Raaj Mondol
The shocking incident of rape and strangulation of a 19 year young Dalit woman in a paddy field in a village of Hathras district in Uttar Pradesh on September 14,2020, her subsequent death in Safdarjang hospital, New Delhi on September 29th and a hurried cremation in the village field in the early hours of the following day drew much media attention for a few days and led to agitations and protests in various parts of the country. However the entire State machinery including the Police and district administration were mobilized to support a narrative which tried to convey that there was no rape. The manner in which crucial evidences to the crime were either neglected during the filing of report and in the investigation process or later destroyed through the burning of the victim’s body without the presence of her family members clearly reflected the caste bias in dealing with such incidents of sexual assaults on Dalit women. There were attempts to shield and protect the perpetrators of the crime through community mobilization, which were earlier witnessed in the cases of Bhanwari Devi in Rajasthan and Khairanji case in Maharashtra. The idea of a conspiracy theory to defame the government was floated by the state government to quell the rising protests and arrest the protesters and media persons reporting on the incident.
Cynthia Stephen an activist and writer asked a deep penetrative question on this incident, which I thought is helpful in exploring the topic of our paper. “Why on earth was her body torn from the family and burnt in the dark somewhere like it’s a piece of trash? In Bangalore our garbage trucks take the solid waste outside the city and incinerate it in an open field. This is something like that, no dignity even in death.”[1]
Millions of girls and women in our country face daily humiliation and discrimination in their lives for being a woman from a Dalit background, but being accorded no dignity even in her death was a disturbing reality that stirred the conscience of many. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court while hearing the petition for a probe of the incident by CBI or a Court appointed special investigation team termed the “incident as horrible… extraordinary and shocking”[2]. This case highlights the process of social devaluation of a Dalit woman that takes place on account of the intersectionality[3] of Caste, Class and Gender in our society. Having learnt the process of social devaluation and wounding which takes place among people with disability, I am attempting to understand how the process of devaluation and wounding affect the other devalued people in our society and the present paper is a very preliminary and basic effort in understanding the relevance of the social devaluation approach in addressing the issue of caste and gender injustice. We are quite familiar with the reality of caste and gender based discrimination in our society and their resultant effects on the people, but using a theoretical approach of devaluation will help us to understand the systematic design of devaluing some people groups and to reflect upon the nature of wounds which they inflict. It is hoped that such knowledge will prevent us from our complicity in such processes and to bring changes at our personal and community level.
We will be using the principles of Social Devaluation as defined by Dr. Wolf Wolfensberger in his book, A Brief Introduction to Social Role Valorization[4] and its explanation in the Course Reader prepared by Keystone Institute, India for their course on Social Role Valorization[5]. I have listed a few key principles drawn from the above mentioned book and the Course Reader which will form the basic framework for our analysis.
1. Human beings by their very nature are evaluative. Everything that we perceive through any of our senses, at either a conscious or unconscious level, is judged either positively or negatively.
2. Therefore people are also evaluated positively or negatively by their perceivers.
3. When a person is evaluated negatively by a perceiver, we call that devaluation.
4. Devaluation is a process of negative social judgment.
5. Devaluation of people can take place both at an individual level and at a societal level.
6. We are here concerned about a process of social devaluation by which a person or a group of persons is judged as having less value by the society or a portion of that society.
7. At the societal level entire classes of people are judged negatively by an entire collectivity or society which creates and maintains societally devalued classes who systematically receive poor treatment at the hands of their fellows in society and at the hand of societal structures.
8. Social devaluation is a universal and found in all societies at all times. The only thing that varies across societies is whom they devalue.
9. Social devaluation is defined as, “The attribution of low or even no value to a person or a group by another person or group on the basis of some characteristics or condition( usually a difference) which tends to be seen in a negative way”.
