|
Tsunami and shame
 First
it was the tsunami that brought death and devastation, grief and trauma of a
mind-numbing magnitude. Though not as badly ravaged as Indonesia or Sri Lanka,
the death toll in India was over 10,000 with at least 600,000 people rendered
homeless or destitute on the coast of Tamil Nadu.
Declining offers of aid from foreign governments towards the
relief and rehabilitation of survivors, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh avowed
that this was not an expression of false pride. Terrible as the tragedy was, in
it there was also a challenge and Indians would cope with it, he said. What’s
more, through a touching gesture, India earned the gratitude of its neighbour by
rushing men and material to Sri Lanka’s aid even as it strained to deal with its
own internal calamity.
This, coupled with the spontaneity and generosity with which
citizens across the country and from diverse social segments contributed towards
relief and rehabilitation, could rightly be expected to earn India respect in
the eyes of the global community. But sadly, as media persons and volunteers
rushed in for reportage and to provide relief, many were shocked to discover
India’s continuing shame.
On January 7, a prominent national daily, The Indian Express
had banner headlines on the front page that read – "Tsunami can’t wash this
away: hatred for Dalits".
The opening lines of the story filed by correspondent Janyala
Sreenivas from the badly hit Nagapattinam coastal area in Tamil Nadu read –
"There’s something even an earthquake measuring 9 on the Richter scale and a
tsunami that kills over 1 lakh people can’t crack: the walls between caste.
"That’s why at Ground Zero in Nagapattinam, Murugeshan and his
family of four have been living on the streets in Nambiarnagar. That’s why like
31 other families, they have been thrown out of relief camps. That’s why they
are hounded out of schools they have sneaked into, they are pushed to the rear
of food and water lines, given leftovers, not allowed to use toilets or even
drink water provided by a UN agency. That’s why some NGOs are setting up
separate facilities for them. Because they are all Dalits. They are survivors
from 63 damaged villages — 30 of them flattened — all marooned in their own
islands, facing the brunt of a majority of fishermen who are from the Meenavar
community — listed in official records as Most Backward Class (MBC) — for whom
Dalits are still untouchable. The Indian Express toured the camps to find
an old story of caste hatred being replayed in camp after camp…"
The shocking sidelining of Dalits is doubly ironic. Firstly, it
was they who were pressed, and pressed hard into service to carry out emergency
operations essential to prevent the outbreak of epidemics in the aftermath of
the calamity. It was they who carried away dead bodies and disposed of animal
carcasses because upper caste people consider such work taboo and socially
degrading. In return, what the Dalit community got was not gratitude but
continued discrimination. Secondly, in the tsunami hit coastal belt of Tamil
Nadu, Dalits were being treated as "untouchables" not by Brahmins or other upper
castes but by fishermen ("Most Backward Castes") barely a rung above them on the
caste ladder.
In response to the report in The Indian Express, the
Union cabinet secretary, BK Chaturvedi said the concerned state governments were
being asked to ensure that Dalits and other weaker sections of society were not
deprived while providing emergency relief and other essential aid. And the
chairman of the National Commission of Scheduled Castes, Suraj Bhan directed the
commission’s Tamil Nadu representative, Ms. Kannagi Packianathan, to visit the
areas where incidents are said to have occurred. But Dalit NGOs and sections of
the press, national and international, continued to highlight the indignities
being heaped on Dalits by fellow survivors and in some cases, government
agencies.
After visiting the affected areas, activists of the National
Campaign for Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR) reported that be it loss of life or
property, the fisher folk had been the worst hit by the tsunami. It was
therefore only to be expected that a major share of the relief and
rehabilitation efforts would be aimed at the community of fishermen. What was
not acceptable, however, was the discrimination against Dalits and other smaller
communities who had also been equally devastated, in human if not numerical
terms.
Says the NCDHR report: "The tsunami left the trail of death and
devastation among the coastal communities in south India — the fisher people,
Dalits and Muslims. The loss of life and livelihood is common to all these three
sections but of course the majority affected is fisher people. The Dalits are
the worst affected since they lost all their huts, livestock, household and the
crops that they raised, although the loss of their kattumarans, fibre
boats or mechanised boats are less in number. Muslims in some parts of the shore
are also equally affected like Dalits but not on par with the fisher people.
Therefore, the relief and rehabilitation measures are to be ensured in an
unbiased manner to all affected communities proportionate to the damage that
they faced, regardless of their economic status or position in caste hierarchy.
