Bant Singh is a poor Dalit villager from the Punjab – a nameless face in the vast multitude that live in the rural belts of the country. Unknown and unwanted in a country which has shifted its focus to cities, to the more successful faces of “India Shining”. A country which is in a frantic race to join the league of developed nations and which chooses to push the obvious lacunae, that point otherwise; under curtains.
Bant Singh's daughter Baljeet Kaur was raped by upper caste Jats three years back, when she was a mere minor, a Class-IX student, returning from school. Bant Singh comes from a family of agricultural labourers, a breed that is synonymous with bonded labour and slavery in the Punjab. In these parts of the country, as in many other parts indeed, the Dalits have no rights – violation of their daughters, is seen as inconsequential, as acts of daily mundaneness. Mere arithmetical additions to statistics that shock no one any more. The families are usually offered lucrative monetary compensations and are expected to keep quiet and move on with their lives. The physical and mental depredations are to be seen as mere blips in the journey of time.
It is sad that these things happen in Punjab – a state where 31% of the population is Dalit – the largest proportion in any state in India. And it is all the more ironic that the protagonists of our stories are all Sikhs – a religious cult founded on the very principle of anti-casteism, which was so very rampant in the Hindu hierarchy. Unfortunately, with time, old regressive customs have an uncanny ability to override the laudable ethos of equality and morality that give rise to new socio-religious orders.
But Bant Singh was not one to keep mum. He fought back – filed a court case against the culprits and had them incarcerated. An act of defiance which would cost him dearly. A fortnight back, some of the relatives of the accused, beat him up mercilessly on a lonely stretch of road and left him to die for good. He survived, but his limbs didn't – Bant Singh has lost both his arms and a leg and as I write this, doctors are still at work, frantically trying to save his sole remaining leg.
The political establishment in Punjab, dominated by the upper castes, chose to conveniently close their eyes ...... and the media followed suit. Fashions shows in Chandigarh and the social peccadilloes of Bollywood starlets were deemed to be more worthy of occupying newsprint. The attack went unreported and it was only when the limbs were amputated, that the local media found the story salacious enough to report.
And yet, Bant Singh would not have been able to tide over these times had it not been for the grass-roots activism and support of the CPI, CPI-M and CPI-ML in his area. A CPI-ML activist from his youth, it was the sense of empowerment that the movement had imbibed in him, that helped Bant Singh stand up to the perpetrators of such heinous crimes. He was promised support and his case brought to the fore, thanks to the activism of the communist leaders from Punjab. In fact, it was only after Harkishen Singh Surjeet took up cudgels on behalf of Bant Singh, that the case was taken up in earnest in the media.
In these enlightened days of a resurgent India, it has become fashionable to criticize the leftist parties at the drop of a hat and to blame them for every roadblock that pops up on the path of economic liberalization. We conveniently choose to forget the less fortunate across India. We are interested only in the output and we do not care about the conditions of the labour force, the vital input for our dreams of economic prosperity. The labour force in states like Punjab are treated as pariahs by those with money and the caste problem is but another angle of the same problem. For many of these nameless, faceless people, the communists and the leftist social activists are the only hope for salvation, for social survival, for that little dose of dignity that would help them keep their heads high.
No nation has truly progressed with only an elitist minority bearing the fruits of such success. The sooner we realize this, the better for all of us.
“Now, that I have lost my limbs and can't do anything anymore, I have all the more time for my activism and to spread the message of solidarity and equality amongst all my brethren.”
May the force be with people like Bant Singh.
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