We would like to apply the concepts of “negative perception” and assigning “low value” to people belonging to the Dalit community and to women. A woman from the Dalit community thus becomes doubly devalued according to this lens. A simple illustration that each one of us could perhaps relate to is of a conversation with a stranger whom one has met for the first time, while travelling in a train or a bus. When telling our first name they would normally ask the full name by which they would like to guess our caste background so as to place their co-passenger in the value scale of their mind as per the caste hierarchy. If the surname in itself does not provide sufficient clues, then they would ask about the place of origin, permanent residence and other such details. In the rural areas such forms of decency and formality are totally dispensed with and a new person visiting a family in the village could expect to be directly asked his or her caste before the host would even offer the basic hospitality of a glass of water or a place to sit.
Similarly at the birth of a new baby the question whether the newly born is a boy or a girl is a measure of the value that would be accorded to the child. This can be observed easily in the visible response of the person through their facial expressions or the words they would use either in congratulating the parents if it is a boy and expressing few words of encouragement or sympathy if it is a girl.
These common examples will help us to understand how the evaluative process of assigning value to a person is so much inbuilt in our thought processes and social interactions. The Caste system is a rigid hierarchy of social division of people in which values are automatically assigned to a person at the time of his or her birth by virtue of the caste of the family in which he or she is born. Similarly the highly patriarchal society like ours assigns high value on males and low value on females.
Isabel Wilkerson in her recently published book, Caste: The Lies that Divide Us has analyzed and compared the recent histories of USA in dealing with the issue of racism, of Nazi Germany with its anti-Semitism and of India with its long history of Caste system. She finds the rigid and arbitrary hierarchy of caste playing a key role in all the three countries. Ranking in human value is common in all the three cases. She says:
“A caste system is an artificial construction, a fixed and embedded ranking of human value that sets the presumed supremacy of one group against the presumed inferiority of other groups on the basis of ancestry and often immutable traits, traits that would be neutral in the abstract but are ascribed life and death meaning in a hierarchy favoring the dominant caste whose forebears designed it. A caste system uses rigid, often arbitrary boundaries to keep the ranked groupings apart, distinct from one another and in their assigned places…A caste system endures because it is often justified as divine will, originating from sacred text or the presumed laws of nature, reinforced throughout the culture and passed down through the generations.”[6]
The author sees Caste as the powerful infrastructure that holds each group in its place.
The Caste system which is an integral part of the majority religion of our country has been one of the distinct and most powerful characteristics of the Indian society for centuries and continues to influence and impact the politics of the nation as well as its economic, religious and social affairs. The pervading influence of Caste has been so strong that even other religions like Islam, Christianity and Sikhism which do not have the sanction of their religious texts for such division have also been affected deeply by it in the practice of their adherents. Similarly Patriarchy also affects the adherents of all religions though they may display some differences in the manner in which they would profess or practice the equality or inequality between the sexes. Thus caste and gender are well designed systems by which some groups of people become devalued in a society. When people reach a devalued state then a number of predictable bad things begin to happen to those people in a very systematic way which is enunciated by Dr. Wolf Wolfensberger in his book, which he terms as “wounds.”
Wounds of the Devalued people: The Bad things that typically get done to devalued people
“People, who are objects of devaluation, and especially of devaluation by their society, typically have all sorts of hurtful things done to them. Sometimes, these things are done with conscious and explicit intent; sometimes, these things are done unconsciously; and sometimes, these things are simply the result of life conditions and circumstances which are the way they are for the devalued party because of that party’s devalued status and life conditions.”[7]
He then lists some of the hurtful things that on a probabilistic basis are very apt to befall societally devalued people. We will examine some of those in our analysis of people suffering the intersectionality of Caste and Gender.
Devalued characteristics takes over the identity of the person: The individual gets subsumed under that characteristic which is devalued- in this case, caste and gender. For example in the case of the girl who was brutally assaulted in Hathras, it was reported that she was quite a lively girl who was going to the village school and had studied up to class 5 but her parents pulled her out of the school due to fear that someone might kidnap her. Her sister-in- law told reporters that she mostly stayed at home and on few occasions that she went out to the market she would return angry and tell, “… the upper castes say mean things about us, called her names … and so on”[8] So her being born in a poor, Dalit family in a rural village of India took over her identity and forced negative life experiences on her which became the wounds that claimed her life in the end at such an early age of 19.
