ALLAHABAD: When Draupadi was being stripped Krishna came to hot rescue. But no Krishna came 10 My rescue when was nude to walk through the village street with Sula piece of cloth to cover myself They even pulled away my hands when Tried to cover myself Death would have been Preferable to what went through says Shivpati o Harijan woman who was subjected for this humiliation at Dauna village on January 21.
Shivpati who belongs to the Chaman caste was punished by Kurmis for a minor transgression of her son as the entire village wit ‘Messed the incident without lifting a ‘finger The Kurmis were carrying firearms. The police remained a Passive observer too.
It was only after the incident was reported by the Press that the district administration woke up to the Come The District Magistrate announced an compensation of Rs 10,000 and ordered that her family be given control over the five big has of land which was allot ted 17 years ago but was usurped by the Kurmis.
This the manner in which land is distributed to the poor for their up if by the State Government which is at the heart of several such disputed instance in this partice Jar incident although the district administration had leased five big has of Gram Samaj land to Shivpati family 17 years ago it had Not bothered to ensure possession of the Jand As a result some Kuris usurped the land and have held it till now.
District Magistrate Alok Ranjan Says that this is a common practice in most villages According to him Kurmis do not allow the leasehold: rs who belong to the Scheduled Castes 10 lake effective possession of the Gram Samaj land And since the Kurmis form a powerful lobby the Harijans are 100 sacred to report the real situation to the administration It is more of a social problem and taking recourse only to the legal process cannot be effective says a revenue officer and cites the incident at Dauna village as an example Allowing Shivpati and others to lake possession of the land allotted to them would have meant and end to the exploitation of Harijan farm workers who get slightly more than a kg of grains for a day’s work by the upper caste landlords The power and the clout of the Kurmis who are listed as backward castes but own large tracts of land can be gauged from what the gram Pradhan has to say about the incident. Asked why he did not object to the stripping of Shivpati) Harish Chandra Yadav said-They are criminals and 1 had no courage to take their on. The situation is no different in hundreds of other Kurmi-dominated villages another police official says had Shivpati been murdered the same State would have brushed up the incident as a simple murder case. But because she was stripped and forced to walk through the village street with scores of villagers comprising Brahmins Thakurs and Kurmis watching the scene it became difficult for the official machinery to accept the incident.
Why did not the Kurmis kill Shivpati? The Kurmis had to send across a message to the Harijans they had to smash their paned. What better way to achieve this goal than by stripping this Harijan woman and making her walk through the streets in broad daylight? Says a villager.
On Jan.16 Shivpati 20-year-old son Rajesh had plucked some green peas from the field of Lurkhur Kurmi whose 12-year-old son
Azad objected to the crime. Rajesh reportedly abused Azad. If the Kurmis had ignored a Harijan abusing one of their own I would have meant departing from past practice
Article extracted from this publication >> February 18, 1994
