Attack on Tribals | In Madhya Pradesh, even a police uniform is no shield

Tying a tribal to a jeep; peeing on a tribal; and humiliating a tribal policeman in uniform — these acts require a mindset that sees tribals not just as unequal, but not quite human

In 2021, the video of a man being dragged on a road by a moving jeep to which he was tied went viral. Kanhaiyalal Bheel, a tribal, was subjected to this treatment after he collided with a milkman, resulting in some milk being spilt. He died the next day in hospital. The video was traced to Madhya Pradesh.

In 2023, the image of a man smoking a cigarette and peeing on a man seated below him went viral. That too was traced to Madhya Pradesh. The man being peed upon turned out to be a tribal, while the perpetrator of the atrocity was Parvesh Shukla, reportedly a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) worker.

Last week, another video went viral — that of a policeman being taunted and manhandled on the street. In the video, two men grab him by his belt, push his jacket aside to read his name on his uniform and try to grab his wireless. It has now emerged that the policeman is a tribal, and the men humiliating him were a jail guard and his three friends, whose car he had stopped. This incident too occurred in Madhya Pradesh.

After the first incident, then chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan announced that the government would fund the education of Bheel’s son and compensate his brothers. Five accused were arrested, and the home of one was demolished.

The second incident was followed by Chouhan washing the feet of the tribal who had been peed upon. Shukla was arrested under the stringent National Security Act (NSA) and his house bulldozed.

Can the tribal policeman humiliated last week expect the same ‘justice’? When Chouhan ‘atoned’ for the sin of a Brahmin BJP supporter, Assembly elections were just four months away. Tribals constitute 21 per cent vote of Madhya Pradesh’s population. Of 230 Assembly seats, 47 are reserved for tribals, and they influence the outcome in 26 others.

However, despite Bheel’s death and the peeing incident, Chouhan succeeded in increasing the BJP’s tally of tribal seats from 15 to 24 in the November 2023 Assembly elections.

Perhaps renaming railway stations after tribal icons and building their statues swayed the voters; perhaps it was the prime minister’s announcement of a scheme to ensure that benefits reached the most vulnerable tribes, or his linking Ram with tribals that worked. Perhaps underlying all this was the silent long-term work of the RSS to ‘Hinduise’ tribals through their Vanvasi Ashrams.

But now, there’s no election to help tribal policeman Teleshwar Ekka. Though his tormentors have been arrested, and the jail guard, who was on probation, suspended, Ekka has to confront a system weighed against tribals.

An official report has revealed that Madhya Pradesh, which has the country’s largest tribal population, also tops the list in crimes registered against them under the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act, accounting for 30.61 per cent of all such cases registered nationwide. Between 2019 and 2023, crimes against tribals by non-tribals increased 54.9 per cent in the state, according to the NCRB. Tribals also form the largest number of prisoners in MP’s jails.

Interestingly, unlike many other states, in MP there exists a special infrastructure to deal with such crimes. Not only does the state have special police stations where such complaints can be recorded, it also has 43 special courts to deal with these offences, the highest number in India. Despite this, the conviction rate in these crimes has been a mere 36 per cent.

Given all this, will Ekka’s tormentors be punished? For the jail guard who humiliated him, Ekka’s police uniform meant nothing. He probably saw him as just another one of the kind who filled his jail.

For Ekka, there’s some consolation: the Indore Police have meted out their version of justice. They paraded the two accused in public,  limping and injured. In the video, they can be heard saying they had committed a mistake which they wouldn’t repeat.

Did the police take such swift ‘action’ only because one among them had been humiliated? The question arises because they have not invoked the SC/ST atrocities Act against the accused, though the latter had asked Ekka his name before assaulting him.

The trial of a government employee under the SC/ST atrocities Act would send a message Madhya Pradesh badly needs. Tying a tribal to a jeep; peeing on a tribal; and humiliating a tribal policeman in uniform — all these acts require a mindset that sees tribals not just as unequal, but not quite human.

It’s not just an ‘upper caste’ sickness; the men who tied Bheel were OBCs. Not all the BJP’s invocations of Birsa Munda, nor the party’s appointment of the first tribal president, or the observance of a tribal day, can change this mindset.

Jyoti Punwani is a senior journalist.