Battlelines drawn

Seven-year-old Ratna was visiting her friend Kamlesh at the Swarn Jayanti Samudaik Hospital in Mathura where she was admitted with 50 per cent burns. A Thakur from their village had thrown Kamlesh into a pit of burning waste because she had been playing near a pond in the ‘Thakur area’ of the village. While Kamlesh was happy to see Ratna, her parents were clearly not—Ratna’s elder brother Sunny was the culprit and is now in jail.

The strained relations between Ratna and Kamlesh could probably define the social structure in the villages of this Thakur dominated region of Mathura. Like in most of western Uttar Pradesh’s villages, an uneasy and fragile sense of peace prevails in Tarauli.

This incident has angered the Dalits in Tarauli and they say Kamlesh’s father Saudan Singh did the right thing by going to the police. The Dalits, they said, had ignored lesser incidents of exploitation by the Thakurs to maintain peace in the village.

“While the Jatavs dominate the political scene in the region of about 40 villages, the Thakurs make the numbers,” said a police official of Chhata police station.

Under the rule of Mayawati, who too is a Jatav, the Uttar Pradesh police are pushed to investigate caste-related violence, senior police officials in Mathura said. “The pressure from above to solve such cases is too much these days; every case of violence against Dalits has to be solved as soon as possible and that has angered some upper caste leaders in the district,” a senior police official said on the condition of anonymity.

The elected member of the legislative assembly from Mathura Shyam Singh Aheria is also from the ‘lower’ caste and that, officials say, adds to the pressure. So it was no surprise that the action in this case was swift and Ratna’s brother Sunny is now in jail after he was arrested within two hours of the incident.

Sunny, who is pursuing his masters in social studies from a college in Mathura, has always been a bright student, claim his family members. “This case is caused by some misunderstanding,” Sunny’s uncle Kamal Singh said. “The two communities have always lived in harmony,” he claimed.

... contd.