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Journalism of Courage
As Nellore goes to the polls tomorrow, many of its citizens know that while their vote counts, it will not grant them water from the well or tea in a steel tumbler.
Ask Lakshmi. A day before the election, she stood nervously, begging two girls from the Reddy community to pour some water from the village well into her bucket. They ignored her, chatted among themselves and perhaps secretly enjoyed her discomfiture.
After one full hour, bored of their little game, they gave Lakshmi her water. This happens everyday and whoever comes to power will not change Lakshmi’s daily routine. She and other Scheduled Caste villagers are not allowed to dip their buckets into the only source of drinking water in the area. Sometimes, she waits all day to get her bucket filled.
The rules are clear and the village is divided into two worlds. Dalits can’t wear chappals or ride bicycles in the Other Caste area. In school, children from the two sections sit separately. Dalit children have their own cricket team while Other Castes have theirs, but the two never play together. And the village ‘‘rachabanda’’ or a chaupal is out of bounds for Dalits.
Raghura fumes as he speaks about the situation. The 29-year-old teacher is the only Dalit from the village with a college education. His BA and BEd degrees are not enough to let him drink tea in a stainless steel tumbler at the village shop.
‘‘The steel tumblers are for Other Castes, the glass ones are for us,’’ he says. He has tried to get his community to speak out, but no one wants to take the first step. Raghura can see why. ‘‘All the Dalits in this village are daily wage labourers working for the Other Castes. So if they rebel, their only source of income is cut off. How do we survive then?’’ he asks.
The rules are arbitrary and have no logic. A Dalit can drive a bullock cart to the boundary of the village, but he cannot drive it into the village. From that point, the owner takes over.
While Raghura seethes, his mother Pinchulamma is sanguine. ‘‘Things have become better,’’ she says. ‘‘There was a time when we were not allowed to eat out of a plate. It will all change one day.’’
If so, politicians may have no role to play in the change. Although Nellore, which happens to be BJP president Venkaiah Naidu’s hometown, is a reserved SC seat, and a quarter of the vilage’s population is Dalit, coastal Andhra politics is still dominated by Other Castes — the Naidus, Reddys, Kammas and Kapus.
The caste divide helps political arithmetic as the Dalits traditionally vote for the Congress while Other Castes tend to support the TDP and the BJP. Politicians have more important things to worry about than a steel tumbler for Raghura, although Pannaba Lakshmi, the Congress candidate, admits: ‘‘This is shocking news. This is the first time I have heard of it.’’
Apart from Depur and Mahimura, politicians say that caste-based humiliations run through Cuddapah, Ananthpur and the entire Rayalseema area.
The BJP candidate, former DIG B Balakondaiah, blames it on the backwardnes of the area. ‘‘Where there is illiteracy among the upper-castes there will be problems,’’ he says.
If elected, he promises to bridge the divide, but the Dalits have heard such promises before. They have even tried to take matters into their own hands. Around six months ago, the collector and other district-level officers came to the village and told the Reddys and Naidus to stop the segregation. The officials even provided two buckets for the two communities to draw water out of the well. The villagers agreed, but after the officials left, a Dalit boy was beaten up. Other Castes suspected that it was he who had tipped off the authorities. The bucket was thrown away.
Most Dalits have accepted the ground realities. But Raghura will stay back to fight. ‘‘This is my village and I don’t want to leave,’’ he says.
