What explains this dehumanising caste violence?

Will the image of a man urinating on the face of another, which went viral recently, ever be forgotten? As the victim, seated at the perpetrator’s feet, tries to turn his head to escape the steady stream of urine, the latter nonchalantly goes on smoking his cigarette.

This attitude of absolute privilege over another human being, the belief that the other is less than human, is at the heart of the caste system. It’s nothing new. What’s new here is the casual manner in which this atrocity is being perpetrated. That it’s being recorded doesn’t seem to bother the perpetrator at all.

However, while Pravesh Shukla showed indifference, others like him who’ve featured in viral videos have shown an even more shocking attitude: pride in publicly humiliating those they obviously consider lesser beings. The Una video immediately comes to mind, wherein seven Dalit youth were tied to a vehicle and flogged on the street. That atrocity took place seven years back; the image, flashed on national television, remains imprinted in one’s mind.

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Since the last five years, social media is full of videos of stripping, lynching, tying up, flogging. Were these brutalities happening earlier and we didn’t know, or does the reach of social media encourage such savagery?

What is certain is that the violence against the Dalits and the Adivasis today is aimed at degrading them. Two years back, in Madhya Pradesh, a video surfaced of an Adivasi with ankles tied, being dragged by a vehicle. He died in hospital.

Then there was the video of a Dalit teen in Uttar Pradesh being made to lick the feet of one of his eight tormentors, who could be seen laughing and asking him if he could spell the word Thakur.

What drives those indulging in such criminal behaviour to record it? Is it the desire to display to the world the extent of their power? Leave aside criminal, such acts would make an average human ashamed of themselves. So why are these perpetrators proud of what they are doing?

This trend is quite different from caste atrocities in the past. Massacres of the Dalits and the Adivasis would take place in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Andhra Pradesh by landlords’ armies or the State’s army, i.e., the police. Priests would deny temple entry to the Dalits. In Gujarat’s anti-reservation agitation of the 1980s, the Dalits were burnt alive.

But this violence had a context — the rising confidence of the Dalits/Adivasis asking for higher wages or land rights; daring to enter temples; or getting educated through reservations. The aggressors didn’t just have centuries of privilege behind them but also the backing of the State apparatus. They acted as an organised group and were able to arm themselves. Even in the 2006 Khairlanji killings in Maharashtra, the rest of the villagers got together to lynch the Dalit Bhotmange family because the latter were resisting the takeover of their land.

However, the videos that have been surfacing since the last 5-7 years show small groups of ordinary people committing unimaginable cruelties on the Dalits and the Adivasis, for the slightest of reasons. The Adivasi who was tied to a vehicle had incurred the wrath of a Gurjar simply by coming in his way and causing him to spill the milk he was carrying. We still do not know what Dashmat Rawat did to make Parvesh Shukla urinate on him. We do know, however, what he thought of Shukla’s behaviour. “I thought let it be, he’s a Brahmin.”

This reasoning, where your caste identity explains what you do or what is done to you, seems to apply to many of the heinous crimes that have been committed in the last few years. What else can explain a food delivery man being spat upon after being asked his name; or the deaths of two Dalit students, one of them just nine years old, after they were beaten by their teachers? Just last month in Gujarat, a Dalit’s thumb was cut off because he objected to ‘upper caste’ men abusing his nephew for picking up their cricket ball.

What drives this new form of caste violence? Is it the growing influence of Hindutva, which glorifies Hindu civilisation with all its blemishes? When the Head of State conducts elaborate Vedic rituals on national television; saffron-robed priests hold rallies urging Hindus to stock weapons; and even judges give importance to Hindu scriptures, what’s the message being sent to the average Hindu?

In the first Hindutva wave of the 1980s, during the Ayodhya movement, the RSS/VHP coined the slogan ‘Garv se kaho hum Hindu hain’. Today, many such proud Hindus are bullies, preying on the same people deemed outcastes by their religion.

(Jyoti Punwani is a senior journalist.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.