Relegated to a lower social status: The Caste system relegates the people belonging to the Dalit communities outside the system of the four tier Varna classification. They are called the Avarna or Non-Varna. By labelling them as “untouchable” they are expected to remain at a far distance so as to not pollute others through their touch. The concept of purity and pollution plays a significant role in ascribing lower status to the Dalit community. The dietary habits, the occupations, and their very presence are considered as polluting to the purity of the dominant castes. They live their lives at the bottom rungs of the society and are looked down upon even by the lowest caste Shudras in the Varna system. Their lower status were forced upon them earlier through the injunctions in the religious texts by which, they were not allowed access to education, or to bear arms or to acquire wealth by imposing various restrictions and forcing upon them their traditional occupations which were considered as menial jobs that nobody else wanted to do . The women were not included in the Varna classification and were assigned their positions in this system as a daughter or a wife. The status of women in general remained subordinate to men.
Experience Rejection: As a result of being relegated to a lower social status they experience rejection at various levels. For a girl child in India this rejection can start even in the womb of her mother. If the sex of the foetus is found out as female through some diagnostic tests then she runs the risk of losing her life through an abortion. There is a wide scale prevalence of this practice despite a ban through the PCPNDT Act. It has led to a skewed child sex ratio of 918 females per 1000 males as per the 2011 census. This ratio is even less than 900 in many affluent states like Haryana, Punjab and Delhi. Girl babies who are spared death through sex-selective abortions face the risk of female infanticide which is still practiced in some states of India. Higher mortality rates of girl children between the age of 0-5 reflect continued neglect and bias against girl children.
For the Dalits this sense of rejection is faced at every level in the way rest of the community treats them. Rejection means that other people do not want them around except for doing those tasks that are meant for them like scavenging, cleaning, tanning or dealing with dead bodies etc. Children from such community face casteist slur from their fellow students as well as teachers. In many village schools they are made to sit separately or are asked to clean the toilets and sweep the premises etc. Those who are able to make their way through to the college or universities too face disparaging remarks from their class mates and teachers there and receive unfair grading in their practical examinations or interviews. This kind of rejection has led to a high number of suicides by Dalit students especially in engineering and medical colleges. The Rohith Vemulla case in Hyderabad had highlighted the seriousness of this problem.
Distantiation: The process of rejection is also reflected through the distantiation of the devalued groups into places away from the rest of the society, which are meant just for them and where they can be easily hidden from the society. This can be termed as physical exclusion and segregation. We all are familiar how the huts or houses of the Dalits are usually found outside the village. Even in a town or a city they usually live in a separate cluster or settlement where only the people from that community will be staying which are known as Dalit bastis, Harijan colony, or Valmiki basti etc. Another form of distantiation takes place through avoidance of interactions. There are strict rules when people from the Dalit community have to pass through the areas where other higher castes people stay. They cannot wear any foot wear or can’t ride on a bicycle. Even the common water sources in a village like a well or a hand pump may not be accessible to them or they will have to use a separate approach or timing.
The process of distantiation for women was earlier maintained by having a separate enclosure for them within the house or by not allowing them to come out of the house. The customs of wearing veils or to observe the purdah are also a form of distantiation. The women are not included in the meetings of the community Panchayat known as the Khap panchayat in Haryana, Rajasthan and Western UP. Increase in the number cases of physical and sexual assaults on women in the recent years are seen by many as result of them crossing the traditionally defined boundaries or the “Lakshman rekha.”
