Paradox of Untouchability

I was not untouchable then?

~Kandswamy

Rape erases caste boundaries, as the victim becomes "touchable" to her attacker ; paradoxically strips away the untouchability.

A 14-year-old Dalit girl was allegedly abducted from her house, gang-raped and killed in Muzaffarpur district of Bihar. Her body was found in a semi-naked condition in a pond. Her mouth was gagged and there were several injuries and bloodstains on her body. She was hacked to death with a sickle and the accused in the crime is suspected to be a youth from her village in Bihar. She was injured in three places, including her face, back of neck and hand as she refused to get married to him.

The heinous acts committed against a young Dalit girl in Bihar represent the systemic oppression and deeply rooted caste hierarchy that continues to plague our society everyday. This is not merely a series of isolated incidents, but the prevalent structural violence that subjugates marginalized communities, particularly Dalit women, who find themselves at the intersectionality of caste, gender and class leading to twin patriarchy.

The perpetrators, privileged by their social status, have weaponized their caste identity to exert dominance and control over the Dalit community. This blatant display of casteist patriarchy is an indication of the failure of our social institutions to dismantle the oppressive structures that turns into such atrocities. The audacity of the aggressors in demanding the hand of a minor in marriage further shows the normalization of pedophilia and the commodification and objectification of Dalit bodies within this Savarna spaces.

We must recognize these sexual acts for what they truly are: a form of social terrorism designed to maintain the hegemony of upper-caste supremacy. The time has come for a radical dismantling of these oppressive systems, and emancipation of oppressed people.

The immoral behavior of media , academic establishments, and even progressive organizations in sustaining this cycle of oppression cannot be overlooked as they are becoming the enablers of the status quo. Mainstream media, trapped in its own upper-caste echo chamber, consistently fails to give adequate coverage to Dalit issues, often reducing such heinous crimes to mere statistics. This systematic erasure of Dalit narratives from public discourse serves to normalize the violence and making the victims invisible. Universities, despite being the hub of intellectual progressivism, remain hotbeds of casteist discrimination. The academic industrial complex continues to marginalize Dalit voices. The tokenistic inclusion of a few Dalit scholars does little to challenge the deeply ingrained Brahminical hegemony in these spaces.