harelb@cabot.dartmouth.edu (Harel Barzilai) (06/10/91)
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From: Sandeep Vaidya <sandeep@tuna.cs.fau.edu>
Date: Sat, 8 Jun 91 23:00:13 EDT
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Recently sombody expressed interst in issues concerning India.
This special report appeared in the April 10, 1991 issue of INDIA TODAY,
published from Delhi. It describes in graphic detail the plight of three
teens who went against the code of apartheid which governs most of rural
India. This article was written for Indian readers and I will be glad to
answers any questions.
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MEHRANA
Medieval Murders
By W. P. S. Sidhu
FIVE HUNDRED VILLAGERS WATCHED SILENTLY
AS THREE YOUNG PEOPLE WERE LYNCHED FOR
DEFYING THE CASTE SYSTEM
Hands grabbed the ropes and pulled. Once. Twice. Thrice. The cries of
three young people pleading for mercy pierced the still morning air for
the last time. The three bodies-0ne of them stark naked- dangled under
the bunyan tree. The rope around their necks squeezed the life out of
them. Slowly. Agonizingly
For the 500-odd villagers of Mehrana near Mathura (160 Km
south-east of New Delhi), the barbaric version of justice was
witnessed in mute and uncomplaining silence. The 'tamasha' began at 8
a.m., soon after the panchyat (local government) passed judgment
against the so-called offenders. The two Jatav (Harijan) boys and a
teenage Jat (high caste) girl were found guilty. Their crime ? Defying
the hide-bound rules of the caste system. Their punishment ? Death by
hanging.
While the key members of the pachcyat, charged with meting out
this sadistic sentence are now behind bars, the lynchings will
go in the annals of the country's social history for its throwback to
medieval horrors-shades of Roop Kanwar became 'sati' (widow burning)
three and a half years ago.
What makes the murders particularly shocking is that they occurred in a
village with all the trappings of modernity, just 160 Km south-east of
the Indian capital, Delhi. Mehrana has good roads, running water,
electricity, televisions, and tractors. Adds Mathura's Superintendent of
Police V. K. Gupta: "There has been no history of cast conflicts in the
village." But all this has changed. Following the hangings and the
filing of the First Information Report (FIR) by Amir Chand, a Jatav,
against 37 Jat members of the panchyat, the caste divide in the village
has become venomous. Most of the Jats have fled.
The cause of the whole cataclysm was a relationship between a
Jatav boy and a Jat girl, between a fashion conscious 18-year-old
unemployed boy, Brijendra and Roshni, the impish, illiterate 16 year old
daughter of Jat landowner Ganga Ram. It began a year back when Brijendra
worked as a labourer on Ganga Ram's fields. Roshni was working on the
fields at the same time. A romance bloomed. Roshni, the villagers say,
was no beauty, but was known to have had a liaison with her Jat
neighbour Shyam, before his marriage.
Around Holi (a festival), she and Brijendra eloped with the help
of another jatav boy, 22 year old Ram Kishen. Roshni's father,
meanwhile, scoured the neighbouring villages for his daughter, vowing to
teach her a lesson she would never forget. Roshni's escapade was all the
more infuriating for him because her marriage had already been arranged
with the son of a wealthy landowner. On March 25, Mangtu Ram 'Pehlwan',
one of the most affluent Jats in Mehrana, had organised a community
feast as part of the death rite of his mother. Jats from 17 neighbouring
villages drove into Mehrana on more than a 100 tractors. Unaware that
they had been spotted, the trio slipped into the village and separately
returned to their respective homes. Ganga Ram and the other Fats did not
raise the issue that day. They feared their 'izzat' (dignity) would be
compromised if the subject was brought up in front of the visit Jats.
The next evening, after the last guests had departed, prominent
Jats, including Naval Singh, the village panchyat Chief, congregated at
the house of Mangtu Pehlwan to discuss the Roshni-Brijendra scandal.
Upto now, the village, which is dominated by about 250 Jat families, had
witnessed little conflict with the 130 odd Jatav families. Both
communities were interdependent, with the richer Jats hiring the Jatavs
as labourers on their farms. The ancient but unwritten code, programmed
into everyone's genes, however, was that the Jatavs were subservient and
inferior to the Jats.
The Jats decided that the punishment would have to be so severe
that no Jatav would ever again dare to over-reach himself. Around 10
p.m., the Jats summoned Brijendra and Ram Kishen, along with their
fathers and brothers. Roshni, along with her father and brother was also
called. The Jats began their inquisition. According to the FIR, Roshni
was adamant: "I will stay with Brijendra.". This was blasphemous to
everyone including Roshni's mother. Asked a week later whether it would
not have been better to let Roshni continue her relationship rather than
kill her, the expression on Vesana Devi's face changed from sorrow to
fury: "A Jat girl marry a Harijan ! This may happen in towns but not
here. Here only a zamindar (landowner) will marry a zamindar." On that
fateful night, Roshni's courageous stand served only to inflame the
passions of the Jats and to seal her fate.
