Charles Miller
Anti-Slavery International
Runner-up, Associations and Societies Young Thinker
of the Year

I want to talk to you about a country on the brink of civil war. A country where each year 250 homes are burned, 300 people are abducted, 650 people are murdered and over 1,000 women are raped simply because of their low social status. A country where the government looks on but does nothing, in what can only be described as a hidden apartheid. This is not Burma, Sudan or North Korea. This is not a country known for human rights abuse. This is India - the fourth largest economy in the world and the second-fastest growing – a country widely praised for halving absolute poverty and sustaining democracy since independence.
     The benefits of India's phenomenal growth have not trickled down to the worst-off because of caste discrimination. When we think of poverty most of us probably think of Africa. But in fact there are more people in poverty in India alone than there are in Africa, and the vast majority belong to low caste or tribal groups. This is not coincidence.
     165 million Dalits, or 'untouchables' as they are better known, are comprehensively excluded from normal political, economic or social life. As a sixth of India's citizens, if they had their own country they'd make the fifth largest population in the world. And yet they often cannot walk on the same paths, eat the same food, or drink the same water as their caste superiors. They are systematically denied the jobs, homes, schools and hospitals that others take for granted, and are subjected to rape, torture and murder if they protest. Dalit women suffer triple discrimination, one, for being Dalits, two, for being poor, and three, simply for being women. Millions of families have been forced by poverty to take loans, and work them off in debt bondage, the most common form of slavery under international law. Even in death, Dalits are seen as unclean and are buried apart from their caste superiors.
     The Indian constitution is a beautiful thing, protecting and enshrining the rights of all citizens, with particular consideration for the worst-off. But legislation is not enforced and local authorities act as they please while the government looks the other way. India's own National Human Rights Commission recently identified the police, army and judiciary as the greatest violators of Dalit rights, stating that widespread custodial torture, killing, rape and looting 'are condoned, or at best ignored'. Dalits are often held by police in distant, isolated locations to avoid publicity, where they are deprived of food and water, humiliated and subjected to severe beatings and sexual abuse. Custodial deaths are covered up with stories of attempted escape or death by natural causes. Again women suffer the worst violations. Police routinely sexually abuse Dalit women, to force them to give false evidence, to silence their protests against brutality, or to punish their male relatives. The vast majority of these crimes go unreported, unregistered and unpunished.
     Despite the lip service paid to human rights by the national government, local authority discrimination makes the state seem more part of the problem than part of the solution in the eyes of victims. As a result, an increasing number of Dalits are resorting to violence to overthrow the government and change the system that abuses them. A revolutionary communist movement known as Naxalism, which fights for the rights of low caste peasants and workers, has more than doubled its area of operations since 2004 and now affects just under a third of the country. In 2006, India's Prime Minister described Naxalism as the 'the single biggest internal security challenge ever faced by our country'. He then launched what he called 'an effective police response coupled with socio-economic development'. But the promised money for development was minimal, leading the Asian Centre for Human Rights to go so far as to claim that it was 'comical' and 'did not have any visible impact'.
     Instead, at the behest of high-caste dominated state governments, India's approach has placed the emphasis squarely on hard-line law enforcement. The strategy is deeply flawed and the stakes could not be higher. Simply expanding the security forces, so frequently complicit in abuse of Dalit rights, is like pouring fuel on a fire. The role of caste discrimination in causing civil unrest is being completely ignored. An increasing proportion of Dalits already feel they have no choice but to turn to violence in the face of repression, exclusion and exploitation. Without immediate and decisive action, the fighting will continue to spread, regardless of how many troops are deployed.
     The Indian government urgently needs to consider measures to resolve conflict and measures to tackle discrimination as two sides of the same coin. Investing in social inclusion to prevent further unrest would not only be far cheaper than fighting a protracted guerrilla war, it would save lives. In the absence of political pressure at home, the international community has a responsibility to persuade India to act, but instead it courts the government for access to its emerging market. The silence in the West on human rights in India is deafening. The UK government, the European Union and others claim to support rights, but look on and do nothing as Dalits are systematically abused.
     The fight for Dalit rights is not a battle for wealth or for power but for freedom and equality. It is one we should surely join.

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