02.05.2026.News Untouchable.(Voice of Sc.STs,Buddhists,Ambedkar ites,Anti SC.ST atrocity news,Employement news)by Sivaji Ayyayiram.9444917060.asivaji1962@gmail.com.FB.sivaji yoga Tiruvannamalai.x.shivajia479023.
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இரண்டும் / இருவரும் - தோனோ [ IRANDUM / IRUVARUM - THONO ]
மூன்றும் / மூவரும் - தீனோ [ MOOVARUM / MOONTUM - THEENO ]
வீடு - கர் [ VEEDU - KHAR ]
கடை - துக்கான் [ KADAI - THUKHAN ]
கோவில் - மந்திர் [ KOVIL - MANTHIR ]
மசூதி - மஸ்ஜீத் [ MASOOTHI - MASJEED ]
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1️⃣🔴🔴🔴🔴🔴🔴🔴🔴🔴🔴🔴🔴🔴🔴🔴1️⃣
Dalit youth assaulted and robbed of 36,000 rupees in Unnao: Thugs hurled casteist slurs at him; police accused of inaction
A Dalit youth was assaulted and robbed in the Bangarmau police station area of Unnao. 36,000 rupees were allegedly snatched from him and he was subjected to casteist slurs. The victim has filed a police complaint.
A young man, son of Mishrilal, was carrying 36,000 rupees from his village to deliver to a man named Lattu in another village. On the way, two village boys stopped him. They began abusing and beating him. One of the accused held Ajay down, while the other was beating him.
The men hurled casteist slurs at Ajay and said, “We will beat you wherever we find you.” During the assault, the accused also snatched 36,000 rupees from Ajay. Ajay comes from a poor family and was using this money to redeem his mortgaged land.
After the incident, Ajay informed the family members of the bullies, but they threatened him. Ajay then filed a petition at the Moradabad police station. However, two days later, no action has been taken in the matter. Ajay is also being pressured to reach a settlement.
The victim, Ajay, has stated that 36,000 rupees have been snatched from him. “How can I make restitution?” Ajay demands that his 36,000 rupees be returned and that he be given a written assurance that such an incident will not happen to him in the future. The Bangarmau police station in-charge stated that the matter is under his notice and that he will investigate and take appropriate action.
Keshan Kumar | Ganjmuradabad, Unnao
Courtesy: Hindi News
Dalit History Month | ‘They Never Wanted This Job’: How ‘Warsa Hakka’ Forces Women into Safai 1️⃣1️⃣💯💯 in Maharashtra
A study of 115 women sanitation workers across Mumbai, Nagpur and Kalyan documents the intersection of caste, gender, occupational health risks and institutional neglect
Mumbai- Every morning, while the city is still asleep, a woman ties her hair, picks up her long-handled broom, and steps out to clean the very streets that others will walk on their way to offices. She is a safai karamchari, a government employee of the municipal corporation and yet, she is almost invisible to the very world she cleans.
A research study conducted across Mumbai, Nagpur, and Kalyan has brought the stories of these women into the public domain. The study, conducted recently among 115 women employed in municipal sanitation services, found that these women aged between 19 and 46 years, simultaneously face caste discrimination, gender inequality, severe health disorders, and economic uncertainty.
Titled “Intersectionality of Caste, Gender and Occupation: A Study of Safai Karamchari Women in Maharashtra,” this research has been authored by Hemangi Kadlak, Pradeep S. Salve, and Payal Karwade.
Lead researcher Hemangi Kadlak has shared this study with ‘The Mooknayak’ as a special report for Dalit History Month.
The study notes that the problems of safai karamcharis are among the least discussed and most neglected areas in academia. Within this gap, issues specific to women safai karamcharis remain particularly unattended, receiving less coverage than those of their male counterparts even in popular media. This study was undertaken to fill that gap by highlighting the problems women safai karamcharis face, the coping mechanisms they use, and by critically examining government policies made for them.
