Weddings, interrupted

As men arrange themselves comfortably on a charpoy, Munnish Devi, 50, finds herself a spot on the mud floor of her three-room house at Bhureka village in Uttar Pradesh’s Mathura district.

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Devi, whose husband passed away a few years ago, has four daughters. One of them is Kalpana, 20, who married Akash, 21, in May this year. The only memory Devi has from the wedding is a bloodstained pair of white pyjamas, which she has kept in a stainless steel trunk. It's a reminder of the day a celebration turned violent.

Akash, a member of the Dalit community, was dragged off the chariot he was riding joyously to his bride’s house. Many wedding guests were allegedly assaulted by a group of men from the Jat community because members of the Dalit community had organised a wedding procession.In Uttar Pradesh, numerous cases have been reported where Dalit families have faced violence from upper caste communities for organising wedding ceremonies in smaller towns and villages. As many as 15,368 cases of atrocities against Scheduled Castes and five against Scheduled Tribes were registered in the State in 2022, as per the National Crime Records Bureau data. There is no separate data on atrocities against Dalits during celebrations.Every month though, there are incidents of Dalit wedding processions being attacked in the State. On June 21, Arti Kumari, 19, and Vikas Singh, 21, were getting married in Etah district's Dhakpura village. When their baraat reached a Rajput-dominant settlement, they allegedly faced threats and stones were pelted. The wedding ultimately took place under police protection.In Bhureka, where mud houses dot green fields, people primarily engage in farming. Despite being located just off the Yamuna Expressway — the 165-km, high-speed road that connects Noida with Agra — people in the village have a slow life.