Admit It Or Not, Sengars Still Rule The Roost
Every time the media flashes news of brutality in the form of murder, rape, from different parts of the country it is more and more reminded that this country, especially its vast rural hinterland almost every day has a story to tell, a story of immense brutality and of crude violence, deeply entrenched within the backwardness of society. Starting from the rampant killing of the girl child to honour killing, dowry deaths, witch-hunt, sorcery and the unpunished, unquestioned rape, it's an incessant tale of tremendous oppression and violence of the dominant continuing behind the façade of a peaceful society
Domination plays a part in the form of crude violence at all levels, be it within the family, in bitter rivalries between the rich, powerful neighbours and of course of the feudal rural elites unleashed without any compassion for the masses. Times may have undoubtedly changed, but the rural elites-the powerful landlords and their variants in different forms with ownership of new businesses still rule the roost and society still carries with the remnants of feudal relations along with the feudal mindset and many of its oppressive, undemocratic system that has remained to the day.
Amidst such a scenario in the rural countryside, rapes are carried out with virtual impunity. Many a times as if it is a privilege of the upper caste hoodlums or the powerful, rich, who are the sections dominating the rural localities. Then the same rural milieu under the dominance of the rural elites, with still the starkly relegated, tremendously oppressed social position of women very much intact, even builds up the social pressure to cover it up. Many a times such a cover-up is done on the alibi of saving further humiliation of the woman's family, but actually to protect the so-called honour and status of the families of the accused-the perpetrators being most often from a well-off family belonging to the dominant section of the village. Thus although we may have been startled during the rally in support of the accused in Kathua but leaving aside its communal-nationalist overtones put forth in Kathua by the Sangh activists, it is nothing exceptional. As in many instances the people of the village rally in favour of the accused and their family. It is the influential section of the village, who gather on the alibi of saving the name of the village and the affected families. The victim's family is prevented from reporting the incident to the police. The police and the administration also help in hushing up the brutal humiliation. This is so because in spite of creeping changes, this is still the position of women in this society, part of the accepted social norm, particularly in the rural countryside. It is the reality of feudal patriarchal milieu that strongly prevails till now. That is why, after the gang-rape of a three months newly-wed woman in a village in Haryana - the father of the victim's daughter could say - "So many people have been coming and urging us to compromise ...when the respected people in the community ask for forgiveness, how can I be above that? We don't want to do anything wrong in the eyes of society and lose our place"[ In Rural India, Rapes are common, but Justice for Victims is not - Simon Denyer, January 8, 2013, The Washington Post]. The women in big cities are also target of oppression but there is at least the hue and cry as that erupted during the Nirbhaya rape incident. Even if not that much, at least the upper class families of Jessica Lal were ultimately able to get court judgements in their favour. In the villages the police, the courts, administration and the powers of state side with the influential perpetrators. It is violence, rape, maiming, oppression with fear instilled in the minds of the masses not to complain against it and justice almost never comes their way.
In fact nowadays many a times it comes to the mind that all of those Bollywood thrillers with their mercilessly brutal characters- the powerful elites, landlords of villages, who never end up in carrying out sinister bloody plans to torment and eliminate their adversaries are not mere fantasies but still very much part and parcel of real life. The Unnao rape and series of violence strengthens further that thinking. All indications pointed in that same direction when the devilish truck with blackened number plates rammed in crushing the car of the Unnao victims, which has been another black deed that jolted everyone in a series of violence in the case.
Unnao first came to limelight with its notoriety of another rape incident surrounded with uninhibited brutality and unfazed silence of the government authorities. It again proved that rape is a horrible expression of domination for the powerful. The girl was gang-raped for months but the police was not willing to record Kuldeep Singh Sengar, the powerful vidhayakji's name in the FIR. In spite of repeated appeals for justice to the CM and higher officials of the police there was no hearing for the victimized, until she tried to self-immolate in front of the CM's house. This is the democratic country we live in, where even after blatant violation of a woman the police and the government remains mum and refuses to accept the complaint against the powerful local lords.
