Cast(e) in stone

An exploration of how inequality exists in a global village, and not just India

- Amitabh Ranjan

In July 2023, a video went viral of a dominant caste man, reported to be a Brahmin, urinating on a tribal man in Madhya Pradesh. The latter sat slouching, and the culprit, identified as a 'pandit,' towered over him, urinating on his face and body. More disturbing than the incident was the support the culprit subsequently received from his community.

In September 2024, in Karnataka's Dakshina Kannada district, a 67-year-old Dalit man was brutally assaulted by a high-caste Gowda shopkeeper with a wooden pole when the former sought shelter from heavy rain and wanted to rest near the shop. More recently, in Uttar Pradesh's Etawah, a group of upper-caste men allegedly tonsured the head of a katha vaachak (religious preacher) and his aide after finding that they hailed from the Yadav community. Shortly after this incident, in Odisha's Ganjam district, men of the Dalit Pana community were beaten up and forced to crawl with grass blades between their teeth and also to drink drain water by so-called Savarnas (dominant castes). They were alleged to have smuggled cattle, which came out to be a falsehood.

These are just a tiny sample from a regular flow of such news from across India's vast geography and cultural landscape. The political dispensation of a state hardly makes a difference. Caste consciousness, in all its shameful manifestations, is ingrained in the Indian psyche, and except for the occasional expression of disgust and surprise, such incidents hardly shake the national conscience in any effective way. But is it just an Indian phenomenon?