Cast into devalued roles: One of the strongest methods of devaluation is to force them to roles which are negative or devalued in the eyes of the people and deny or diminish their access to valued roles in society. All such work and activities which were not desirable by the common people were thrust upon the Dalit community as their traditional occupation roles such as manual scavenging, cleaning of the sewer lines and drains, dealing with dead bodies of humans or animals, tanning, cleaning of lavatories and septic tanks etc. So many deaths have been reported of people while cleaning the sewer lines who have died by inhaling poisonous gases while working without any protective gear. Almost 90 percent of those designated as sweepers – who clean streets, who go down manholes and service the sewage system, who clean toilets and do menial jobs- and employed by the Government of India are the Dalits[9]. These roles thus reinforce the negative imaging of the people.
For the women such devaluation takes place by assigning them roles which are non–paying or less paying and are looked with disdain by the males such as the household chores of cleaning, washing, sweeping, cooking and child rearing etc. The phrase “women’s work” itself is limiting and stereotypical. Though now the situation has been changing but the lack of autonomy, freedom and choice in making their own decisions about pursuing these roles contribute to their devaluation.
Involuntary material poverty: People who are devalued end up being poor. They have very little in terms of material possessions. Dalit households are most vulnerable to poverty. The caste based occupations in which the community is mostly engaged in not only low in social ordering but also very low in economic productivity. According to the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) from UNDP, Oxford Poverty and Human Development Index, every second person belonging to the Scheduled Tribes and every third person belonging to the Scheduled Castes remains poor. The report defines poor not only on the basis of income but on other indicators such as nutrition, health, education, living standards and assets[10]. Less than 10% of Dalit households can afford safe drinking water, electricity and toilets, which is indicative of their terrible social condition[11].
Women in India represent 29 percent of the labour force. More than half of the work done by women in India is unpaid, and almost all of it is informal and unprotected. Women are not well represented in most sectors, including business leadership. Though they comprise almost 40 percent of agricultural labour, they control only 9 percent of land in India. Women are also shut out of the formal financial system. Nearly half of India’s women do not have a bank or savings accounts for their own use, and 60 percent of women have no valuable assets to their name. It is unsurprising then that at 17 percent, India has a lower share of women’s contribution to the GDP than the global average of 37 percent.[12]
Thus we see that both Dalits and women constitute a higher percentage of the poor amongst us.
Impoverishment of experience especially that of the typical, valued world
They suffer impoverishment in the world of experience as well. They are denied participation in religious places or community events of celebrations. Many of the experiences which are taken for granted for valued people are denied to them. Caste barriers have kept people belonging to the lower castes from having access to valued positions in society. Despite having the constitutional provision of reservation in government jobs and education the percentage of Dalit communities who hold positions of power in bureaucracy, judiciary or higher education institutions are very low. “In Central Public Sector Enterprises only 8.4percent of A-grade officers belong to the Scheduled Castes when the figure should be 15 percent, in JNU which is regarded as a progressive university only 3.29 percent of the faculty is Dalit. In 2006, the Centre for Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) did a survey on the social profile of New Delhi’s media elite. Of the 315 key decision makers surveyed from 37 Delhi based Hindi and English publications and television channels 90 percent of them were found to be from ‘upper’ caste. Not one of the 315 was a Dalit or a Adivasi.”[13] Similarly they experience exclusion from higher order value systems such as positions in spiritual or religious orders. Those positions by their very nature were the preserve of the higher castes and they continue to control that dominant position by restricting the entry of people from the Dalit community or women into those positions.
One of the results of several such wounds is that the devalued people’s lives so often get wasted. As they are denied opportunities, experiences and their potential is wasted or destroyed. So many women who have earned educational degrees and have gifts, talents and potential are denied opportunities to make use of them and in turn get wasted. These things in turn affect the spirit and psyche of the wounded person in that they may feel themselves to be worthless and that they do not fit in or are not welcome. Some of them may internalize those wounds and develop negative emotions about themselves which can some time turn into despair and self destruction. These then could lead to substance abuse, addiction, depression, feeling of insecurity and sometimes to rage and rebellion.