While the tsunami knew only geographical boundaries in its trail, NCDHR found
the deep entrenched boundaries of caste and discrimination dividing the affected
people even in the deep hours of grief and helplessness".
The report points out that though fewer in number, Dalits living
near the coastline in proximity to colonies of the fishing community also depend
on fishing for a livelihood. "Dalits assist the fisher people in unloading the
fish, buying and selling, serving as coolies or domestic workers, besides
helping in salt pans. Also, they are marginal farmers and agricultural labourers".
Thus, they are poorer compared to the fisher folk and the poor, as always, are
more vulnerable.
The NCDHR’s report, accessible online on their website,
www.dalits.org, documents numerous specific examples of discrimination
against Dalits by fellow survivors (the fishing community) as also
discriminatory, negligent or apathetic attitudes of government officials,
including policemen, at the lower level, against Dalits in the matter of relief
work.
In the backdrop of the UN Conference Against Racism, Racial
Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durban in August 2001,
under the aegis of NCDHR, Dalit activists had launched a highly visible and
effective international campaign to highlight the fact that 260 million Dalits
living in Asia continue to be victims of a "hidden apartheid".
Among the offshoots of that campaign was a global network that
calls itself the International Dalit Solidarity Network (IDSN). In the aftermath
of the tsunami, Dalit organisations and networks, fraternal bodies like the ISDN
and sections of the international media (Reuters, Inter Presse Service,
Deutsche Presse-Agentur) have not only awakened the global community to
the fact of discrimination against Dalits in relief programmes post-tsunami, but
also the larger issue of continuing indignities of the caste system.
As was only to be expected, respected international human rights
groups and minority rights groups such as the New York based Human Rights Watch
and the UK-based Minority Rights Group have promptly sent out international
alerts and called upon the Indian government "to take all necessary steps to
ensure non-discrimination in all aid and rehabilitation efforts".
The middle class in "Resurgent India" might draw comfort from
the fact that when the tsunami struck, fellow Indians, celebrities and commoners
alike, responded spontaneously and generously to the needs of the survivors. But
unless urgent corrective measures are taken, as after the Gujarat earthquake in
2001, post-tsunami relief and rehabilitation work will also be remembered by the
global human rights community as one more example of how even severe natural
disasters cannot break down the barriers of India’s pernicious, man-made caste
system that refuses to recognise all human beings as equal. |
|
‘They only want us to
clear their dead bodies’
" They want us to clear out their dead
bodies and faeces but when it comes to accepting relief they want to ensure
that we are nowhere around simply because they cannot stomach the idea of
sharing anything with us…
"We see the tsunami as one more opportunity to highlight the
severe discrimination against Dalits, which the government is reluctant to
acknowledge before the international community…
"Dalit representatives must be present wherever relief and
rehabilitation is taking place. This is the only way that we can ensure that
Dalits get a fair share because most voluntary agencies are run by upper caste
people who, in general, lack sensitivity towards Dalit issues and are not
serious about getting relief to them."
— Ashok Bharti, national coordinator of National
Conference of Dalit Organisations (NACDOR), which represents 300 Dalit bodies
across India. Quoted in a report by The Inter Press News Service.
----------------------------
India’s "untouchables" gather dead
NAGAPATTINAM, TN - They are the "untouchables"; the lowest of
the low in India’s ancient caste system. No job is too dirty or too nasty, and
they are the ones cleaning up the rotting corpses from last week’s killer
tsunami.
The overwhelming majority of the 1,000 or so men sweating away
in the tropical heat to clear the poor South Indian fishing town of
Nagapattinam, which bore the brunt of the giant wave, are lower caste Dalits
from neighbouring villages.
Locals too afraid of disease and too sickened by the smell
refuse to join the grim task of digging friends and neighbours out of the sand
and debris. They just stand and watch the Dalits work.
Although it has been a week since the tsunami hit, and the
destruction was confined to a tiny strip by the beach and port, the
devastation was so fierce that several bodies — located by the stench and the
flies — are still being discovered daily.
"I am only doing what I would do for my own wife and child,"
says M. Mohan, a Dalit municipal cleaner as he takes a break to wash off some
of the grime of the day’s work. "It is our duty. If a dog is dead, or a
person, we have to clean it up."
Mohan and other sanitation workers from neighbouring
municipalities are working around the clock to clear Nagapattinam, for an
extra 50 cents a day and a meal.
