Paper 2 Hira Husnnen - Class on Causes of Violence

HLTH 350 Hira Husnnen Paper 2: India’s hidden apartheid: the structural violence against the “Untouchables” Johan Galtung in his paper “Violence, Peace and Peace” defines violence as the “cause of the difference between the potential and the actual, between what could have been and what is.” He further makes a distinction for structural violence as the kind of violence that is weaved into the fabric of society. Taking this definition of structural violence, this paper highlights that inequality and symbolic violence are the causes of structural violence against the lowest caste members (Dalits) in India. Furthermore, this paper argues that the most effective way to mitigate such violence against the Dalits is to first ally all Dalits together for non-violent protests that can lead to constitutional reforms of power distribution in the Indian society. The word “Dalit” literally means, “broken, ground-down, downtrodden or oppressed.” This is a caste in India that falls below the traditional four-fold caste system. Dalits are shunned by the rest of the society as being untouchables as they are considered to have impurities and pollution connected with their menial jobs of toilet cleaning or garbage removals. Today, Dalits make up a 170 million or 25% of the Indian population and one out of every six Dalit faces structural violence, which reduces his/her actual potential. Taun Cortado. “Recent Rampage Shows Drastically Worsening Plight of India’s 285 Million Untouchables.” ChristianNewsWire. Nov 2012. March 2014. http://www.christiannewswire.com/news/8735770888.html They are flagrantly abused by higher caste Indians and the police, are denied access to land, are forced to work in deplorable conditions and are unable to get legal justice. Elizabeth Mivon. Event Debrief: Dalit Freesom Network. November 2013. March 2014. http://dialecticalfilms.bristolradicalfilmfestival.org.uk/event-de-brief-dalit-freedom-network-11th-november-13/ An appalling 27.6% of Dalits are prevented from entering police stations; 25% of the villages pay lower and delayed wages to Dalits than to any other group; 38% of the government schools prohibit Dalit children to mingle with other children; and in over 12% of the villages Dalits are denied access to polling booths. Who are Dalits and What is Untouchability? NCDHR. Nd. March 2014. http://www.ncdhr.org.in/dalits-untouchability/ Hence, in all spheres of their lives, be it social, economical, educational or political, Dalits are persecuted. In essence, this extreme form of structural violence is India’s hidden apartheid, which necessitates immediate change. However, for a change to be effective, it is necessary to address the foundation i.e. the main causes of the existing problem. The first cause of the caste system seems to be embedded in religion, when the ancient text known as the Rigdeva, ranked the occupational groups in India. This led to the creation of an accepted societal stratification in the country. Since the Dalits performed all the “dirty work” such as cleaning up after funerals, dealing with sewage and working with animal skin, they were placed at the bottom most part of the hierarchal structure. The caste system. Ancient Civilizations. Nd. March 2014. http://www.ushistory.org/civ/8b.asp However, though the religious cause may be the obvious building block of the caste system, it is essential to understand the reason why this building block was readily accepted when it was initially introduced. Inequality in the Indian society was the structural failure in the Indian society that eventually allowed the caste system to evolve. This is because ideas can only be readily adopted when the group that is victimized due to the idea is unable to resist against the belief. Inequality, both economically and politically ensure that the victimized group is unable to defend the injustices committed against them. Relative poverty put the Dalits in a position of vulnerability as they were landless laborers and needed to use the lands of upper castes to earn for their livings. If they ever opposed the social crimes committed against them by the elites, they could lose their source of livelihood. Furthermore, lack of political power also precluded the upper castes to be held responsible for any unfair behavior. Today, the existence of the caste system since further perpetuates this inequality, fueling further structural violence in the country. For instance, the caste system prevents the Dalits from owning land or receiving an education. Thus, the Dalits are stuck in a vicious cycle of an exploitative economic arrangement. As the land is a prime asset in rural India, which determines the standard of living and thus the social status of individuals, the caste system makes the Dalits economically vulnerable to the upper and middle caste landlords. For instance, once the upper caste retaliated against the Dalits by putting a social boycott on them. Thus, the Dalits could not enter their lands, or work for them, or get wood, or buy from their stores or grind their grains in flourmills or go to the wells near the upper-caste territory. Hence, the fact that economic disparity existed due to the caste system, led to further economic exploitation of the Dalits. This leads to further social distance in society. Consequently, not only did economic and political imbalance allow the caste system to commence, and thus for structural violence to seep into the society, but the resulting disparity of this structural violence also became the cause for sustained structural violence in society. Michelle Maiese. The Necessity of Social Structural Change. July 2013. March 2014. http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/social-structural-changes Richard Wilkinson in his book, The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Always Do Better, further substantiates the claim that “the scale of income differences has a powerful effect on how we relate to each other,” as “poverty is a social status.” Thus, income differences engender social stratification, which allows structural violence to exist as there is an inequitable standing in society that ensure that the dominating group can assert their power to exploit the poor, while the poor have no outlet of relief. Furthermore, Wilkinson’s research demonstrates that poor health and violence are more prevalent in more unequal societies. The research shows that increasing inequality and index of health/social problems are positively correlated as the countries with higher income inequality have a greater index of such problems. As the data has low dispersion Wilkinson’s research seems to accurately portray this correlation. Thus, the assertion that poverty of the Dalits in comparison to the upper or middle castes is the underlying cause behind structural violence can be taken as a valid deduction. Richard Wilkinson. The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better. March 2009. March 2014 Another crucial