After two months of my marriage, I joined this work; before marriage I was not into it. I married at the age of 16 years. Nobody told me to do this work, I myself started this when I was pregnant with my elder daughter. I thought gharwala should not have financial problem… Muze accha nahi lagata tha, so I started the work.
— 39-year-old sweeper, Kalyan
Almost three-quarters of the women surveyed entered the occupation through the Preferential Treatment (PT) case locally known as Warsa Hakka, meaning hereditary right. Under this system, a safai karamchari can nominate a wife, son, daughter, sister or other dependent to take over the post after retirement, death or permanent disability. The study found that the majority of women in Mumbai and Nagpur municipal corporations were widows recruited under this system following the death of the male safai karamchari and key earning member of the family.
Direct recruitment in Mumbai municipal corporation has been closed since 1989, with current recruitment mostly based on PT. Male safai karamcharis are replaced by female workers when no male relative is available or when male members are below official working age. Among those recruited directly, caste was the decisive factor, almost all women came from Scheduled Caste backgrounds, with castes such as Rukhi, Mehtar, Valmiki, Mahar and Matang most predominant. The majority of women studied were second or third generation in this occupation.
The study also found that most women entered sanitation work after marriage, as their parents had discouraged them from doing so beforehand. The researchers recorded an age of marriage below 18 years among most respondents. The researchers observed cases where female karamcharis were forced by family members to enter sanitation work under unfavourable financial conditions, and some women also stated they agreed because of the job security of a government post.
My father died with the paralysis and permanent disability of lower back six years after he met with a road accident during working hours. He worked for 20 years in the municipal corporation as street sweeper… my mother continued his work and being an elder in the family, I took over the charge of family… since the past 3 years, I am working in her place as third generation sweeper.
— 20-year-old woman safai karamchari, Mumbai
Women safai karamcharis are vulnerable to a range of serious health conditions including chronic cough, headaches, respiratory infections, skin disease, anaemia, diarrhoea, musculoskeletal disorders and mental disorders. They also suffer from reproductive health problems and gynaecological issues. The study found musculoskeletal disorders to be particularly prevalent, attributed to the dual burden of heavy physical activity at work and daily household chores.
About 88 percent of respondents at Nagpur municipal corporation and 72 percent at Mumbai reported joint or musculoskeletal pain. A high percentage of women also reported mental distress due to work burden and working schedules. Women karamcharis wake between 3 and 4 am, prepare food for their families, and begin work at 6:30 am, continuing until 2 pm without any scheduled break. This schedule results in inadequate sleep and daily health issues including headache, acidity, nausea, blood pressure fluctuations, hypertension and menstrual problems.
The study observed that women do not seek treatment in the primary phase of illness unless it becomes intolerable, preferring home remedies first. Despite being entitled to medical claims as government employees, the ground observations showed that women were not provided with medical insurance in Nagpur and Kalyan. In Mumbai, women reported recently receiving medical insurance of around ₹2,50,000, and were demanding its extension to family members with coverage up to ₹5,00,000. Whatever treatment expenditure occurs, women pay out of pocket through family savings, borrowing from friends or relatives, or mortgaging household assets.
In Nagpur, women reported that workplaces lacked even basic amenities such as toilets, drinking water, sitting arrangements and first-aid boxes. Women in Nagpur also reported not being provided protective gear for a long time. A similar situation was observed in Kalyan. The situation in Mumbai was found to be better, with women reporting basic facilities and protective measures at reporting places. Across all cities, women had no changing room at their reporting stations
I was 40 years old when my husband (age 47) died due to alcohol addiction… When I married him, he would never touch alcohol, but over the period of years he became addicted to alcohol after being engaged in this waste collection work. Many times when he used to come home heavily drunk, I opposed him; and he used to finish it up by beating me.”
— 40-year-old widow safai karamchari, Mumbai
Health problems and discrimination at the workplace were found to be common and most of the time neglected. In Mumbai and Nagpur, women reported teasing problems from male counterparts. In Kalyan, exploitation by the mukadam (supervisor) was documented. The study describes a case in which a hearing-impaired woman was given no rest time by her supervisor; the situation was only resolved after her son confronted the mukadam directly, after which she was shifted to another area.
The study found that supervisors often give work instructions by shouting, and scold workers when work is not completed. Favouritism among female employees by supervisors was reported to create excessive burden on some women. Women stated they mostly keep quiet when facing challenges at home and at work and sometimes discuss issues with female colleagues. In critical situations, married women seek help from their husbands and widows from sons or other male relatives.
The study found more than 50 big and small trade unions in Mumbai municipal corporation, but women’s participation in these unions was found to be invisible, none of the women were found in high positions. Men never took up issues related to women. Union representatives came to women asking for donations and money for worker welfare, but none of the unions were found to be useful to the women. Women reported not going against the municipal corporation due to high levels of illiteracy, lack of support from colleagues, fear of losing jobs, harassment and demands of bribes from higher-position staff. Several women expressed the desire for a separate union where they could raise their own issues.
Although women safai karamcharis are the breadwinners of their families, the study found they do not enjoy decision-making powers. Important decisions including their children’s marriages , are taken by in-laws or male members of the family, whether women live in nuclear or joint families. The study observed that how money is spent and where it is spent is not in the women’s hands.
Women in joint families receive help from other women in the household. Those in nuclear families rely on their daughters for household chores, which the study found leads to girls losing interest in studies and gradually dropping out of school. At the workplace, women face mental and sexual harassment, abusive words and taunts from male supervisors and colleagues.
The study also noted that the situation of contract safai karamchari women is worse than that of regular workers. Contract women workers receive approximately ₹150 to ₹200 as daily wages, with no protective measures such as gloves or masks made available to them. Municipal corporations address contract safai karamcharis as liabilities and deny them workers’ rights.
What the study recommends
The researchers conclude that women safai karamcharis are directed by two kinds of authority: the authority of the family, where being a woman she is compelled to do any kind of dirty work; and social authority caste and socio-cultural norms which dictate the type of work women perform without question. Despite their vulnerability, there are no target-oriented policies for them.
The study calls for a women-centric approach to make the workplace more comfortable, changes in society’s approach towards women safai karamcharis, and a strong bridge between workers and the academicians and policymakers who form welfare programmes, so that the workers’ real conditions and needs are understood before policies are designed.
The researchers close with Dr. Ambedkar’s words: “I measure the progress of the community by the degree of progress which women have achieved.”
The Researchers
Hemangi Kadlak is a researcher affiliated with the School of Social Work at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai. Her work focuses on Dalit communities, caste-based labour, and social exclusion.
Pradeep S. Salve works at the International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), Mumbai, where he conducts research on occupational health, caste, and sanitation workers.
Payal Karwade is affiliated with the School of Social Work, TISS, Mumbai, and is engaged in research on Dalit studies and social policy.
Disclaimer: The data and findings presented in this article are based on research conducted between 2014 and 2016. Over time, official figures, working conditions, and government policies may have changed. Readers are advised to refer to current and authoritative sources for the latest updates.
Geetha Sunil Pillai.
3️⃣🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀⚔️3️⃣
Dalit History Month | ‘They Never Wanted This Job’: How ‘Warsa Hakka’ Forces Women into Safai Karamcharis in Maharashtra
A study of 115 women sanitation workers across Mumbai, Nagpur and Kalyan documents the intersection of caste, gender, occupational health risks and institutional neglect
Mumbai- Every morning, while the city is still asleep, a woman ties her hair, picks up her long-handled broom, and steps out to clean the very streets that others will walk on their way to offices. She is a safai karamchari, a government employee of the municipal corporation and yet, she is almost invisible to the very world she cleans.
A research study conducted across Mumbai, Nagpur, and Kalyan has brought the stories of these women into the public domain. The study, conducted recently among 115 women employed in municipal sanitation services, found that these women aged between 19 and 46 years, simultaneously face caste discrimination, gender inequality, severe health disorders, and economic uncertainty.
Titled “Intersectionality of Caste, Gender and Occupation: A Study of Safai Karamchari Women in Maharashtra,” this research has been authored by Hemangi Kadlak, Pradeep S. Salve, and Payal Karwade.