But this is merely a glimpse of the series of heinous crimes. The father of the victim was thrashed and then arrested on accusation of possessing illegal arms. In jail he became ill but was not allowed by police to be removed to hospital, and died within police custody with torture marks. Even a witness of his death, a person named Yunus, suddenly died under mysterious circumstances and was buried hurriedly. Just before the latest incident of ramming a truck there has been regular threats to the family -" If you want to live, change your statement...". With the car 'accident' two more have died among whom the aunt has been an important witness, the advocate is in critical condition, the victim herself fighting for her life. Before this 'accident' this July 12 the survivor's mother, sister and aunt wrote to the Chief Justice of Supreme Court with copies to the Allahabad High Court, pleading for orders to the local police to take action on their complaints about threats. Even at the Supreme Court the letter didn't reach the Chief Justice and was wrapped up beneath files until he questioned the secretary general on finding that the newspapers reported before even his reading of the letter that he had read it. Doesn't it make up a pulsating dramatic crime thriller? The only difference being this is an actual sordid tale from reality. The victim and her family and advocate are being eliminated or rendered immobile by brutal acts through successive assaults. Unlike those hindi films the chances of the heroine to win this fight between the good and evil is becoming bleaker by the day. And there is no hero, the saviour also, in sight. After all this is a real life drama enacted not only by the powerful villain but also aided and connived in many ways at each step by a state that harbours such powerful, blood-suckers. The feudal satraps give a damn to the laws and the courts and before whom the police and the officials of administration, the ruling party are mere servants to protect their interests. The police, judiciary and bureaucracy, in short, the state machinery as a whole, at least at the local level, are connected by a thousand strings with them to serve them and cover-up their blatant deeds. There are many such Sengars who are the lords still in this country in this era of supposed democracy and equality of all citizens. Hence so many unending instances of blatant collusion of the state to protect such perpetrators. Because the perpetrator himself is an upper-caste, elite--a person with money, muscle-power and being part of the power structure as an MLA. Parties do not matter for him. He has been in Congress, then the BSP, the SP and now in the ruling dispensation of the state's BJP government. His wife is a zilla panchayat head. 18 years earlier the elder uncle of the raped girl stood as a candidate for the Pradhan's seat of the village against Kuldeep Sengar's mother. During that election there were also gun battles. Her elder uncle was beaten to death. It shows why till today no one dares to raise any question against the Sengars -the thakurs of Makhi village and surroundings. Democracy awakens the voices of the masses against violation on them but these are panic-stricken subjects of their local lord, who can only praise and sing hymns for him. His huge property, caste, status of MLA, owner of cold storages and brick-kilns, illegal sand-mining, and above all his clout as a big, rich owner of landed property, from where he started, maintains and spread his wings has been the source of power for him. Moreover Sengar being an MLA of the ruling BJP or any other ruling class party at the helm of power in the state, the state's interconnection is further bolstered, the state acting as the shelter for such feudal satraps in every case.
Dabangs, bahubalis we have heard of - in UP, Bihar even among the upper caste dominators in other states like Andhra - and this is a real picture of it. And they are not merely the likes of Pappu Yadav, Sahabuddin. The bada and chhote sarkars are numerous such local, powerful elites like Sengar who dominate the rural country-side and who budges not to unleash brutalism to any extent. Capitalism and with it democracy may have come in this country, but that democracy is very limited, curtailed and restricted-because there still remain the fiefdoms of the powerful, merciless elites in the villages and various parts of present-day society, on whose mercy and unilateral right to punish, torment and even maim the questioners and on whose diktats the masses in the villages live.
Didn't the brutal killings of poor tribals in Sonbhadra bring it before us starkly? There also the powerful landlords deprived the Gond tribals of their land, with the connivance of some government officials. And when the poor tribals demanded their right to the land, the army of the landlords started indiscriminate firing and killed leaving 10 people dead and 28 more injured. Did it shake up the rulers-the ruling party, the state? It was just another incident which has been passed over with the CM announcing compensations for the dead and unending, fruitless legal tangles. Was there any policy declaration by the government to admit of and adopting steps putting an end to this kind of brutal oppression generally for everywhere in the country, that is being repeatedly carried out by the elites on the poor masses in village after village?
Kuldeep Sengar's might and exhibition of power and heinousness is merely one example of it. The general malaise continues in society at large and the state has no answer for it. Once again it proves beyond any doubt that the powerful, the rural elite are part and parcel of the state, the ruling class. The officials of this state are very much in collusion to oppress and deprive the poor, and crush anyone, even like the Unnao rape victim's family from among their thakur brethren itself, who dare to compete and question. The society, this country is still steeped with violence, torture, torment in all its branches, structures amidst which the masses are used to live with. Only sometimes when such cases like Unnao reeking with its putrid smell spills over in front of the bigger arenas of democratic structure, the so-called modern world of this country living in the big cities, the so-called structures of democracy, fruitlessly seeking justice, it is only then that we are able to get a glimpse of this oppressive system still in existence. It is the distorted, stunted democracy in existence in this country that with its oppressive elites who still defy all laws and norms of modernity and justice that must be uprooted from their entrenchments. Democracy, justice cannot be there with such strata of utterly anti-democratic oppressive sections not only wielding their dominance but also with them being part of the state structure that protects and nurtures further their brutal ways and means.
Capitalism has kept these vestiges of the old and their representatives, the Sengars intact, maintaining the edifice of this fragmented, stunted democracy which stands on the continuous brutality and lack of rights inflicted on the masses. The Sengars are used by them to keep the masses oppressed and in subjugation in the midst of backwardness and meagre bouts of sops. To drive them out the capitalist state itself has to be demolished. The fight for thorough democratization of society must achieve that. Only the path to such a fight can awaken the masses against such tyranny.
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