Wednesday, September 15, 2010

[ZESTCaste] Jats go on rampage in Hisar over quota

 

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Jats-go-on-rampage-in-Hisar-over-quota/articleshow/6556387.cms

Jats go on rampage in Hisar over quota
TNN, Sep 15, 2010, 03.05am IST

ROHTAK/CHANDIGARH: A day after a protester was killed in police
firing in Hisar on Jat community members demanding OBC quota in
government jobs, Haryana was on the boil on Tuesday with angry mobs
torching vehicles, business establishments and a police post.

Hisar bore the brunt, where curfew has been imposed in parts of the
city and the Army called in. Traffic on the Hisar- Delhi National
Highway 10 has been suspended.

In Chandigarh, CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda, while appealing to the Jat
community to end the stir, announced a compensation of Rs 10 lakh to
the family of the youth killed in police firing, job to a member of
his family and registration of a case against Subhash Yadav, who was
last night removed as superintendent of police, Hisar.

While Hooda claimed the stir has been called off, the All-India Jat
Sangharsh Samiti (AIJSS), spearheading the agitation, reiterated its
threat to disrupt the Commonwealth Games. Sit-ins and road blockades
were suspended till the 'teravi' (thirteenth day) ceremony of the
youth, who was killed on Monday, according to AIJSS spokesman Om
Prakash Mann. "Protests would resume if the Centre fails to announce a
quota for Jats by October 3," said Mann.

Tuesday's violence was sparked off when two protestors were killed
while trying to stop a goods train at Uklana railway station in Jind
district in the morning. The protestors tried to set the railway
station on fire. Soon, the agitation spread to Rohtak, Jind, Bhiwani,
Sirsa and Fatehabad with mobs blocking several roads connecting the
affected towns.

Violent protests began on Monday after the death of the Jat youth in
Hisar in the wake of a clash between Jats and police following a
public meeting called by AIJSS in Mayyar village to press for their
reservation demand.

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[ZESTCaste] India revives colonial-era caste count

 

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/09/10/india.caste.count/

India revives colonial-era caste count

By Harmeet Shah Singh, CNN
September 10, 2010 -- Updated 1055 GMT (1855 HKT)

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Prime minister approves a bid to hold the count after the general census
The last time India collected comprehensive caste data was 80 years ago
Proponents of caste-based classifications say the exercise will help
groups get their legitimate claims
Critics argue it jeopardizes national integration.

India
New Delhi, India (CNN) -- India plans to hold a full count of its
citizens and their castes, the country's first since 1931.

Prime minister Manmohan Singh's Cabinet on Thursday approved proposals
to hold the count separately next year after the ongoing general
census is over, a government statement said.

The move largely aims to enumerate low-caste groups called Other
Backward Classes (OBCs), which a government-appointed commission in
1980 reported makes up 52 percent of the population.

The last time India collected comprehensive caste data was under
British rule, almost 80 years ago.

After gaining independence in 1947, India picked only two of its most
disadvantaged communities in its decennial population calculations
instead of listing all of them from Hinduism's complex caste
hierarchy.

This year, regional political parties drawing support from
marginalized communities mounted pressure on Singh's government to
expand the current census to cover all groupings.

Proponents of caste-based classifications say the exercise will help
the downtrodden -- also referred to as the Dalits -- get what they
call their legitimate claims.

"Besides, a comprehensive government data on such communities will
also eventually determine the share they deserve in the overall
establishment, be it jobs or governance," said Balbir Madhopuri, a
Dalit scholar and writer.

India's constitution outlaws discrimination on the basis of castes,
which date to thousands of years.

The country has launched numerous schemes to uplift low-caste groups,
including reservations in government jobs.

Critics, however, argue that a caste-based survey would jeopardize
national integration.

"It is extremely distressing that now, after 60 years, the government
appears to be inclined to revive the old British colonial practice of
caste enumeration," a campaign called Meri Jati Hindustani, or My
Caste is Indian, says on its website.

"Inclusion of caste in the census will cause deep fissures and
divisions in the society, and weaken the sense of Indian nationhood,"
it adds.