Lead researcher Hemangi Kadlak has shared this study with ‘The Mooknayak’ as a special report for Dalit History Month.
The study notes that the problems of safai karamcharis are among the least discussed and most neglected areas in academia. Within this gap, issues specific to women safai karamcharis remain particularly unattended, receiving less coverage than those of their male counterparts even in popular media. This study was undertaken to fill that gap by highlighting the problems women safai karamcharis face, the coping mechanisms they use, and by critically examining government policies made for them.
After two months of my marriage, I joined this work; before marriage I was not into it. I married at the age of 16 years. Nobody told me to do this work, I myself started this when I was pregnant with my elder daughter. I thought gharwala should not have financial problem… Muze accha nahi lagata tha, so I started the work.
— 39-year-old sweeper, Kalyan
Almost three-quarters of the women surveyed entered the occupation through the Preferential Treatment (PT) case locally known as Warsa Hakka, meaning hereditary right. Under this system, a safai karamchari can nominate a wife, son, daughter, sister or other dependent to take over the post after retirement, death or permanent disability. The study found that the majority of women in Mumbai and Nagpur municipal corporations were widows recruited under this system following the death of the male safai karamchari and key earning member of the family.
Direct recruitment in Mumbai municipal corporation has been closed since 1989, with current recruitment mostly based on PT. Male safai karamcharis are replaced by female workers when no male relative is available or when male members are below official working age. Among those recruited directly, caste was the decisive factor, almost all women came from Scheduled Caste backgrounds, with castes such as Rukhi, Mehtar, Valmiki, Mahar and Matang most predominant. The majority of women studied were second or third generation in this occupation.
The study also found that most women entered sanitation work after marriage, as their parents had discouraged them from doing so beforehand. The researchers recorded an age of marriage below 18 years among most respondents. The researchers observed cases where female karamcharis were forced by family members to enter sanitation work under unfavourable financial conditions, and some women also stated they agreed because of the job security of a government post.
My father died with the paralysis and permanent disability of lower back six years after he met with a road accident during working hours. He worked for 20 years in the municipal corporation as street sweeper… my mother continued his work and being an elder in the family, I took over the charge of family… since the past 3 years, I am working in her place as third generation sweeper.
— 20-year-old woman safai karamchari, Mumbai
Women safai karamcharis are vulnerable to a range of serious health conditions including chronic cough, headaches, respiratory infections, skin disease, anaemia, diarrhoea, musculoskeletal disorders and mental disorders. They also suffer from reproductive health problems and gynaecological issues. The study found musculoskeletal disorders to be particularly prevalent, attributed to the dual burden of heavy physical activity at work and daily household chores.
About 88 percent of respondents at Nagpur municipal corporation and 72 percent at Mumbai reported joint or musculoskeletal pain. A high percentage of women also reported mental distress due to work burden and working schedules. Women karamcharis wake between 3 and 4 am, prepare food for their families, and begin work at 6:30 am, continuing until 2 pm without any scheduled break. This schedule results in inadequate sleep and daily health issues including headache, acidity, nausea, blood pressure fluctuations, hypertension and menstrual problems.
The study observed that women do not seek treatment in the primary phase of illness unless it becomes intolerable, preferring home remedies first. Despite being entitled to medical claims as government employees, the ground observations showed that women were not provided with medical insurance in Nagpur and Kalyan. In Mumbai, women reported recently receiving medical insurance of around ₹2,50,000, and were demanding its extension to family members with coverage up to ₹5,00,000. Whatever treatment expenditure occurs, women pay out of pocket through family savings, borrowing from friends or relatives, or mortgaging household assets.
In Nagpur, women reported that workplaces lacked even basic amenities such as toilets, drinking water, sitting arrangements and first-aid boxes. Women in Nagpur also reported not being provided protective gear for a long time. A similar situation was observed in Kalyan. The situation in Mumbai was found to be better, with women reporting basic facilities and protective measures at reporting places. Across all cities, women had no changing room at their reporting stations
I was 40 years old when my husband (age 47) died due to alcohol addiction… When I married him, he would never touch alcohol, but over the period of years he became addicted to alcohol after being engaged in this waste collection work. Many times when he used to come home heavily drunk, I opposed him; and he used to finish it up by beating me.”