Brijendra, it seems was equally unrepentant. When his father
broke down and admitted his son's guilt, eyewitnesses say he was equally
defiant and determined to marry Roshni. Such defiance from a Jatav sent
the Jats into apoplectic rage. Eventually, Roshni and her father were
sent home but the Jatav families were told to remain. Then the
bestiality began. According to the FIR, five Jat men tortured the two
boys mercilessly that night. First they were kicked and beaten with
sticks. Then they were striped naked and ropes tied around their ankles.
The two youth were hung upside down and the soles of their feet, their
legs, and buttocks were repeatedly hit with sticks. They screamed with
pain but refused to repent. When this had gone on for well over three
hours and there were still no signs of remorse, the torturers refined
their techniques.
One of them brought a stick, tied a kerosene-soaked cloth to it
and lit it. The tourch was pushed into the mouths of the boys as
they hung upside down. Their lips puckered and melted. The whole village
must have heard their scream but no one came forward to protest at the
inhumanity. Their caste pride still not appeased, the Jats then moved
the tourch from the boys' mouths to their genitials. And only when
Brijendra and Ram Kishen became unconscious did the torture stop. At this
juncture, the Jats decided to call an impromptu panchyat at the village
'chaupal.' Their aim was to use the panchyat to issue a verdict which
would be binding on all villagers including the Jatavs. The summoning
the panchyat was merely to provide them with a fig-leaf of legitimacy.
The semi-conscious boys were dragged to the site. Four Jatav members of
the panchyat were pulled out of their homes in the early hours of March
27 and forced to participate in the proceedings, dominated by Jats.
Sixty-five year old Parmi, one of the Jatavs present, recalls:
"We were there but we were not allowed to have our say. When we tried
to, we were beaten down." The sham panchyat finally decided that the
three "accused" should be hanged by their own parents. The Jatav
families were coerced into complying through threats and violence from
the Jats. However, Roshni's father, Ganga Ram, gave his consent to
the verdict against his daughter. Roshni, Brijendra, and Ram Kishen
were dragged to the village banyan tree. The local priest made a
feeble appeal against such mob madness but no one in the 500 strong
crowd paid him any attention. When the boys' fathers recoiled from
putting the noose around their necks, they were "persuaded" to obey by
the blow of sticks. It was a clumsy hanging. Only Ram Kishen died
quickly. The two lovers died a slow, painful death. The mob then
dragged bodies to a nearby cremation ground and set them on fire
before retiring to their homes. The Jatav families were much too
frightened to go to the police post at Barsana, situated around 20 Km
away, to report the murders. In fact, it was a passer-by who informed
the police of the gruesome incident. Among the 15 people arrested were
Ganga Ram and Roshni's brother, Pappu.
Why did the villagers, particularly the Jats, call a panchyat
instead of going to the police ? Vesana Devi's answer is a typical one,
"In villages the panchyat does all the work and takes all the decisions.
We only go to police when nothing else has worked." She also defends the
decision of the panchyat to kill her daughter: "Once we went to the
panchyat for a verdict, we had to abide by it."
Even though the principle culprits have now surrendered and the
case has entered the domain of the law, there is still profound
anxiety amongst the Jatavs about their future. They dread the day the
police, brought in after the murders, leave the village and the Jats
return. Says Puran Singh, a Jatav tailor: "Once they come back we will
have to leave the village. How can a man possibly stand before a
mountain and challenge it ?" No doubt the due process of law will
impose suitable punishment on the men who, in defence of their caste
pride, forgot their humanity. Mehrana itself will take a long time to
recover from the collective memory of the whole nightmare. So, too,
will the wounded psyche of the Jatavs. As for people outside Mehrana,
it was a tragic reminder that the country's villages continue to be
steeped in the medieval obsession of caste, which no amount of
"modernity" can erode.
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People have asked several times about copyright; in this case I did.
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From: Sandeep Vaidya <sandeep@tuna.cs.fau.edu>
Subject: India Article
To: harelb@cabot.dartmouth.edu (Harel Barzilai)
Date: Sun, 9 Jun 91 14:29:15 EDT
> I am concerned about one question: do you have permission to
> reproduce the article? The alternative press is very mellow about
> this, and some, like Z maagazine, we even know their exact
> policy on when and how it's ok, but I don't know anything about
> India Today's policy...please let me know if you can
The copyright page of India Today only says "All Rights reserved."
But I am a member of India's on of th emost active Civil Liberties
groups and we HAVE used several reports from that periodical in our
newsletters and reports. We only mention the source. We do not even
ask them ! No problem so far !
I have some friends working for that periodical and I think they won't
really mind you useing it now. --
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I don't have _India Today_'s address and subscription information, but
I'm sure Sandeep could provide that information by email to anyone
interested. --Harel