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[ZESTCaste] Breaking boundaries (Chandrabhan Prasad)

http://www.dailypioneer.com/265241/Breaking-boundaries.html

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Breaking boundaries
September 15, 2010 3:13:46 PM

Chandrabhan Prasad

One of the supreme blockages Dalits face in breaking boundaries comes
from stereotypes woven around them. Typecasts around Dalits dampen
their self esteem, which limits their self belief. Some time back, I
had written that of the top ten Dalit owned businesses in Agra, eight
were in the non-leather segment, and five in the hotel business. On
that count, Agra Dalit businesses should be known for hotel industry.
But, in popular public imagery, Agra Dalits are known for their
specialisation in leather trade. This is what I call the Dalit
stereotype as this goes on to suggest that Dalits are expected to do
well in occupations associated with their social identity.

The recently concluded Pune Dalit Expo has expressively dealt with
many Dalit stereotypes. The participants in the Expo were expected to
be predominantly into leather industry. Many guest participants from
Delhi and elsewhere, who came to the Expo, were surprised to meet
Dalits builders, sugar millers, machine tool makers, and Dalits in
food and beverages industry. Above all, the Expo presented Dalit faces
who have successfully broken boundaries and entered into areas where
it was considered that only traditional players could shine. Dalits
are making their forays in the following areas:

n OICL: A software professional, Pratibha Kambale owns Oceanic
International Corporation Ltd, a BPO. Her clients are mostly British
companies. In her 100 plus strong workforce, she employs youth of all
castes. Pratibha is set to open an office in London. Pratibha comes
from an average Dalit middle class family with no previous business
history.

n Horizon: Vivek S Dolas owns Horizon, a Brain Development Academy
offering educational services. Brain Gym is one of their major
products. The Brain Development Program offers training in
concentration, memorising, insight, speed reading and information
processing. Highly technical and sophisticated, children of the rich
are Horizon's main client base.

n Krish: Inspired by the science fiction film, Satsul Sonawal started
this security equipment making company. With business operations
spread across India, Krish manufactures CCTVs, watches with spy
cameras, pens, neck , cameras, sunglasses and caps with spy cameras,
Biometric Door Access System, to name a few. Krish offers 40 highly
sophisticated electronic gadgets.

n Comsolve Mediatech Pvt Ltd: This Lalit Bansod owned company is a
service provider dealing in Internet Bandwidth, Internet Securities,
BPO, Video Conferencing etc. Maharashtra's major corporations are
Lalit's customers.

n Content: Sunil Mane's Content or Concept Communications Pvt Ltd is a
media solution company providing services such as Media Strategy,
Corporate Films, Public Relations, Media Management, Branding &
Promotions etc. Top corporate houses are Sunil's main customer base.

More than two dozen Dalit entrepreneurs I met at the Expo are in
businesses considered brainy and requiring soft skills. In all such
enterprises one need not inherit businesses from families, and neither
do such businesses require big capital. The most fundamental
requirement in these businesses is that the owner should be a
thoroughly skilled professional. Most of these Dalit entrepreneurs
come from humble families and none, to repeat, none has any previous
family history of business and enterprise. Also, most of the above
soft skill driven enterprises are non-traditional.

The Pune's Expo opened a new window to Dalit youth. The Expo proves
beyond doubt that Dalits too can succeed in intellectual areas. The
Expo also establishes that globalisation is bringing newer enterprises
in India which are free from social taboos. The Expo also establishes
that the new enterprises don't have any Caste monopoly. In other
words, no Caste can claim expertise in such enterprises as all are
new. Dalits can now claim their share on equal footing.

But, that's not enough. The dynamic and visionary Milind Kambale must
spread branches of DICCI all over India and organise Dalit Expos
everywhere.

More than anything else, the modern day Dalits bubbling with
aspiration need motivation. With limitless desire to make a point,
Dalits have enough talent to break all boundaries built around them by
the nasty casteist history.


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[ZESTCaste] There’s a case for burning all the holy books (Opinion)

http://www.dnaindia.com/opinion/column_there-s-a-case-for-burning-all-the-holy-books_1438027

There's a case for burning all the holy books
Published: Wednesday, Sep 15, 2010, 3:06 IST
By Venkatesan Vembu | Place: Mumbai

There's an unintended irony about the (eventually aborted) campaign
last week by Terry Jones, the pastor of a fringe church in Florida, to
make a bonfire of copies of the Koran on the grounds that it was an
"evil book". Jones isn't the first man of Christian faith who was
broadcasting to the world his loathing of the Koran and, more broadly,
of Islam. Since the 8th century, when Islam spread across Europe, that
religion and its Holy Book have served as objects of hatred — and, on
occasion, fear — for Christians.

Christian clergymen and scholars branded the Koran the "work of the
devil" that was dangerous to Christian souls, and this revulsion was
immortalised in popular Christian
literature and hymns down the ages.

The "clash of civilisations" continued right up until the 16th
century, when the Ottoman Empire, expanding through conquest, was at
its apex. In the 16th century, however, German theologian Martin
Luther advanced an effort to publish Latin translations of the Koran —
in the belief that free dissemination of Koranic ideas among
Christians would refute "the abomination of Mohammed" and do "grievous
harm" to the Turks. Fighting efforts to censor and prevent the
translation and dissemination of the Koran, Luther wrote: "To honour
Christ, to do good for Christians, to harm the Turks, to vex the
devil, set (the Koran) free…"

In other words, the Florida pastor Jones' campaign against the Koran
only marks the continuation of a medieval-era Crusade mindset, except
that the denunciation of the Koran today finds expression in vastly
different ways. Where once Christian clergymen campaigned to have the
Koran translated and distributed in the belief that dissemination of
its ideas would damn it, today's 'man of the cloth' would rather
organise a bonfire of the scriptures!

There are countless precedents in history for calls to burn the holy
books — even in India, where it happened as part of a process of
'religious reformation' from within. For instance, when Dalits'
historic campaign in Vaikom in the early 20th century for the right to
enter temples met with opposition from orthodox Brahmins who cited the
Hindu scriptures in their defence, Dalit leader BR Ambedkar said that
if, indeed, the scriptures defended the practice of untouchability,
they ought to be burned.

At a later satyagraha led by Ambedkar for Dalits' access to public
water, the Manusmriti, which codified a caste-based social order, was
publicly burnt.

The Zen philosophical tradition exhorts practitioners to "burn the
scriptures" and "kill the Buddha". But this isn't a call to religious
war; it is, rather, an inspiration to reject tradition and the
"fundamentalism" of "doctrines" and, indeed, all external sources of
divinity — and instead make the inner journey into one's one
consciousness, which lies at the core of the Buddhist spiritual order.

An overly faithful abidance by the hardcore fundamentals of
established religious orders lies at the root of most religious
conflicts today. Not only is it building walls and hardening attitudes
all around, it also interferes with the process of interactions based
on humanistic principles.

To the extent that moving away from "ordained" and "revealed"
principles of religious orders can perhaps enable people to interact,
even if only occasionally, in the secular space of humanism, there may
well be a case for symbolically 'burning' all the scriptures by
breaking the constricting bonds of religious fundamentalism.


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[ZESTCaste] Demands met, Jat group halts agitation

http://www.hindustantimes.com/Jat-agitation-has-ended-in-Hisar-claims-CM-Hooda/Article1-600149.aspx

Demands met, Jat group halts agitation
HT Correspondents

Chandigarh/Hissar, September 14, 2010First Published: 21:31 IST(14/9/2010)
Last Updated: 00:35 IST(15/9/2010)

Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda said on Tuesday evening
that the Akhil Bhartiya Jat Sangharsh Samiti (All India Jat Agitation
Committee) had suspended its agitation in the state. The outfit had
resorted to a violent agitation to press for reservation for Jats in
state government related stories
Curfew in Hisar, Army help sought as violence intensifies
Police firing at Jat protest kills 1
jobs.

Hooda told mediapersons in Chandigarh that the committee had halted
the agitation after talks with state government officials. The
committee was given an assurance that the state would provide
financial compensation of R10 lakh to the family of the youth killed
in police firing on violent protestors on Monday.

Officials also promised to give one of the deceased protestor's family
members a job in the state government. "We have also registered a case
against the SP, as demanded by the victim's family,'' Hooda said.

The chief minister said the government would give financial assistance
to those injured in clashes with the police. Hooda said certain
miscreants had damaged and destroyed public property in the past 24
hours and that "the Samiti had nothing to do with it".

Regarding a job quota for Jats, Hooda said he had forwarded a
representation to the central government.

Earlier, the army was called in to quell violence in Mayyar village
and its adjoining areas in Hisar district. The places were also
brought under curfew following a violent agitation on Monday.

The protesters, who went on a rampage on Monday, had continued their
protest on Tuesday. A mob set on fire the SBI branch in Hisar
Cantonment in the morning. They also set ablaze a cotton mill, besides
torching two buses and damaging a petrol pump. Protesters set a
generator set on fire at the Uklana railway station and thrashed
security personnel who tried to stop them. They also looted several
trucks parked on the roadside.


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[ZESTCaste] Not caste in stone (Opinion)

http://in.news.yahoo.com/48/20100913/1241/top-not-caste-in-stone_1.html

Not caste in stone

Mon, Sep 13 06:25 AM
While readying for the deluge of data on various caste groups, now
that the cabinet has cleared the census of caste groups from next
year, we need to demolish some dominant caste myths.

The most important one, of course, is that caste groups are uniform
monoliths. Look at the data and there is no doubt that, at the
all-India level, upper castes will have higher incomes than other
backward castes — who, in turn, have higher incomes than Scheduled
Castes who earn more than Scheduled Tribes. At an all-India level,
upper caste households earn an average of Rs 86,690 per annum, OBCs
earn Rs 59,741, SCs Rs 45,889 and STs Rs 40,753. This data is from the
NCAER's annual household survey of income, since the government's
National Sample Survey captures only data on expenditure and, on
average, it is unable to capture more than half the total consumption
in the country. These numbers are from 2004-05, but the relative
differences across caste groups are valid even today.

The averages, like all averages, miss out on the important
differences. So, an analysis of the NCAER data (in the book Caste in a
Different Mould, of which I am a co-author) shows that while SC
households in Uttar Pradesh earn Rs 39,655 per annum, those in Punjab
earn Rs 63,055; OBCs in Bihar earn Rs 40,839 as against Rs 73,223 in
Maharashtra. Similar differences hold true for all caste groups. The
short point is incomes across caste groups differ widely across
various states, which means the overall level of development of the
state is more important than the caste of an individual when it comes
to determining income levels. So ST households in Karnataka earn Rs
62,238 per annum, more than upper-caste ones in Bihar (Rs 51,187).

The second myth, related to the first, is that differences in income
automatically imply discrimination, and therefore suggest affirmative
action is called for. Apart from the impact the "state" of
development, as it were, has on income levels, the differences are
largely explained by education, by the industry/service you are
employed in, by whether an individual is situated in a rural area or a
small town or a big metro, and the list can go on. Even where groups
are classified as 'graduate and above', if the group has more
post-graduates, income levels are certain to be higher.

So, for instance, OBC households in villages (73 per cent of OBCs are
to be found in villages) have an average annual income of Rs 51,740
but this goes up to Rs 72,288 in small towns, Rs 81,745 in mid-sized
towns (5-10 lakh population) and to Rs 95,999 in towns with more than
a million people. Some of this is just the location factor. A driver
in a village is going to get next to nothing while a driver in a metro
probably earns Rs 7,000, on average, a month.

There's education as well. So, a large part of the higher income
levels in urban settings are probably also a reflection of higher
education, not just location — but because it needs sophisticated
econometrics, and even that can go wrong, this is often ignored. An
OBC household that has is headed by an illiterate earns Rs 24,363 per
year, and this rises to Rs 32,169 in case the head of the household
has studied till class V, Rs 67,371 in case s/he has studied till
class XII, and to Rs 105,285 in case the head of the household is a
graduate. Just 20 per cent of OBC households have graduates as
compared to 35 per cent for upper castes.

A recent study of Dalit villages in Uttar Pradesh by Devesh Kapur,
Chandra Bhan Prasad, Lant Pritchett and D. Shyam Babu confirms the
role urbanisation plays. In Azamgarh district, for instance, the study
found just 18.1 per cent of Dalit households lived in pucca houses in
1990, and this rose to 66.4 per cent in 2007. For Bulandshahr district
in western UP, the figures were 38.4 and 94.6 per cent respectively.
Ownership of television sets rose from 0.9 per cent to 22.2 per cent
in Azamgarh, and from 0.7 to 45 per cent in Bulandshahr. They found
similar changes for mobile phones, simple chairs in homes, fans and
even the use of shampoo, toothpaste and bottled hair oil. There are,
the authors say, several reasons for the change: the rise of Mayawati
could be one, as could economic reforms which led to greater
marketisation of the economy. One of the powerful reasons, the authors
conclude, is migration. While the eastern district of Azamgarh saw
dependence on family members who had migrated to urban areas rise from
14.5 per cent in 1990 to 50.5 per cent in 2007, Bulandshahr district
saw a much smaller rise. Compare this with the proportion of family
members living in the village, and this suggests that in Bulandshahr,
villagers were probably travelling out of the village for work in the
morning and returning the same day.

All of which would suggest the solution cannot be a uniform one. It
has to be education in some cases, urbanisation in some and
industrialisation in others. With over 75 per cent of ST households
having studied only till class X (38 per cent till just class V)
reservations in colleges are unlikely to be a solution, to cite one
instance. Affirmative action also poses a problem in terms of
implementation since 90 per cent of all ST households are in rural
areas.

In the case of Muslims, where the government hopes to fix things
through an Equal Opportunities Commission, it's worth keeping in mind
that nearly 90 per cent live in rural areas (64 per cent) and small
towns; Muslims have the highest proportion of households who are
self-employed in non-agricultural occupations (25.7 per cent versus
16.2 for Hindus) and the least who are salaried (13.1 per cent versus
18.8 per cent for all Hindus).

The moral of the story is that it's not so much about affirmative
action as it is about urbanisation, industrialisation and education.
Not that this is easy either. The agitation against land acquisition
in Uttar Pradesh shows the limits to the pace of urbanisation,
Niyamgiri and Singur does the same for industrialisation, and the
Right to Education Act, though wonderful in spirit, will end up
slowing the development of low-cost unrecognised private schools.

The writer is Opinion Editor, 'The Financial Express'
sunil.jain@expressindia.com


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[ZESTCaste] Man behind stir: UP builder

http://www.hindustantimes.com/Man-behind-stir-UP-builder/Article1-600215.aspx

Man behind stir: UP builder
Navneet Sharma, Hindustan Times

Chandigarh, September 15, 2010First Published: 00:39 IST(15/9/2010)
Last Updated: 00:41 IST(15/9/2010)

Violent protests by the Jats of Haryana, who are demanding reservation
in jobs and education, entered the second day on Tuesday. But few,
including most protestors, know much about Yashpal Malik, the man
leading the agitation. Once a property developer, Malik is now
national president of the All-India Jat Arakshan Samiti (AIJAS), which
is at the forefront of the quota stir. His outfit wants Jats to be
recognised as one of the Other Backward Castes (OBCs), so they too can
benefit from reservation across the country.

Malik, who hails from Muzzafarnagar in Uttar Pradesh and made it big
in the real estate business in Ghaziabad and adjoining areas, led
talks with a state government delegation to end the standoff triggered
by the death of a youth allegedly in police firing in Hisar district
on Monday.

"There is hardly anyone who knew him or had even heard about him here
before this. I also met him for the first time today," a Congress
leader, who was one of the negotiators, said.

The negotiations were held by Malik and some local leaders with the
state team comprising Haryana chief minister's political adviser Prof
Virender and former ministers Sampat Singh and Jai Prakash.

Malik told HT that AIJAS had planned peaceful demonstrations at 62
places in about a dozen states on Monday.

But the police, led by the local SP, started firing indiscriminately
at the protestors. One person was killed and the protest turned
violent.

"We ended the dharna after the government decided to take action
against the policemen and accepted all our 13 demands, including
declaring the youth killed in police firing a martyr. However, our
nationwide stir for OBC status will continue. There will be let up in
it," he said.

AIJAS had earlier threatened to disrupt the Commonwealth Games, to be
staged in Delhi during October, if their OBC status demand is not met.

The caste-based outfit is a breakaway group of All India Jat
Mahasabha, which is headed by wrestler and former MP Dara Singh.


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[ZESTCaste] Jat anger singes Haryana

 

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chandigarh/Jat-anger-singes-Haryana/articleshow/6556733.cms

Jat anger singes Haryana
Deepender Deswal & Bhaskar Mukherjee, Sep 15, 2010, 05.52am IST

HISAR: Haryana was on the boil on Tuesday with scores of vehicles, a
bank, a cotton ginning factory, a police post, among others, torched
in several towns of the state by agitating Jat community members
seeking reservation under Other Backward Caste ( OBC) category. Hisar
bore the brunt of the violent agitation and curfew had to be imposed
in the city even as the Army was called in to rein in the protesters.

Two protesters were killed while they were attempting to stop a goods
train at Uklana railway station in Jind district in the morning. This
triggered a violent reaction when protesters tried to set the railway
station on fire. The agitation also spread to Rohtak, Jind, Bhiwani,
Sirsa and Fatehabad with mobs blocking several roads connecting the
affected towns.

Violent protests were primarily sparked off on Tuesday after a Jat
youth was killed in police firing in Hisar in the wake of a clash
between Jat community members and police on Monday following a meeting
convened by All India Jat Sangarsh Samiti ( AIJSS) in Mayyar village
to press for their reservation demand.

Traffic on the Hisar- Delhi National Highway-10 was suspended. Mobs
torched a State Bank of India branch at Hisar Cantonment, building of
a cooperative bank in Agroha town and HP cotton mill as well as two
buses of the company.
A petrol pump, which was lying closed, was also damaged by the mob in
Hansi, police said, adding that an attempt had also been made by the
mob to set a petrol pump afire in Agroha.

A police post was torched at Bhiwani even as the protesters, at many
places in Hisar, Rohtak, Jind and Bhiwani districts, blocked most of
the highways and approach roads. The mob damaged a railway halt in
Kalwan village of Jind district and uprooted a rail track, burnt down
a railway room and also damaged a railway crossing.

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[ZESTCaste] Madiga seer to conduct padayatra

http://hindu.com/2010/09/15/stories/2010091560500300.htm

Karnataka - Mysore

Madiga seer to conduct padayatra

Special Correspondent

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

He will meet Pejawar Math seer at Krishnadhama tomorrow

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MYSORE: Maadara Channaiah Swami of Madiga community Gurupeetha in
Chitradurga will conduct padayatra in Brahmin colony of
Krishnamurthypuram in the city on Wednesday.

This is being viewed as a step towards ending caste conflict in society.

Pejawar Math seer visited Devaraj Urs Colony slum and Kailasapuram
Colony slum in the city recently.

He was accorded a rousing welcome by pourakarmikas and Dalits.

The seer also visited houses of pourakarmikas and addressed a meeting
on Pattaladamma temple premises and called upon people to shun
untouchability.

'Samarasya Vedike' is making all preparations to extend a warm welcome
to Maadara Channiah Swamiji. State convener of the vedike Vaadiraj
said the seer of Madiga community would be staying in the house of a
member of forum and perform puja.

He would meet Pejawar Math seer at Krishnadhama on Thursday morning
and discuss ways to eradicate untouchability.


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[ZESTCaste] Team confirms dalit exodus from Karnataka

 

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Team-confirms-dalit-exodus-from-Karnataka/articleshow/6556396.cms

Team confirms dalit exodus from Karnataka
Senthalir S, TNN, Sep 15, 2010, 03.13am IST

BANGALORE: The exodus of Madiga (Dalit) community from Budihalli
village in Chitradurga district Karnataka on August 18, 2010, was
mainly because of intense social boycott and continuing sexual
exploitation of its women by landowners belonging to the Nayaka and
Golla communities. This was stated by the fact-finding team comprising
women's organizations from Bangalore and Mysore, corroborating the
report of TOI (August 26, 2010) which first wrote about this horrific
event.

The team, comprising People's Union for Civil Liberties of Mysore and
Bangalore, Samata Vedike of Mysore, Stree Jagruthi Samithi and AIPWA
of Bangalore, visited Venkateshwaranagar slum outside Chellakere,
Chitradurga district on September 5, 2010. The report talks about how
members of the Madiga community served as bonded labourers to
landlords belonging to Nayaka and Golla community in Budihalli, a
small village, 30km from Chellakere town.

"There was untouchability practized in the village. Rape, sexual
harassment and social boycott are the primary reasons for the families
that forced them to abandon their villages. These dominant communities
have tried to reinforce sexual servitude of Madiga women with the
practice of bonded labour. When women refused to cooperate, they were
verbally abused, threatened with torching the huts or false
implications in theft cases," the report said.

The report, to be released on Wednesday, stated that district
officials denied that women were raped and sexually harassed and no
cases registered by women in this. A fact-finding committee of the
government visited Budihalli and submitted a report denying there was
an exodus.

Stating the report submitted by the DC was false, Geetha Menon of
Stree Jagruthi Samithi said they would bring the problems of the
Madiga women to the notice of the Karnataka State Commission for Women
and principal secy of women and child welfare department.

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