The smell of death still hangs heavily, mixing with the sea
breeze and the almost refreshingly tart smell of the antiseptic lime powder
that has turned some streets and paths white.
More than 5,525 people — close to 40 per cent of India’s
estimated total 14,488 fatalities — died along this small stretch of pure
white beach, where the huts of poor fishermen were built down to the sand at
the top of the beach itself.
For Mohan, illiterate, uneducated and low caste, the only way
to get a government job and the security and pension that come with it, was as
a municipal sanitation worker. For some Indians, untouchables are less than
human.
— Reuters report.
----------------------------
Injuries of caste
Instances of discrimination against Dalits since the tsunami
struck, documented by the NCDHR and press reports:
Ø Dalits cannot drink water from tanks put up by UNICEF at
some relief camps, as other groups say they ‘pollute’ the water;
Ø Dalits have been excluded from some relief camps resulting
in much of the relief material failing to reach them;
Ø Dead bodies of other communities have been buried in the
living areas of some Dalits;
Ø In the Nallukadai Street Relief Camp, cartons of glucose
biscuits delivered by a Coimbatore NGO were taken from Dalits who were told:
‘these are not for you’;
Ø At Puttur Relief Camp, when Dalits asked for family relief
kits, rice packets, donated clothes and other materials, they were forced to
spend the night on the road;
Ø At the Neelayadatchi Temple Camp, Dalits were not allowed
inside the temple, especially when rice and cash donations were being handed
out;
Ø 32 Dalit families taking shelter in a girls’ school in
Thanjavur were asked to vacate the building on the pretext that it was due to
re-open just days after the disaster;
Ø Officials have been apathetic about registering deaths among
Dalits, establishing the conditions of Dalit victims, and have been reluctant
to register missing Dalit persons or respond to appeals for relief.
----------------------------
‘Shame on us!’
Considering that probably 80 per cent of the seismic quake
victims were Muslims, it is American and European rescue teams who are out
there. The Muslims are probably busy doing Umrahs and preparing for Bakri Id.
Shame on us!
Noor Hussain
[email protected]
----------------------------
Religion no bar
Caring has no religion. Ask this Jamaat chief in a Cuddalore
corner mosque who works overtime to take care of Hindu, Christian fisher folk.
Rahmatullah is a tired man. He and his nephew have just returned to their
masjid after burying an unknown Christian man, identifiable by the black
thread with the little cross around the neck. They had not forgotten to put a
makeshift bamboo cross on the burial mound.
In Cuddalore, the second hardest-hit town in Tamil Nadu when
the killer waves came, a masjid and the local jamaat have
emerged as the rallying point for thousands of fisher folk – almost all of
them Hindus and Christians. There are hardly any Muslim fishermen in Cuddalore,
and most of the local Muslims are either traders – which explains the Hindi –
or have NRI sons in the Gulf. There have been no Muslim casualties. ‘’We came
to know when people came running to the masjid, minutes after it
happened. We decided to do what we could do,’’ says Mohammed Younus, president
of the United Islamic Jamaat.
Within minutes of the tsunami striking Pudukuppam,
Samayarpettah, Chinnoor and other little villages along the Cuddalore coast on
Sunday morning, Younus had summoned his flock. Within half an hour, his men
had left their shops and homes for the beaches in their goods vans, cars,
two-wheelers and cycles, picking up and rushing the injured to hospitals.
By noon the Jamaat on its own had organised milk for a few
hundred babies, and food for over 3,000 survivors. By evening, about 3,000
Muslim men were tending to over 10,000 Hindus and Christians in makeshift
camps in the local schools.
A few hundred of the survivors were invited to stay in the
masjid, where they still stay. Many more are in the Jamaat’s school, and
dozens occupy its office building.
For the last three days, the Jamaat has employed 24 cooks
working round the clock to feed about 9,000-odd survivors. Some in the relief
camps and others in the five battered villages. The administration provides
the rice and milk, and the Jamaat buys the vegetables and everything else on
its own.
As the bodies began piling up, Younus asked his men not to
hesitate. And, for the last three days, they have been doing what might be
unthinkable for many Muslims: carrying bodies on their own shoulders and
cremating them. ‘’To the possible extent, we have been making sure that the
Hindu bodies are burnt, and Christians are buried. They should not feel
offended in death,’’ Younus reasons.
— The Indian Express.
|
|