— 40-year-old widow safai karamchari, Mumbai
Health problems and discrimination at the workplace were found to be common and most of the time neglected. In Mumbai and Nagpur, women reported teasing problems from male counterparts. In Kalyan, exploitation by the mukadam (supervisor) was documented. The study describes a case in which a hearing-impaired woman was given no rest time by her supervisor; the situation was only resolved after her son confronted the mukadam directly, after which she was shifted to another area.
The study found that supervisors often give work instructions by shouting, and scold workers when work is not completed. Favouritism among female employees by supervisors was reported to create excessive burden on some women. Women stated they mostly keep quiet when facing challenges at home and at work and sometimes discuss issues with female colleagues. In critical situations, married women seek help from their husbands and widows from sons or other male relatives.
The study found more than 50 big and small trade unions in Mumbai municipal corporation, but women’s participation in these unions was found to be invisible, none of the women were found in high positions. Men never took up issues related to women. Union representatives came to women asking for donations and money for worker welfare, but none of the unions were found to be useful to the women. Women reported not going against the municipal corporation due to high levels of illiteracy, lack of support from colleagues, fear of losing jobs, harassment and demands of bribes from higher-position staff. Several women expressed the desire for a separate union where they could raise their own issues.
Although women safai karamcharis are the breadwinners of their families, the study found they do not enjoy decision-making powers. Important decisions including their children’s marriages , are taken by in-laws or male members of the family, whether women live in nuclear or joint families. The study observed that how money is spent and where it is spent is not in the women’s hands.
Women in joint families receive help from other women in the household. Those in nuclear families rely on their daughters for household chores, which the study found leads to girls losing interest in studies and gradually dropping out of school. At the workplace, women face mental and sexual harassment, abusive words and taunts from male supervisors and colleagues.
The study also noted that the situation of contract safai karamchari women is worse than that of regular workers. Contract women workers receive approximately ₹150 to ₹200 as daily wages, with no protective measures such as gloves or masks made available to them. Municipal corporations address contract safai karamcharis as liabilities and deny them workers’ rights.
What the study recommends
The researchers conclude that women safai karamcharis are directed by two kinds of authority: the authority of the family, where being a woman she is compelled to do any kind of dirty work; and social authority caste and socio-cultural norms which dictate the type of work women perform without question. Despite their vulnerability, there are no target-oriented policies for them.
The study calls for a women-centric approach to make the workplace more comfortable, changes in society’s approach towards women safai karamcharis, and a strong bridge between workers and the academicians and policymakers who form welfare programmes, so that the workers’ real conditions and needs are understood before policies are designed.
The researchers close with Dr. Ambedkar’s words: “I measure the progress of the community by the degree of progress which women have achieved.”
The Researchers
Hemangi Kadlak is a researcher affiliated with the School of Social Work at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai. Her work focuses on Dalit communities, caste-based labour, and social exclusion.
Pradeep S. Salve works at the International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), Mumbai, where he conducts research on occupational health, caste, and sanitation workers.
Payal Karwade is affiliated with the School of Social Work, TISS, Mumbai, and is engaged in research on Dalit studies and social policy.
Disclaimer: The data and findings presented in this article are based on research conducted between 2014 and 2016. Over time, official figures, working conditions, and government policies may have changed. Readers are advised to refer to current and authoritative sources for the latest updates.
Geetha Sunil Pillai
4️⃣🔴🔴🔴🔴🔴🔴🔴🔴🔴🔴🔴🔴🔴🔴🔴🔴🔴🔴🔴🔴🔴🔴4️⃣
Plates Apart, Gods Apart: Junagadh Temple Feast Exposes Gujarat’s Caste Fault Lines
Five men walked into the Dalit community’s lane in Bhutdi village, Junagadh district, on the evening of April 27. They had an invitation to deliver —to the consecration feast of a newly built Lord Ram temple scheduled for two days hence. But the Patostav invitation came with conditions. The Dalit residents were told to arrive only after the other castes had eaten. They were to bring their own plates and bowls. Their food and water would be kept separate. And they were to stay out of the temple itself.