Social Role Valorization (SRV) theory focuses on changing the perceptions of perceiver, so positive social judgments could be made which will in turn contribute in assisting people with devalued status to have a full and meaningful life and have access to “good things of life”.“ … in order for people to be treated well by others, it is very important that they be seen as occupying valued roles, because otherwise , things are apt to go ill with them. Further, greater the number of valued roles a person, group or class occupies, or the more valued the roles that such a party occupies, the more likely is that the party will be accorded those good things of life that others are in a position to accord, or to withhold.”[14]
The programs of affirmative action which have been incorporated in our Constitution by providing for reservation in government jobs and educational facilities and legislative seats are meant to fulfil this objective. However we are also aware of how much opposition these measures generate among the socially advantaged and educated people. In India the Caste system has multiple dimensions of complexity. It enjoys religious and social sanctions which have been deeply embedded in the psyche and mindsets of people for centuries. Therefore when people from the Dalit communities or women come to occupy those valued social roles through the reservation system, they continue to face negative social judgements. But we cannot deny the fact that those measures have to some extent contributed in changing the social perception and dynamics in the society and have helped in breaking the centuries old barriers. SRV theory believes in the importance of valued social roles in bringing about change in the condition of devalued people.
- Valued roles give a person a place in the society.
- Valued roles affect all aspects of a person’s life.
- Valued roles enable people to experience valued participation in society.
- The more valued the roles that a person holds the more likely it is that “the good things of life” will come to that person.
- Valued social roles help to compensate for and overcome stigma.
- Valued social roles may offer some protection.
- Valued social roles can be restorative and healing.[15]
At the heart of SRV is the belief that people will have exceedingly richer and fuller lives if they in fact have lots of positively valued social roles, and that a person having those roles will cause others to see them positively and treat them better. I believe that as a Church we can play an important role in applying those principles to restore the dignity of the devalued among us especially the people from Dalit background and women.
As a follower of Christ I see the principles enunciated in the SRV theory very much in line with the life, ministry and teaching of Jesus Christ. Jesus said, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” (John 10:10) The caste system and Patriarchy are two of the biggest lies of Satan through which he has deceived entire nations and enslaved millions of people in a devalued condition. Those two lies are in clear opposition to the Biblical truth that all human beings are created in the image of God and therefore are equal in status and value.( Genesis 1:27). Satan has stolen and robbed the dignity and worth of people by using the artificial construction of Caste and Gender. These two systems have destroyed and killed the lives of so many through caste based atrocities, killings, lynchings, brutal rapes and murder of women. He has snuffed out lives of millions of girls through the evil of Gendercide. It is a sad tragedy that the Church has not fully recognized the implications of these two lies.
Through his life, ministry and teaching, Jesus proclaimed and demonstrated the truth of God’s kingdom which helps people to be set free.( John 8:32). Jesus at the beginning of his ministry announced that he had come “to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim freedom to the prisoners… and to release the oppressed”(Luke 4:18-19). His ministry focused on the devalued people of his society- the sick, the outcasts, the people affected with various forms of disabilities, leprosy and those who were looked down upon such as the tax-collectors and prostitutes (Matthew 4:23-25,15:29-31, Luke 5:29-32). He entrusted valued social roles to women such as the Samaritan woman at the well to be an evangelist of his gospel to her community( John4) and the women at the tomb to be the first witnesses of his resurrection (Luke 24:1-11). At a time when the women were not having access to learn from a Rabbi or a Teacher he let them be part of the team of his disciples along with the Twelve who not only followed Jesus in his ministry journeys but supported his ministry financially ( John8:1-3). He defended the disciple role for Mary and reprimanded her sister Martha for her fixation with the stereotypical role expectations from her sister (Luke 10:38-42).He broke the social barriers of purity and pollution that the Jews associated with Samaritans by asking for water from a Samaritan woman and accepted the hospitality of the Samaritans and stayed with them for two days (John4:39-42). He made the Samaritan man the hero of his story and asked his disciples to emulate his behavior and action ( Luke 10:30-37). Thus we can see how Jesus was restoring dignity, worth and value to people who were devalued in his society by giving them valued social roles.
