Boston event links Black Liberation and Palestinian movements with the Anti-Caste Struggle
By Paul Malachi, TwoCircles.net
Boston: Activists in Boston organized an event titled “Dalit Women Fight – Moving Beyond Caste Apartheid” on Saturday September 19th, 2015 that was attended by about 70 people. The speakers were Yamila Shannan – a Harvard educated Palestinian educator and activist, Nina LaNegra – an Afro-Mexican-Indigenous leader who produces a long standing Boston-based radio show, Brandi Artez who works with Black Lives Matter Boston and Coalition Against Police Violence. They were joined by the Asha Kowtal, Vee Kay, Manisha Mashaal and Anjum Singh from the Dalit Women Fight collective who are on a US tour to promote awareness about caste-based sexual violence against women in India. The panel was moderated by Dolly Arjun, a Boston-based activist.
Yamila Shannan said from her experience with oppressive systems in Palestine, US and Latin America, those in power build an ideology of the ‘other’ – and give it different names but the power group themselves remain nameless and are never a subject of study. In this way they want to remain unnamed because their culture, ideology, and way of life are the “normal” so the ‘other’ is abnormal. In this system everything that the oppressed group does is subject to comment, analysis, scrutiny, diagnosis etc. and they are often blamed for their plight. However, the power group escapes the same scrutiny because they are ‘the normal’. She said that this invisibility and normalization is perfect power.
Dr. Shannan also cautioned that the role of the state in oppressive systems is sometimes overlooked or underestimated or sometimes oppressed groups look to the state for justice; the same state that sanctions their oppression. She reminded that the key functions of the state (health, schooling, housing, judiciary, policing, etc.) are in hands of the powerful groups and are thus designed and administered in ways that make it inevitable that the benefits of access to those resources accrues to those groups. Emphasizing the centrality of land ownership as a key course and indicator of power, Dr. Shannan argued that calling the judicial system a ‘justice’ system masks the role of the law and the state in creating and sustaining oppressive systems and structures.
Vee Kay, who holds a PhD from Dartmouth College and is coordinating the tour, explained that caste originated in Hindu scripture in Rig Veda which describes that Brahmins were formed from head and Dalits from feet. She said hierarchy is intrinsic in this system. She explained that knowledge, wealth, power and land are concentrated in the top of the caste hierarchy even though they are a numerical minority.
Nina LaNegra said that as a practicing Buddhist for last 40 years she was horrified to see a system like caste which does not even believe in the basic principle that all humans are equal’. She said that it was sad to see that Buddhism which believed in equality was overthrown by Hinduism in India and caste was introduced in the land where Buddhism was born.
Activist Asha Kowtal who has been part of Dalit women marches in India said that she has been working on sexual caste atrocity cases for the last four years and have been confronted repeatedly with systematic caste bias in India’s judiciary and law enforcement system from the top to the bottom. She gave an example that while the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocity law was a progressive law passed 25 years ago, the conviction rate is less than 1%. They also have countless examples of direct threats, harassment, negligence, and non-cooperation from the law enforcement and judiciary. She said that were now facing a crucial juncture and are thinking about how to proceed because the legal system is proving time and again to be hostile to serve the quest for minimum justice for those who have experienced the worst brutalities of caste based sexual violence.
Ms. Kowtal said that being a Dalit woman multiples the effect of belonging to only one category. She said that the feminist movement In India primarily articulates the concerns of upper caste women and the caste question was never seriously on the agenda. Similarly in the Dalit movement she said that the gender question was often misplaced.
Brandi Artez from Black Lives Matter Boston said that she was inspired by the Dalit women led movement in India and hoped that Black Women could form a national movement to articulate their interests independently. She said Black Women’s concerns are often not given proper space in the movement and emphasized that even a member of the oppressed groups can behave in an oppressive manner with others. She said that as a Black woman the oppression from the system was very similar to the stories of Dalit women in that their communities were subjected to ideological violence because the dominant culture is attempting to erase their history permanently.
Manisha Mashaal, a grassroots leader, said that she became involved when there were incidents on 40 gang rape cases of Dalit women and girls reported in a period of 14 months in Haryana. She was shocked to find that in most of the cases even a simple FIR has not been filed and the families were still living in fear. In some of the cases even to conduct an autopsy on the girl’s dead body they had to do a dharna for seven days. She contrasted this to the Delhi rape case of an upper caste girl where there was international coverage and outcry and the body was flown immediately to an international hospital for autopsy.
Anjum Singh described working in remote areas in UP where extreme caste-based feudal systems prevailed. There were entire villages upon villages where there was not a single person of any age who was literate and in these areas there was no recourse to sexual violence from dominant castes.
Both young activists described many instances where they were threatened and intimidated by feudal dominant castes collaborating with police who followed them constantly. Their vehicles have been attacked and they operate in a climate of fear even to go on a fact-finding mission after an atrocity case. However, Ms. Mashaal said that she was not prepared to stay at home out of fear and that if she was killed tomorrow she would rather die as a leader than a victim. She also said that if she is killed for speaking up about caste based atrocities in India she hopes that before she dies she will inspire a thousand other Manisha’s to raise their voices.
The panel was followed by a question and answer session where people wanted to learn more about the caste system and other aspects of their struggles. The standing room only audience was very diverse and majority were not South Asian. Many of the audience members were visibly moved and there was a lot of time interacting one on one with panelists.
Critically acclaimed Pulitzer Prize winning Dominican American novelist, MIT Professor, and MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, Junot Diaz was also in the audience and expressed his admiration and support for the panelists. Mr. Diaz said that the event was “profoundly important on one level – a master class in the kind of community education and solidarity building that keeps so many of us alive in our communities, but also for the important knowledge about Dalit Women’s struggles without which I am not sure one can really understand what’s going on in the “Shining India”.
The event was locally co-sponsored by the Association for India’s Development (AID) Boston, Dorchester People for Peace, FANG North East, Grassroots International, Haley House, Survivor Theater Project and Activist Calendar, who provided financial, logistical and outreach support, and co-organized by Pampi and Loreto Paz Ansaldo, local community artists, activists and educators.
Source: twocircles.net