Ajay Chatur Boricha, 25, filed a complaint at Visavadar police station the next morning. By the time the temple was consecrated on April 29, the community feast had been cancelled, five organisers were facing FIRs under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, and the case had acquired the attention of DySP Ravirajsinh Parmar of the Junagadh SC/ST Cell, who confirmed that statements have been recorded and notices issued to all accused under BNSS 35(3). As we file this news report, investigators are also searching for digital evidence.
That a complaint was filed before any violence occurred — and that the Dalit community chose legal redress over participation on humiliating terms — marks a small but significant assertion of dignity. What happens to that complaint in the courts of Gujarat is another matter entirely.
Above: The temple in Bhutdi village where Dalits were asked to bring their own plates. Picture via special arrangement by Vibes of India
THE GRAMMAR OF EXCLUSION
The conditions imposed on Dalits in Bhutdi — separate vessels, a later sitting, barred entry to the sanctum — are not inventions of rural backwardness. They are a grammar, fluent and consistent across the state. A Dalit manual scavenger from Ahmedabad district, whose testimony has been documented by civil society organisations, described the same logic at work in a city setting: separate tea tumblers at canteens, made to clean them yourself, barred from upper-caste water taps, sometimes forced to walk a kilometre for water. When he and his colleagues asked for their rights from the municipality, officials threatened to fire them. This sounds unbelievable but in most so called posh and high class and caste houses of Gujarat, there are two separate sets of vessels especially tea cups and drinking glasses which even the non Dalit domestic helps refuse to touch.
In March last year, a Dalit man in Vadol village in Sabarkantha district was beaten, stripped naked, and paraded through the streets by dominant-caste men — his offence, allegedly entering a temple. Two Dalit men in Mandal village were assaulted by cow vigilantes for refusing to dispose of a dead animal, a task that caste hierarchy has historically pressed their community into. During Navratri, a young Dalit girl was dragged out by her hair from a garba event amid casteist abuse. A 38-year-old Dalit labourer named Shailesh Solanki was assaulted and abused with casteist slurs at a crossroads in Sabarkantha simply for declaring his intent to visit the Kal Bhairav temple in Himatnagar.
As recently as February 2026, a Dalit groom’s wedding procession in Patan district was stopped at sword-point by upper-caste men who objected to his riding a horse — a ritual they considered their exclusive preserve. The video circulated widely. Elsewhere in Banaskantha, a Dalit lawyer named Mukesh Parecha wanted to arrive at his own wedding on horseback and requested police protection. A team of 145 policemen arrived in Gadalvada village to escort him. The wedding passed without incident. The spectacle of state force required for a man to exercise a social custom that others take for granted was, in itself, a statement about the distance between constitutional guarantee and ground reality.
THE CONVICTION RATE THAT EXPLAINS EVERYTHING
The Bhutdi FIR, once it travels the familiar path of Gujarat’s criminal justice machinery, will encounter a set of odds that are well documented. Between 2018 and 2021, the conviction rate in cases of atrocities against Scheduled Castes in Gujarat was 3.065 per cent. Of 5,369 cases registered during that period, only 32 were proven against the accused. In 1,012 cases — including cases of murder and rape registered under the SC/ST Act — the accused were acquitted. A further 1,044 cases were settled out of court.
Martin Macwan, veteran activist and founder of Navsarjan Trust, has observed that in the rare cases where conviction has been reached, it is typically because Dalit rights NGOs sustained the case — because the complainant and witnesses face social pressure and threats to withdraw. Ahmedabad city alone reported 189 cases of atrocities against Scheduled Caste persons in 2022, the highest of any district in the state, out of a state total of 1,425 registered cases. In March 2019, Gujarat’s then-minister for social justice told the assembly that crimes against Dalits had risen 32 per cent between 2013 and 2018.
