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Journalism of Courage
It will take the mutually reinforcing efforts of law and politics to fight caste atrocities
The move to amend the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Prevention of Atrocities Act,1989,may come at a politically useful moment for the UPA,but it promises a long overdue relook to strengthen its provisions. The act itself was a recognition that discrimination is hardwired into the caste system,and that it would take a punitive law to help dismantle its manifestations,from extreme violence and humiliation to exclusion from public spaces and practices like bonded labour and manual scavenging. While the act was an advance on earlier laws,and seemed to be drafted with a fuller acknowledgement of the enormity of the problem,the two decades since have revealed that it leaves a range of oppressive practices unaddressed,and is not comprehensive enough to counter the institutional bias in police stations and courts. After the Khairlanji killings,the prime minister himself rued that the SC-ST Prevention of Atrocities Act had not been effectively used,that cases continued to be registered under weaker sections of the IPC.
The proposed amendments to the law concretise genuine patterns of injustice from preventing SCs and STs from engaging in political activity,blocking access to common resources like water bodies,preventing entry into places of worship,dispossessing them of land or crops,filing counter cases to thwart legal redress,to public humiliation and more. They also raise the penalties for public servants for not recording cases and monitor delays in court. These are important changes. Caste discrimination and violence have deep and tangled social roots. It will take the sustained and mutually reinforcing efforts of law and political will to fight it. This should not be thought of in terms of profit and loss for any political formation. It is simply what we need to do to call ourselves a humane society.