This was in fact the reason for the growth of the church in the first century that those who were considered as people of no value or consequence were accorded the status of valuable citizens of God’s kingdom. Those who were kept out through traditions and customs were included into the new community of the church which was a model of an inclusive community before a society which was divided in terms of race, noble birth, freed men and slaves, men and women. They received a new identity of being one in Christ ( Galatians3:28). Paul underlies this truth in his letter to 1st Corinthians: “Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of the world and the despised things- and the things that are not- to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him” (1 Corinthians1:26-29).
It is sad that we have moved far away from that model of the early church. The gospel of the Kingdom that Jesus preached and inaugurated, entrusts us a clear mandate to valorize the people who are devalued in our society. It is time for us to introspect and examine how have we been giving valued social roles to people from the Dalit community and women in our churches and institutions. The leadership positions in churches and institutions sadly reflect the caste and gender bias of our larger society than the values and character of Jesus’ kingdom. Valorization is a French term, which means to add value to lives who have not had it, or who have had it taken out. Jesus came into this world so that we can receive back our position and roles as sons and daughters of God (John1:12). “Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God…”( 1 Peter 2:10a). May we follow in the footsteps of our Lord Jesus in the acts of valorization by enabling, establishing, enhancing and defending valued roles for people from Dalit background and women in our own homes, churches, institutions and the larger community. Church as the body of Christ in this world has to play the role that Christ did during his earthly ministry and then only perhaps the tragedies like that in Hathras could be averted.
Raaj Mondol completed his M.A. and M.Phil. from JNU, New Delhi. He is a training facilitator and has been engaged in doing training on Biblical worldview, Gender justice and Integral mission and working with churches in ending violence against women.
[1] Menaka Guruswamy, The Gangrape,The Indian Express, October 3,2020.
[2] Ananthakrishnan G, “Hathras: SC calls it horrible, UP says step in to stop narratives”, Indian Express, October 7, 2020, p.1.
[3] Intersectionality/the interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage.
[4] Wolf Wolfensberger, A Brief Introduction to Social Role Valorization, Valor Press, Ontario, Canada, 2013.
[5] Keystone Institute, India, “Valued Lives 3.0, An Invitational Course on Social Role Valorization, p.19-22 November 2019.
[6] Isabel Wilkerson, Caste, The Lies that Divide Us, Penguin Random House, UK, 2020, p.17.
[7] Wolf Wolfensberger, op.cit. p.31.
[8] Somya Lakhani & Jignasa Sinha, “ Looking for a 19 year old”, Indian Express, October 4, 2020, p.8.
[9] National Commission for Scheduled Castesand Scheduled Tribes(NCSCST) 1998,p176 as quoted in Arundhati Roy, The Doctor and the Saint, Navanya, New Delhi, 2016, p.35.
[10] Ruhi Tewari and Abhishek Mishra, “Every Second ST, every third Dalit and Muslim in India poor, not just financially, UN Report, The Print,12th July 2019
[11] P. Srithar,N. Bairavi &G.Mariselvam,Socio-economic, Status of Dalit in India, Indian Journal of Applied Research,Vol.6, Issue 12, Dec.2016, p.1.
[12] UN India Business Forum,Gender Equality, Women’s Economic Empowerment, Factsheet 2018, https://in.one.un.org/unibf/gender-equality/
[13] Arundhati Roy, The Doctor and the Saint, Navanya, New Delhi2016, p.31,33,34.
[14] Wolf Wolfensberger, “The Definition of Social Role Valorization”A Brief Introduction to Social Role Valorization, Valor Press, Ontario, 2013, p.81.
[15] Keystone Institute India, Valued Lives 3.0, An Invitational Course on Social Role Valorization in Four Days, New Delhi, 2019, pp. 53-60.