The national conviction rate under the Atrocities Act stands at 3-4 per cent. Advocates working in the space have pointed to a structural explanation: a prejudiced or compromised police officer at the investigation stage, or a biased judge at trial, can ensure justice is never served while simultaneously encouraging the accused to file counter-complaints against the victim. The acquittal is, in this reading, not a failure of the law but of its gatekeepers.
THE PROSPERITY PARADOX
Gujarat’s governance record is frequently cited as evidence that development and social order can coexist. The state’s per capita income is among the highest in the country. Its industrial corridors, port infrastructure, and export numbers are points of pride in every Budget speech. The ‘Gujarat Model’ has been exported as a national template.
Against this backdrop, the persistence of caste atrocity is not incidental — it is, researchers and activists argue, structurally connected to the prosperity rather than standing apart from it. A 2014 research paper found that an increase in the consumption expenditure ratio of Scheduled Castes relative to upper castes is associated with an increase in crimes committed by the latter against the former. Dalit economic mobility, modest as it remains, appears to trigger a backlash in communities where subordination was the unspoken social contract underpinning local hierarchies.
Between 2015 and 2021, more than 9,000 incidents of violence against Dalits were documented in Gujarat — an average of four cases a day, according to National Crime Records Bureau data. The state also recorded the highest number of custodial deaths of any state or Union Territory for three consecutive years, with 24 deaths in 2022 alone. Gujarat’s ratio of complaints converted to FIRs is 0.8 per cent against a national ratio of 1.9 per cent — meaning the first filter, at the police station counter, already eliminates more than half the cases that are brought in.
The National Family Health Survey adds a further dimension. Gujarat has one of the lowest rates of inter-caste marriages in the country at 2.59 per cent, and the highest rate of consanguineous marriages at 28 per cent, against a national average of 11. Endogamy at that scale does not merely reflect social preference — it actively reproduces and entrenches the caste boundaries that produce the conditions for atrocity.
THE UNA DECADE AND ITS AFTERMATH
June 2016 remains the defining reference point. In Una, Gir Somnath district, cow vigilantes stripped, tied to a vehicle, and flogged four Dalit youth — Vashram and Ramesh Sarvaiya along with their cousins Ashok and Bechar — while they were skinning a dead cow in Mota Samadhiyala village. When their father Balu Sarvaiya, his wife Kunvar, and other relatives intervened, they were beaten too. The video, shot on a mobile phone, detonated across social media and triggered the most significant Dalit mobilisation Gujarat had seen in decades.
Ten years on, the flogging case has produced prosecutions but the underlying conditions that produced it remain structurally intact. Gau raksha vigilantism has, if anything, expanded its operational confidence. The deployment of OBC community members as the front-line enforcers of upper-caste social norms — while dominant castes maintain distance — has been documented by reporters who interviewed Dalit victims across Sabarkantha and Gandhinagar districts. It is a franchise model of atrocity: the moral authority rests higher up the hierarchy, the physical risk is outsourced down.
THE LAND THAT WASN’T GIVEN
State Congress working president and Vadgam MLA Jignesh Mevani, whose constituency has become a focal point for Dalit rights work, had recently drawn attention to the gap between land promises and land possession. According to Mevani, Dalits have not received 20,000 acres of land promised under the Gujarat Agriculture Land Ceiling Act — parcels that remain illegally encroached upon by non-Dalits. He has called on the government to register offences in such cases and to provide security to Dalit allottees who attempt to take possession, arguing that without state protection, the legal entitlement is functionally worthless.
