Casteless, Classless, Truthless

Published in the Hindustan Times Edit Page on February 15, 2005

In the nearly thirty years of Left Front rule, amid promises of classless, casteless equality, the plight of Dalits in West Bengal continues to be one of suffering and shame

Most of those familiar with Kolkata ----and the bhadralok ethos it celebrates ----will tell you that in this city, atrocities based on caste bias are but stray incidents. Any display of caste bias is generally scoffed at and 28 years of Left rule have, among other things, done away with the twin evils of class and caste. People’s Democracy, the CPI(M) publication, informs with unfailing regularity of the communists’ success in providing succor in Bengal to the socially marginalised.
Don’t fall for that. On the surface, yes, it may be different in Bengal. There is no Ranvir Sena to maim, rape, kill and burn the Dalit populace. Dark-skinned cows are not rejected because they may belong to lower castes, or white-skinned ones venerated as Aryan symbols. Caste politics hasn’t reared its ugly head to the extent it has in some other states, notably in the BIMARU ones.
The atrocities and inequalities in the rule of the Left Front are different. Urban Bengal has always had a tradition of ‘unorthodoxy’. So caste discrimination does not always assume epidemic proportions. But that has not put a stop to the caste crimes here. It’s another matter that they mostly go unreported. Truth be told, the government of the proletariat has been guilty not only of criminal negligence to the Dalit cause, but of atrocities against them as well.
Flashback to the late Seventies: an about-to-retire head of the Sanskrit department of a reputed university in Kolkata reacted strongly against an application for a lecturer’s post in his department. Reason: the applicant was a namashudra (a scheduled caste). Surely a shudra can’t be allowed to teach Sanskrit in a university, the professor fumed. Reservation for SC/STs and OBCs was still a distant dream. The candidate a first-class degree holder had applied purely on the basis of merit. The professor, a Left ideologue, garnered tacit political support to scrap the application. No reason was cited for the refusal. All that the applicant got to know was that ‘a more deserving candidate’ has been selected.
The Morichjhapi carnage in 1979, for instance, is a classic example of the Left Front’s caste bias. The incident that forms the backdrop of Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide saw the forcible eviction of around 10,000 settlers (mostly lower-caste Hindu refugees from East Pakistan, now Bangladesh) from Morichjhapi, an island on the south of Kumarimari in Suderbans. Around 6,000 huts were set on fire, plainclothes policemen opened fire in which many hapless refugees were killed. The Left Front government was then in power.
But what was it that prompted the Left to displace a people who had started new lives in an uninhabited island? The official explanation was that Morichjhapi was a reserved forest area. Reports state that Janata Dal MPs, who visited the region in 1979, said that there never was any reserved forest in that region. What then was the real cause of the carnage?
According to journalist Niranjan Haldar, who extensively reported and researched the carnage, the refusal of the Udbastu Unnayansil Samity, an association of refugees, to merge with the CPI(M) led to their eviction. Moreover (and this is the version of the inhabitants of Kumarimari), the inhabitants of Morichjhapi were all namashudras. Would things have been different if they belonged to the upper castes?
In Novemver 2004, students in a primary school in Birbhanpur village in West Bengal’s Bankura district refused to accept mid-day meals. Reason: the cook was a baghdi woman, an untouchable. With op-ed hacks from Kolkata newsrooms crying ‘Disgrace’, politburo member Biman Bose issued a statement” The matter has to be resolved through detailed discussions.” When a similar incident took place in Purulia district’s Dumuradi village around the same time, a quick solution was offered by the village education committee: hire another cook, an upper caste this time.
More recently, the Howrah Municipality Corporation evicted several hundred Dalit families, mostly from the Balmiki community, from Belilius Park, Howrah. These families are mostly engaged as safai karmacharis (sanitation workers) with the corporation. Citing environmental degradation, and without providing any alternative, the government razed their houses and it was reported that the police even took away their belongings.
After the mid-day meal incident last year, Anandabazar Patrika ran a series on the plight of Dalits in Bengal villages (panchayats in most of these are under direct Left control). The findings are alarming. In village after village, the survey finds that Dalit families are marginalized; Dalit children are made to occupy separate seats in schools and are denied access to libraries and other facilities.
So while comrades Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechury prodly declares in Delhi, “Where ever the Red flag flies, we will destroy untouchability”, the dalits live a life of shame and suffering in West Bengal’s villages.