TOURISM promoters are wont to say that India is a land of surprises. It is and they are right. India is also a land of shocks, numbing shocks. And the latest shock has come from a village, jaitsar, in Snganganagar in northern Rajasthan. One day late last month upper caste Hindus of the village humiliated, tortured and finally killed a woman for her Crime of protesting against the arrest of the male members of her family on her part it was the Natural reaction of any woman Whose husband and son were taken to the local police station and detained there on mere suspicion. But in certain pockets of this ancient land, such a simple action is viewed as a dangerous challenge to the caste hierarchy and the reaction is invariably quick and brutal. Lynching is normally the punishment if the crime is from across the Faull line of society, namely, caste. In Jaitsar there was the additional provocation of Prakash Kaur not belonging to the majority community, although she invited the utterly unspeakable retaliation solely because she came from the wrong side of the caste system, was a mere woman and dared question the authority of the high caste elite who perceive themselves to: be law-givers. Clever people as the perpetrators of this ghastly act are, they have now come up with a long list of crimes that called for the summary punishment. They Say her 12-year-old son had stolen cash from the daily collections at the village temple. (This is a suspicion and hence only an allegation.) As the boy moved about inside the temple, he fell down and accidentally put out the sacred flame. That made him guilty of theft of temple cash and desecration. That he comes from a lowcaste, working-class family made his behavior intolerable he and his father were summoned of the police station and kept there while the village elders devised the best (Or, actually, the worst way to handle them.
It was then that the woman entered the scene and walked into & raging cauldron of pent-up but unfocused anger and general confusion, punishing two males, on mere Suspicion, is still a problem. But a defiant woman, from the social stratum which enjoys no rights whatsoever, is a different Proposition, Men then tum into conquering invaders and wreak their suddenly felt urge to dominate On hapless women, In this case, the woman’s head was shaved and her face was blackened! She was stripped, mounted on 8 donkeys, paraded around the temple and physically assaulted before death mercifully possessed her. All this happened within a short distance of a police station. The Rajasthan Home Minister is not fully convinced that it is a case of plain murder, To him it appears to be an expression of “mob anger” at the woman’s attempt to poison the village tank. The Chief Minister has not yet found time to listen to this sickening tale from a delegation of the all-India women $ organization affiliated to the CPM, A poor woman does not enter into the political calculations of the ruling class (not merely the Party), In cases like the one in Jaitsar, everyone finds himself belonging to the ruling class and it includes the perpetrators, the police, the bureaucrats and the political bosses. It is this combination that springs periodic shocks. Shocks will remain; the Jaitsars will fade away.
Article extracted from this publication >> July 22, 1994