Mevani’s Swabhiman Helpline, launched in 2023, had received 113 calls and helped secure the arrest of 150 accused as of last year’s count. He noted the figure also illustrated the scale of distrust in formal institutions: people are calling a political helpline rather than a police station because the police station has already failed
CONDITIONS OF DALITS IN GUJARAT IS PITIABLE: HITENDRA PITHADIYA
Seventy-seven years after Independence, the condition of Dalits in Gujarat remains pitiable. What happened in Bhutdi village of Junagadh — where Dalit residents were invited to a temple consecration feast on the condition that they arrive after others had eaten, bring their own plates, and stay out of the temple — is not an aberration. It is a routine. The state government speaks of social harmony, but only on paper says Congress leader and newly elected Ahmedabad Municipal Councilor Hitendra Pithadiya.
“In nearly 18,000 villages across Gujarat, after three unbroken decades of BJP rule, there is not a single village with a Dalit population where caste-based discrimination does not exist in some form. That is not an opposition charge. It is ground reality, and it reflects the state government’s sustained indifference toward its most marginalised citizens,” says Pithadiya.
The forms this discrimination takes are by now numbingly familiar. Dalits are barred from dining alongside other castes at community feasts. Wedding processions are stopped. Grooms are pulled off horses. DJ music at Dalit marriages is silenced. And then there are the assaults — for wearing goggles, for dressing well, for tucking in a shirt, for keeping a moustache, for using “Singh” after one’s name. Each beating carries the same message: dignity is not yours to claim.
“We had hoped that Kishor Makwana — a Gujarati, and Chairman of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes — would bring sharper scrutiny to his home state. That hope has proven hollow. Whenever atrocities against Dalits surface in Gujarat, the Commission’s response has been silence. Makwana appears to look the other way.”, says Pithadiya.
WHAT THE LAW SAYS, AND WHAT IT DOES
Article 17 of the Constitution abolished untouchability in 1950. The SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act of 1989 — amended in 2016 to provide faster relief and stronger protections — created a legal architecture that, on paper, is among the most comprehensive anti-discrimination frameworks in the world. It covers social boycott, denial of temple access, enforced separate seating, casteist abuse — each of which is specifically alleged in the Bhutdi FIR.
The gap between the architecture and its application is where Dalits in Gujarat live. According to Jignesh Mevani the approximate seven per cent of Gujarat’s population that is Scheduled Caste has been the last of the state government’s concerns for the last two decades. There has been no government-led campaign to tackle atrocities. Senior officials no longer visit victims. The tehsildar, once a minimum threshold of state acknowledgment, is now often absent.
The Bhutdi case is, viewed from one angle, an example of the system working: a complaint was filed, an FIR was registered, the SC/ST Cell is investigating, digital evidence is being sought. Viewed from another angle, it is five men who walked into a Dalit lane with a list of humiliating conditions for dinner and face odds of roughly 97 to 3 that they will walk away unaccountable. That is the Gujarat Model as it applies to caste.
Deepal Trivedi
Courtesy : Vibes Of India
Dalit student abused, beaten by teacher for failing to bring textbook
The teacher Satish “pushed” Mohit, resulting in a head injury after impact with the bench
Gurugram: A 14-year-old Dalit student was allegedly assaulted and insulted with casteist slurs by a teacher at a private school in the Gurugram district of Haryana.
The incident is from Joginder High School in the Sohna area. Kishanlal, a resident of Javed Colony, wrote in the police complaint that a teacher identified as Satish allegedly hit his son, Mohit, for not bringing the required Hindi textbook to class.
According to Kishanlal, Satish “pushed” Mohit, resulting in a head injury after impact with the bench. He said that his son already had health conditions, which he had informed the school about earlier. “After the beating, his condition worsened,” the complaint read.
The injured student was initially taken to a local hospital in Sohna. However, due to his underlying conditions, he was referred to a hospital in Gurugram.
The family alleged that the teacher, Satish, used derogatory, casteist and abusive language against Mohit and accused him of humiliating their child. They demanded strict action against the teacher.
The school officials told Dainik Bhaskar the matter was being “unnecessarily exaggerated.” Denying all accusations, the school operator, Tejpal Saini, insisted that no such assault had occurred inside the classrooms. “There was no beating by the teacher,” he added.
Meanwhile, the police have taken statements from both the teacher and the family.
Posted by Khadija Irfan Rahim
Courtesy : TSD
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