cause of structural violence is the fragmented resistance amongst all the Dalits. This weakens their position, as a united front of a significant 25% of the Indian population (as Dalit make up 25% of the population) could cause a formidable force for the other castes. This fragmentation can exist due to a result of a general belief amongst the Dalits that the structural violence is justified, as it is religiously indoctrinated and thus natural. This reason can be viewed as the “symbolic violence” that Pierre Bourdieu asserts exists in the society due to the tacit acceptance and complicity of both the abusers and the victims. It is a form of violence that is masked in the perceived “inevitability” of social relations as those relations are discerned as being part of the “order of things.” Steph Lawler. Symbolic Violence. Encyclopedia of Consumer Culture. October 2011. March 2014. http://knowledge.sagepub.com/view/consumerculture/n534.xml Hence, given that the caste system is embedded in religious and traditional scriptures, it can be inferred that Dalits may accept that as natural and thus do not feel the need to rise against the order of nature. However, with time as Dalits recognize the injustice done against them, they have started to gradually unite against the upper castes and hence symbolic violence underlying structural violence is gradually mitigating. Steph Lawler. Symbolic Violence. Encyclopedia of Consumer Culture. October 2011. March 2014. In retaliation to the acute structural violence in India, the Dalit Panthers emerged in 1960s and 1970s. This group ideologically aligned themselves to the Black Panther Movement in the United States, which aimed to achieve self-determination for those of minority African descent. Since 1980s the Dalit Panthers have thrived as a nonviolent awareness raising and organizing movement. They concentrate primarily on women’s rights and land issues. There was also a more aggressive and violent uprising by the Naxalite group of the Dalits. This group initiated a series of peasant uprisings in the village of West Bengal and then in the surrounding villages. They seized land, burned property records and assassinated exploitative landlords and other “class enemies.” This Naxalite insurgency was repressed by the brutal police crackdown. However, the movement continues to survive, albeit with some splits and regrouping in the rural areas of West Bengal, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh and Bihar. Human Right Watch. Broken People: Caste Violence Against India’s Untouchables. April 1999. March 2014. Despite participating in both violent and non-violent demonstrations as a means to alleviate structural violence, the Dalits failed to significantly rally for change in India. It can be argued that amongst other factors, the primary cause for such a defeat is the lack of a coordinated and united front displayed by the Dalits, which allowed their fragmented demonstrations to be easily curtailed by the government via violent means. Hence, this paper argues that the most essential step in fighting against structural violence requires the Dalits to join forces to exacerbate their strength as an opposition. This claim is corroborated by the rise of the “backward castes or Shudras” in India by following such a strategy. Referred to as “other backward classes (OBCs)” in administrative parlance, backward castes are defined as those individuals whose ritual rank and occupation status is above that of Dalits but who remain socially and economically suppressed. Often OBCs include different groups including the economically and politically aggressive Jat and Yadav group. The inclusion of so many heterogeneous groups allows OBC to attain strength through numbers. Hence, their leaders are able to advocate for constitutional reform that allows OBCs to enjoy claims for special status and land in post independence India. The land reforms of 1950s that aimed to confer ownership rights on existing tenants of land, thus proved beneficial for OBCs as the land was distributed from the feudal to the substantial class of medium-sized owner cultivators, many of whom were OBCs. Though these land reforms aimed at benefitting marginal farmers and the landless, majority of whom were Dalits, the lack of power that Dalits represented due to their inadequate unity, precluded them from taking advantage of these reforms. In fact, the combined efforts of all OBCs to rally for their rights has engendered a recent trend in which OBCs are able to take up positions of power and control in society from upper castes who initially held these titles in the past. Human Right Watch. Broken People: Caste Violence Against India’s Untouchables. April 1999. March 2014. http://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6a83f0.html Consequently, we can infer that though OBCs had to struggle to fight the social injustice they faced, their ability to amalgamate as a strong group to strive for constitutional reforms, allowed them to eventually break free from acute structural violence. Thus, it can be inferred that Dalits too should follow a similar strategy of mobilizing against their oppression. The Context of Caste Violence. Human Rights Watch. Nd. March 2014. http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/india/India994-04.htm Additionally, this paper argues that exhibiting non-violent resistance should be the preferred action for Dalits, as violent displays have spawned severe backlash from the Indian government in the past. Moreover, many successful global examples of nonviolent protests against structural violence substantiate the claim that nonviolence is a viable option for the Dalits. For instance, in the United States, the civil rights movement, which was predominately nonviolent, engendered a legal protection against discrimination at work places and schools. This revolution reformed the North American political system to address the interests of minorities. Similarly, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which caused a dramatic political and social change, was primarily achieved by nonviolent methods. Moreover, nonviolent labor management actions can also correct structural injustices. Case in point is the American New Deal, a domestic program that was enacted in the United States after the Great Depression. This policy aimed to alter the balance of economic power between the elite and the subordinate classes. The New Deal’s labor legislation banned unfair labor practices and compelled large interstate corporations to recognize and negotiate terms with labor unions. Hence, such a change is part of a successful, nonviolent social structural change with relatively minimal reprisal and thus supports the argument that Dalits too should participate in nonviolent and united protests to bring about social justice. Michelle Maiese. The Necessity of Social Structural Change. July 2013. March 2014. http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/social-structural-changes Citations: