Latest News Update: Jan 1, 2010

Friday, January 1, 2010

[ZESTCaste] Dalit girl’s gangrape has hung for 11 yrs on an MLA’s note

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/Dalit-girl-s-gangrape-has-hung-for-11-yrs-on-an-MLA-s-note/561767

Dalit girl's gangrape has hung for 11 yrs on an MLA's note

Parimal Dabhi Posted online: Thursday , Dec 31, 2009 at 0848 hrs
AHMEDABAD/VADODARA : She was a minor; her alleged assaulter a man with
clout. The police initially turned her away; while a decade later, her
case is still on in courts. And while Ruchika Girhotra's tragic story
may have got the nation's and government's ear, no one remembers the
then 13-year-old Dalit girl who was allegedly gangraped on the night
of the Dhuleti festival, a day after Holi, in a Vadodara village by an
MLA's relative and a friend of his.

In the 11 years since, the case is still at a stage where the
witnesses are to be examined. Her grandfather has had to sell most of
his land in the court battle, while the girl herself is now married to
a local youth and has two children.

As for Khumansinh Chauhan, on whose official letterhead a handwritten
note was sent to the police sub-inspector concerned over the case (a
copy of which is with The Indian Express), he continues to be the
Congress MLA from Savli.

On the night of March 13, 1998, the girl from Mokshi village was
reportedly abducted fom her home by Ramesh Baria and his friend,
gangraped and found abandoned and bleeding near the village pond the
next morning. Her grandfather Vashram Vankar had just stepped out,
leaving her alone (her parents having split, she was being raised by
Vashram).

"We took her to the police outpost, but they told us to go to the
Bhadarva Police Station. The Bhadarva police did not register a case,
and told us to take her to hospital for medical examination," Vankar
says.

At the SSG Hospital, the doctors initially thought that the girl, who
was in deep shock, was mentally challenged, and referred her to the
Vadodara Hospital for Mental Health. The doctors there realised she
had been raped and sent her back. A medical examination confirmed
rape.

It took four days for the police to register a complaint. "When the
police kept delaying, we met the then Vadodara Superintendent of
Police, but he accused us of making up the case to extort money," says
Vankar.

The police finally relented after Vankar moved the Gujarat High Court.
The family believes the note on Chauhan's letterhead that was
hand-delivered to the Bhadarva Police Station on March 14, 1998, even
before the grandfather had reached there with the rape complaint, was
behind the police delay.

The letter, signed by Chauhan, says the person delivering it was known
to him: "Virendra B Solanki is from Mokshi. He is a personal supporter
of mine, I had introduced him to you earlier too. His is the issue
concerning the rape case. I know this issue. So, it is my
recommendation that you too understand the issue as he will tell you,
and do the needful."

Chauhan claims his letterhead may have been "misused" by someone and
that he doesn't know anybody by the name of Ramesh Baria. "I routinely
give many recommendation letters, but I don't recall giving any such
letter," he told The Indian Express. "I would never do that, not in a
serious case like rape."

Valjibhai Patel, secretary of the Council for Social Justice, which
took up the issue, says Chauhan isn't telling the truth. "Baria was
definitely a relative on his maternal side," he says.

The police were just the first stumbling block. At every stage, the
Vankars met delay, callousness and apathy:

* Police take a month to submit a chargesheet before the local
Sessions Court, on April 25, 1998, naming Baria and accomplice Ramesh
Vankar.

* A year later, on April 14, 1999, the Additional Sessions Judge
refers the case to the Lok Adalat, deciding that the gangrape of a
minor was a fit case to try for an amicable "compromise". The girl's
family doesn't agree.

* Eight more years would pass, until May 30, 2007, before the court,
which had by then completed the entire trial proceedings, would
realise that proper procedure was not followed in submitting the
chargesheet and that it was submitted directly to the Sessions Court
instead of the court of the Judicial First Class Magistrate (JFMC),
which could have committed it to the Sessions Court. The case papers
were sent back to the Investigating Officer, who was told to submit
those to the JFMC court.

* Police would take five months, till October 9, 2007, to submit the
case to the Magistrate.

* As things stand, the Sessions Court is to conduct "further hearing"
in the case on January 23, 2010.

Says former Gujarat High Court judge Justice S M Soni: "A case so
serious as rape cannot go to the Lok Adalat. The court should not have
done that. As for sending it back to the Investigating Officer after
the trial was almost over, the court could have found some way to
rectify the error instead of following mere official formality."

Vashram Vankar, who is in his late 70s now, and the girl's maternal
uncle Suresh Vankar say they are determined to fight on. "We were
offered Rs 50,000 by relatives of the accused... We refused," says
Suresh.

"I wish someone understood our pain," adds the grandfather. "Our only
relief is she has settled down with a loving husband and in-laws, who
do not object to her appearing in court to fight for justice."

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

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[ZESTCaste] Witch tag only on dalits and minorities in Nepal

http://southasia.oneworld.net/fromthegrassroots/witch-tag-only-on-dalits-and-minorities-in-nepal

Witch tag only on dalits and minorities in Nepal

Mallika Aryal
30 December 2009

In Nepal's Lalitpur district, a 46-year old dalit woman was
mercilessly beaten up for being a 'witch'. Activists say it is a shame
that people, particularly women from dalit and minority communities,
are tortured and treated with such disdain that they are forced to eat
their own excreta.

The headmistress of a local school along with a local shaman accused
Kalli Kumari, 46, resident of Thasingtole village, just 40 kms away
from the capital Kathmandu, of practicing witchcraft and tortured her
for two days.

"They kept hitting my head and my bruises. They fed human excreta and
then they took a blade out and started cutting my skin. I couldn't
bear it anymore and was forced to admit that that I am a witch so they
would stop giving me so much pain," said B.K. in a public forum here
in Kathmandu.

They let her go when she accepted that it was because of her that the
village cattle was dying and signed a paper, which said that if any
more animals died it was her responsibility.

After being freed, she rushed to the police and filed a complaint at
the area police office. For days the administration did nothing. After
pressure from local rights group the police finally apprehended the
local headmistress.

However, the accused was let off after she paid a fine. Now she has
been reinstated at the school and lives in the same village as B.K. "I
live in fear, the people who tortured me are still in this village,
what if they come at night and take me away again?" said B.K.

In Sunsari, 650 km south-east of Kathmandu, Jabrun Khatun, 26 was
dragged out of her house and beaten in the middle of the village.
"They said I was a witch, that because of me a lot of children were
falling sick and beat me for hours. Then they stepped on my chest and
forced me to eat human excreta," said Khatun.

They imprisoned her for days until local children let her out. She was
all alone in the family as her husband had recently left to work in
neighbouring India. "I have come all the way to Kathmandu looking for
justice," said Khatun.

In Kalilali, far west Nepal, Jugu Kumari Chaudhari was accused of
practicing witch-craft when a close family member died. Chaudhari was
beaten up and her husband had to come rescue her. "We went to the
police station to file a complaint but they said it was a personal
matter and we should resolve in the community," said Chaudhari.

Fighting against the scourge

Gender activists have been fighting for years to end this extreme form
of violence against women, but the problem is still common in the
Tarai, the southern plains of Nepal, and in areas where there's high
illiteracy and poverty.

"An educated woman from higher-income family and higher caste never
gets accused of practicing witchcraft," said Indu Pant, gender advisor
at CARE Nepal. Urmila Bishwakarma of the Dalit media group Jagaran
Media Centre has been documenting cases of Dalit women who have been
accused as witches and tortured. She said that dalit and other
minority women are the most vulnerable because they are socially,
culturally, financially and politically backward.

Pant says that the problem is exacerbated because the state is often
missing in these regions, so the victims have nowhere to go for help.
"Even when they try to seek help from the police they are often turned
back because the police says it is a personal matter and must be
solved in the community. This culture of impunity lets the
perpetrators off the hook."

Spokesperson of the Supreme Court Sri Kanta Poudel said that there is
a legal vacuum when it comes to punishing those who are involved in
such crimes. "There are no provisions of compensation or reintegration
of the victims into the society, that is the weakness of our justice
system," admits Poudel.

'Our great shame'

Human rights activists like Kapil Shrestha say that it is our great
shame that in this day and age, we are still indulging in beating
women up, feeding them human excreta, torturing them until they have
no self-confidence, treating them like animals. He adds that by saying
we do not have laws to punish those who are involved in the witch-hunt
is irresponsible.

"We are a party to CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination on all forms
of Discrimination Against Women), which has strict provisions against
gender-based violence," said Shrestha adding, "we may not have
designed our laws according to the convention but once a country
ratifies an international convention we have an obligation to follow
their provisions."

Bishwakarma of Jagaran Media Centre says that if the state is really
serious about addressing this problem strict laws need to be devised
and implemented so that no perpetrator gets away.

"The government announced that Nepal is untouchability free but that
is not enough," he said, "Translate the words into actions, make laws,
and implement them properly so that this extreme form of violence
against women stop."

Bishwakarma said that the state must immediately look into proper ways
of rehabilitating those who have been accused and tortured as witches.

"It is wrong to expect victims like Kalli B.K. to live in the same
community as the perpetrator – isn't it the state's responsibility to
make every citizen feel safe, so why is Kalli still scared that those
who tortured her are going to come back?"

In the long-run, Bishwakarma said that the state must ensure that
there's representation of the hitherto backward community in
decision-making levels so that these issues are addressed in
policy-making levels as well. Activist Shrestha said massive education
programmes need to be launched in the areas where this practice is
prevalent.

"This needs to be our curriculum so that children learn early on about
superstitions, it must be included in police training manuals, and the
organisations need to move out of the urban areas into the field and
work with communities. It is about changing the behaviour and mindset
of our society and it may take some time and it is definitely not
going to be easy," said Shrestha.

Source : IPS

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

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[ZESTCaste] India's women go to war against alcohol abuse

http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091231/FOREIGN/712309877/1002/foreign

India's women go to war against alcohol abuse

Shaikh Azizur Rahman, Foreign Correspondent

* Last Updated: December 31. 2009 2:11PM UAE / December 31. 2009 10:11AM GMT

Roshni Devi and her alcohol resistance group with Brijesh Kumar, a
former drinker and wife beater. Shaikh Azizur Rahman

KOTHAL KHURD // Brijesh Kumar used to spend half of his daily wage
each night on alcohol. When his wife asked for money for food and
household expenses, he beat her.

Unable to bear the abuse, Munni Devi would stay away from her house
for hours in the evening until her husband fell asleep. This routine
continued for more than two decades.

"But four years ago, when Roshni Devi organised the women in action
against our village's drunkards, my husband was forced to stop taking
alcohol," said Ms Devi, a 40-year-old resident of Kothal Khurd village
in Haryana's Mahendragarh district.

"I had never dreamt that any power could correct my husband and peace
could ever return to my family."

She was referring to Roshni Devi, the village chief who led a
successful anti-alcohol campaign. In July, India's president, Pratibha
Patil, invited Roshni Devi, a Dalit, or low caste, Hindu woman to her
residence in Delhi and said that her movement's achievement proved
that the "most difficult of challenges in society can be overcome with
courage, dedication and confidence".

In most of Haryana's villages many day labourers are alcoholics who
squander most of their earnings on drink, leaving their wives,
children and families to fend for themselves, according to the
anti-alcohol campaigners.

In Kothal Khurd, about 20 per cent of the village's 415 Hindu families
are headed by Dalit men who work as day labourers on farms, and almost
one quarter of them were alcoholics just a few years ago, according to
Mr Kumar, who has turned to helping campaign against drink. "At least
one third of the men in our [Dalit] community took alcohol every day,
in the evening. As it happened in my case, the families suffered badly
in all terms and many incurred bad debts. With men spending more than
half of their wage on alcohol bottles, little money would be left for
their families and the situation forced the women to go to work and
children to drop out of the schools," Mr Kumar said. "Alcohol was
sending all of us on the path to ruin."

But the situation began changing in Kothal Khurd in 2005 when Roshni
Devi took a vow to eradicate alcoholism from her village and organised
the women to fight off the menace.

Ms Devi, the only Dalit university graduate from the village and a
mother of two sons, listened to the women speak of their sufferings
and told them that they could help their husbands shun alcohol if they
collectively stood up to them.

Hoping to add more political muscle to her movement, in 2005 Ms Devi
contested the local Panchayat, or village administration, elections
for the seat of sarpanch, or head of the administration, newly
reserved for a Dalit candidate. Because of her fight against
alcoholism, she was so popular among women and non-drinking men that
she polled more votes than all nine of her Dalit male opponents
combined.

However, Ms Devi's election did not go down well with everyone in the
Hindu-majority village. "On the first day as I held my office as the
sarpanch, some upper-caste men said they could not accept the
authority of a woman in the village. When I said that I would do my
best to empower the women and strengthen the movement against
alcoholism, a drunken man pulled me out of my office in the presence
of other men," Ms Devi said.

"But by trying to humiliate me that way, in fact they emboldened me
further on my key mission against alcohol."

Ms Devi was soon able to help enact a resolution seeking the closure
of the liquor shops within 1km of the village. This led to three such
stores being shut down.

But because some Kothal Khurd men still managed to obtain liquor at
far-off shops and return home drunk, Ms Devi's group formed teams made
up of Dalit as well as upper-caste women to confront the drunkards in
the village.

"We caught many drunken men and abused them publicly for taking
alcohol despite our repeated appeals to stay away from drinking. In
some cases we even assaulted some men who tried to abuse us," said Ram
Kali Devi, wife of a day wage labourer who was forced to quit his
10-year drinking habit in 2005 after Roshni Devi launched her
movement.

"Soon, as a number of alcohol users began dwindling in our village, we
knew that our action was working," she said. "All families in Kothal
Khurd are in peace because alcohol is not a hurdle on its development
any more."

In other Indian states alcoholism is also often blamed for domestic
violence and poverty. Sometimes women, mostly wives of alcoholics,
have formed groups that have forced alcohol shops to close.

However, according to Shivtaj Singh, a local social activist and
professor at the government college in the nearby town of Narnaul, "In
nearly all cases the women-led prohibition movements finally failed
because they did not get the necessary support from local police.

"Police get bribes from such illegal liquor shops on a regular basis.
If these shops are stopped they will lose their cuts. So police never
take action against such mushrooming bars," he said.

"Roshni Devi has succeeded in her movement against alcohol addicts in
her village because she spearheaded the movement while being the
sarpanch of the village. Administrative officials supported her and so
police were forced to shut down the liquor shops around Kothal Khurd."

The success of the Kothal Khurd movement has spurred women in about 20
of Haryana's villages to set up alcohol resistance groups.

"Only the collective resistance by women can put a halt to their men's
drinking habits," Roshni Devi said. "On our successful mission we have
also discovered that women too can wield power and can enforce
positive changes in a society."

foreign.desk@thenational.ae

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

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[ZESTCaste] Fwd: Doctrine of Universal Emptiness

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Shiva Shankar <sshankar@cmi.ac.in>
Date: Fri, Jan 1, 2010 at 1:21 PM
Subject: Doctrine of Universal Emptiness
To:

'... Nagarjuna utterly rejects the idea that his arguments, or any
other philosophical affirmation, are valid because of a foundation
that exists outside of, or beyond, language. ...'

From: Mircea Eliade - A History of Religious Ideas, volume 2: From
Gautama Buddha to the Triumph of Christianity.

Section 189. Nagarjuna and the doctrine of universal emptiness.

... As we have observed, the goal of these doctrinal elaborations and
mythological constructions that are characteristic of the Mahayana is
to make salvation easier for laymen. By accepting and integrating a
certain number of Hindu elements, whether 'popular' (cults, bhakti,
etc.) or learned, the Mahayana renewed and enriched the Buddhist
heritage, though without thereby betraying it. Indeed, the doctrine of
universal emptiness (shunyatavada), elaborated by the genius of
Nagarjuna (second century A.D.) was also known by the name 'the
doctrine of the middle', corresponding to the 'middle way' preached by
the Buddha. Certainly, as if to balance the tendency toward
'easiness', evident in Mahayanist devotion, the doctrine of emptiness
(shunyatavada) stands out by its philosophical depth and difficulty.

Nagarjuna's Indian adversaries, and some Western scholars, have
declared that the shunyatavada is a nihilistic philosophy, since it
appears to deny the fundamental doctrines of Buddhism. In reality, it
is an ontology, paralleled by a soteriology, that seeks to free itself
from the illusory structures that are dependent on language; so the
shunyatavada employs a paradoxical dialectic that ends in the
coincidentia oppositorum, which in a way suggests Nicholas of Cusa, an
aspect of Hegel, and Wittgenstein. Nagarjuna criticizes and rejects
any philosophical system by demonstrating the impossibility of
expressing ultimate truth (paramarthata) by language. First of all, he
points out that there are two kinds of 'truths': truths that are
conventional or 'hidden in the world', which have their practical use,
and ultimate truth, which alone can lead to deliverance. The
Abhidharma, which claims to convey 'high learning', really works with
conventional knowledge. What is worse, the Abhidharma obscures the way
to deliverance with its countless definitions and categories of
existences (as, for example, skandhas, dhatus, etc.), which are
basically only products of the imagination. Nagarjuna sets out to
liberate, and rightly direct, the mental energies trapped in the net
of discourse.

From a demonstration of the emptiness, that is, the nonreality, of
everything that seems to exist or can be felt, thought, or imagined,
several conclusions follow. The first is that all the famous formulas
of the old Buddhism, as well as their systematic redefinitions by
Abhidharma authors, prove to be false. Thus, for example, the three
stages of the production of things - 'origin', 'duration', 'cessation'
- do not exist; and equally nonexistent are the skandhas, the
irreducible elements (dhatus), and desire, the subject of desire, and
the situation of the person who desires. They do not exist because
they possess no nature of their own. Karman itself is a mental
construction, for there is neither 'act' nor 'actor', properly
speaking. Nagarjuna likewise denies the difference between the 'world
of composites' (samskrta) and the 'unconditioned' (asamskrta). 'From
the point of view of ultimate truth, the notion on impermanence
(anitya) cannot be considered more true than the notion of permanence'
(Mulamadhyamaka Karika 23. 13, 14). As for the famous law of
'conditioned coproduction' (pratitya-samutpada), it is useful only
from the practical point of view. In reality, 'conditioned
coproduction - we call it shunya, empty' (ibid., 24. 18). So too, the
Four Holy Truths proclaimed by the Buddha have no nature of their own;
they are merely conventional truths, which can serve only on the plane
of language.

The second consequence is even more radical: Nagarjuna denies the
distinction between 'him who is bound' and 'the delivered one' and,
consequently, the distinction between samsara and nirvana. 'There is
nothing that differentiates samsara from nirvana' (ibid., 25. 19).
This does not mean that the world (samsara) and deliverance (nirvana)
are 'the same thing'; it means only that they are undifferentiated.
Nirvana is a 'fabrication of the mind'. In other words, from the point
of view of ultimate truth, the Buddha himself does not enjoy an
autonomous and valid ontological condition.

Finally, the third consequence of universal emptiness is the basis for
one of the most original ontological creations known to the history of
thought. Everything is 'empty', without any 'nature of its own'; yet
it must not be inferred from this that there is an 'absolute essence'
to which shunyata (or nirvana) refers. When it is said that
'emptiness', shunyata, is inexpressible, inconceivable, and
indescribable, there is no implication that there is in existence a
'transcendent reality' characterized by these attributes. Ultimate
truth does not unveil an 'absolute' of the Vedanta type; it is the
mode of existence discovered by the adept when he obtains complete
indifference towards 'things' and their cessation. The 'realization',
by thought, of universal emptiness is, in fact, equivalent to
deliverance. But he who attains nirvana cannot 'know' it, for
emptiness transcends both being and nonbeing. Wisdom (prajna) reveals
ultimate truth by making use of the 'truth hidden in the world': the
latter is not rejected but is transformed into 'truth that does not
itself exist'.

Nagarjuna refuses to consider the shunyatavada a 'philosophy'; it is a
practice, at one dialectical and contemplative, which, by ridding the
adept of every theoretical construction not only of the world but of
slavation, enables him to obtain imperturbable serenity and freedom.
Nagarjuna utterly rejects the idea that his arguments, or any other
philosophical affirmation, are valid because of a foundation that
exists outside of or beyond language. One cannot say of shunyata that
it exists or that it does not exist or that it exists and at the same
time does not exist etc. To the critics who observe, 'If all is empty,
then Nagarjuna's negation is likewise an empty proposition', he
replies that his adversaries' affirmations as well as his negations
have no autonomous existence: they exist only on the plane of
conventional truth (Mulamadh. 24. 29).

Buddhism, as well as Indian philosophical thought in general, was
changed profoundly after Nagarjuna, though the change was not
immediately evident. Nagarjuna carried to the extreme limit the innate
tendency of the Indian spirit toward coincdentia oppositorum.
Nevertheless, he succeeded in showing that the career of the
boddhisattva retains all its greatness despite the fact that 'all is
empty'. And the ideal of the boddhisattva continued to inspire charity
and altruism ...

References:

1. Frederick J. Streng - Emptiness: A Study in Religious Meaning,
(Nashville, 1967).

2. F.I.Stcherbatsky - The Conception of Buddhist Nirvana, (Leningrad, 1927).

3. T.R.V.Murti - The Central Philosophy of Buddhism, (London, 1955).

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Friday, January 1, 2010

[ZESTCaste] Dalit girl’s gangrape has hung for 11 yrs on an MLA’s note

[ZESTCaste] Witch tag only on dalits and minorities in Nepal

[ZESTCaste] India's women go to war against alcohol abuse

[ZESTCaste] Fwd: Doctrine of Universal Emptiness

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