial. Even now, Dalit women are raped and hanged from trees by upper-caste men. This, even when we have a Prime Minister who is an OBC.
It is obvious that India wants Prime Minister Narendra Modi to talk about Hathras — a case where the ruthlessness of the Yogi Adityanath administration and the gruesome nature of the incident has moved even the rigid upper-caste conscience. But Prime Minister Modi’s signature silence over social issues is still going strong, unless of course the topic is Kashmir, dead and alive Gandhis, Jawaharlal Nehru and Modi’s Muslim sisters who must be liberated from triple talaq.
Last week, while addressing the Invest India Conference in Canada, PM Modi proudly called India a vibrant democracy with political stability, investment and business-friendly policies and a skilled talent pool. In a pitch to bring more foreign investors to India and to boost the GDP that’s contracted -23.9 per cent, Modi is trying to sell a shiny New India that is all hunky-dory with new farm laws, labour laws and relaxed corporate laws. But the fraying social fabric of India is under where Modi has swept and hidden the ugly truths of the nation. And the world is very much aware of it, given the international coverage of the Uttar Pradesh ‘rape’ case and the Time Magazine editorial on the PM himself. Hathras has become a mirror to Modi.
Also read: Some want to call Hathras an ‘honour killing case’ — they forgot it’s an upper-caste practice
Whose PM?
No nation’s economy can be seen in isolation — the ‘country risk’ is evaluated by its sociopolitical conditions too. In an article published in the European Journal of Political Economy, researchers Matthias Busse and Carsten Hefeker found that ‘internal conflict, ethnic tensions, law and order, corruption, democratic accountability of government, and quality of bureaucracy’ are highly significant determinants of FDI flows.
Prime Minister Modi obviously seems oblivious to this fact. While the nation was outraged by Hathras, Prime Minister Modi chose to not speak a word, either to assure the Indian women of their safety or to condemn the barbarity of the act. We don’t expect Yogi Adityanath to reassure women, but we expect the PM to.
The fact that this incident and the subsequent investigation are shrouded by caste supremacy — upper caste Thakur men allegedly raping a Dalit woman — has also led to doubts about how much the government actually cares about the social development of Dalits and OBCs, the vote bank that the BJP has wooed. The Hathras case isn’t a one-off incident.
And then to call yourself a great nation in front of foreign investors seems nothing more than patting yourself on the back, and failing to look in the mirror. If PM Modi fails to recognise that the BJP’s Hindutva agenda has once again dangerously re-ignited the pride of the savarnas, especially in a state like Uttar Pradesh whose chief minister is a saffron-clad Thakur, the metaphorical ticking caste bomb will blow up on the party’s face. The Dalit anger is already palpable with leaders like Chandrashekhar Azad opting for a Bose-like roar for justice rather than a Gandhi-like passive whimper.
Also read: Don’t know how to take a U-turn? Learn from TV channels on Rhea Chakraborty and Hathras cases
Equality with an asterisk
With crores of rupees being spent on an Air Force One-type planes for the Prime Minister, Delhi’s Central Vista and statues, one wonders how hard it is for a government that seems so well equipped, both financially and politically, to bring about better and more sensitive rape laws, better policing laws, and work on the upliftment of Dalits. In fact, if the BJP can bulldoze through both houses of Parliament to remove Article 370 and the recent farm laws, why not better laws for Dalits and women?
Obviously, the answer is more complicated. In India, the idea of equality itself comes with a disclaimer. You can call yourself an equal only if you are certified by self-proclaimed nationalist, patriotic agencies — usually, yelling anchors and BJP ministers. Tone-deaf news channels have not shied away from sensationalising claims of the Hathras accused who said the victim was killed by her own family because they were ‘friends’. The character assassination of a dead woman is allowed. Her forceful cremation by upper-caste policemen, who now claim that there was no ‘rape’, is allowed. Barricading and threatening the victim’s family in a largely Thakur village is allowed. All of it was allowed only because she was a Dalit.
Equality in India, at best, is a myth, and the Hathras case is proof. PM Modi may be a marketing maverick but the human conscience is a powerful factor too. The world is watching.
The author is a political observer and writer. Views are personal.