The die is ‘caste’: Dalits lodge FIR against upper-caste ‘oppressors’

According to Jaman Parmar, a Dalit villager from Nesda, tension was simmering between the communities for quite some time. “There has been no Panchayat election in our village for the last two terms and it was elected uncontested under the Samras scheme,” Jaman said, stating further that while the village subsequently received extra development funds from the government for the same, nothing has been done for the Dalit areas so far. “Not only that, there is no Dalit representative in the Panchayat and even in the Social Justice Centre of the village,” he added.

Jaman said: “On August 5, they held a public meeting in the village and declared that the Dalits are to be excommunicated from the village, as they are refusing to carry out their traditional duty of taking care of the dead animals of the village in a public system. Now, no one from the village calls us to the farm, or gives us any work. We cannot get flour from the village, or grocery, not even milk. We cannot also take a rickshaw owned by them.”

“Ab to saheb, apne sage sambandhio se laakar khana pad raha hain (We are dependent on our relatives for food),” he added.

Dana Parmar, another Dalit villager from Nesda, said: “There has been a lot of discrimination in our village and people from the higher castes would not even touch our money or let us enter the grocer’s shop under normal circumstances. After they declared the boycott, the situation has only worsened and it is after two months of struggle that we could register an

FIR with the Tankara police station on Monday evening. We had written a number of letters to the district authorities in this connection, but nothing yielded any result.” He added that until Monday, Tankara police was even refusing to register an FIR in this case.

Interestingly, Rajkot (Rural) Police Superintendent ND Solanki told this paper on Monday that the matter has already been looked into and there is nothing in the complaint that merits an FIR, which is why FIR was not being registered. However, soon after this, Tankara police registered the FIR. “Though there was nothing in the case, but they insisted and we had to register the FIR,” he said on Tuesday evening, adding that police have now initiated an investigation into the matter.

The Sarpanch of the Village, Ramesh Bhadja, however, completely rubbished the allegation. “These people are lying. They have refused to dispose the dead animals and now we are managing that on our own. But there is no question of any social boycott at all,” he said. He, however, admitted that there is no Dalit member in the village Panchayat. “I have been the Sarpanch for the last two years. Why didn’t they come to me and ask for a community representation?” he said.

Rajkot Collector HS Patel said, “They had made a representation a few days ago and we had sent the police to take a look at the situation there. What we found was that the higher caste people are not giving them employment. In a strict legal sense, we cannot do much about it, as the representation was only regarding registering an FIR. But now that an FIR has been registered naming people, we will take a serious look at it again.”