. Since the daylight shallow the darkness, Please Write articles to take the intellectual from apathetically approach towards rectification of prevailing maladies as to wake up Yogesh Kumar Saxena, Advocate, High Court Allahabad (India) e mail Address yogrekha@yahoo.co.in or yogrekha@rediffmail.com Phone:- 91/ 0532/637720/2436451, Mobile:- 9415284843
To paraphrase the well-known saying, the last refuge of the profiteer is patriotism. But what if patriotism is, in a given situation, the most profitable of options? What if patriotism paid? Wouldn't it be a foolish and eventually pauperised profiteer who in such a scenario did not make patriotism his first resort rather than his last?
According to the Swiss Banking Association Report 2006, dishonest (and unpatriotic) Indians have stashed away some $1,456 billion in numbered Swiss bank accounts. If the report is to be believed, Indians have more clandestine loot hidden away in foreign accounts than all the rest of the world combined. This suggests that, far from being a poor country as we've always been taught by our net as to believe, India is in fact a very rich country. Except that its wealth, instead of being kept in India, has been taken outside India.
Compared with India's $1,456 billion, Russia comes a poor second with $470 billion, followed by the UK ($390 billion), Ukraine ($100 billion) and China ($96 billion). These figures, which are four years out of date, relate only to Swiss banks, and do not take into account other offshore tax havens such as the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands which offer similar facilities for the parking of undeclared wealth.
It has been estimated that if the Indian money kept abroad only in Swiss accounts were to be brought back to India, the country's entire foreign debt would be wiped out 13 times over. The foreign debt repaid, the interest earned on the residual amount would reportedly be more than the central budget. You wouldn't have to pay taxes. Every poor person in the country could be given a lakh of rupees.
But why would this huge hoard of undeclared boodle be brought back to India? For reasons of pure patriotism? Certainly not. But what about reasons of profitable patriotism? Now that makes more sense.
The reason that all this wealth was secreted out of the country by politicians, industrialists, businessmen, racketeers, smugglers was that the regulation-strangulated Indian economy did not inspire confidence in anyone, least of all in much of the political leadership whose (deliberately?) misguided policies had made the country economically weak to begin with.
It was deemed to be prudent to keep cash assets in the form of hard currency rather than in the lowly avatar of the despised and worthless Indian rupee. Economic patriotism very definitely did not pay.
But does the same situation obtain today, when the so-called 'advanced' economies by and large are in terrible shape, thanks to their own greed and spendthrift ways which have resulted in enormous and unsustainable accumulations of sovereign debt? Following the subprime crisis in the US, which unleashed a global financial tsunami from which the international economic order will take a long while to recover, Europe has been hit with an epidemic of 'Euroflu' as a result of fiscal mismanagement in the euro zone which has led Greece into virtual bankruptcy and is also threatening Spain and Portugal.
Increasingly, the so-called 'advanced' economies of the world including Japan, which also seems to be on the brink of a sovereign debt trap don't look so advanced anymore. The two big growth centres of the world today as we keep being told over and over again are India and China. In this context, wouldn't it make both patriotic and more importantly profitable sense for India's offshore riches to find their way back to India, instead of remaining in what looks to be an increasingly dangerous economic war zone?
The Underworld of India. In this notquite- scholarly treatise, MacMunn rambles at length about all that he found dark and dreaded while on his tour of duty in India. In a chapter titled “Criminal Tribes and Classes,” MacMunn wrote: “They are absolutely the scum, the flotsam and jetsam of Indian life, of no more regard than the beasts of the field.” Sprinkled through the rest of the chapter are several other references to such tribes, all as derogatory. The Chantichors (“bundle-stealers”) are all “feckless and unstable.” Harnis have a “gift for humbugging the world.” Ramoshis were employed by the British as watchmen, but such a watchman “is always an incorrigible pander, being prepared to produce ladies of the flimsiest virtue at the shortest notice.” Vanjari women are “bright and comely [with] wellmoulded breasts,” and are “adept no doubt in venery.” In fact, MacMunn makes it a point to comment on the women of nearly every tribe. He mentions: all are invariably “comely” yet “hopelessly immoral.” (MacMunn also has an astonishing tendency to refer to women as “baggages”, but I’ll let that pass). In 1871, the British passed the “Criminal Tribes Act.” It notified about 150 tribes around India as criminal, giving the police wide powers to arrest them and monitor their movements. The effect of this law was simple: just being born into one of those 150 tribes made you a criminal.
As T.V. Stephens, a British official of the time, said while introducing the Bill that became the Act: “... people from time immemorial have been pursuing the caste system defined job-positions: weaving, carpentry and such were hereditary jobs. So there must have been hereditary criminals also who pursued their forefathers’ profession.” Why did the British feel a need for such an Act? Arguably, it was part of an entire model of how law and order was to be preserved in colonial India. To the British, used as they were to a highly centralized governance, India seemed a hairraisingly volatile place with its complex array of castes and communities, functioning as autonomous, self governing entities, following differnent life styles and social norms. Those communities, which offered the stiffest resistance to pax -Britannica, were targeted in different ways for such special treatment. Among the worst victims were communities which did not have a sedentary life style which made it more difficult to demand subservience from them.
A strategy was evolved to concentrate the limited resources and efforts of the police on selected, visible targets. This was the only way to give the appearance of effectively guaranteeing “public peace” . In Imperial Power and Popular Politics: Class, Resistance and the State in India 1850-1950, the Cambridge University historian, Rajnarayan Chandavarkar explains: “[The police had] necessarily to rely upon a general consensus about Declared Criminal at Birth India’s “Denotified Tribes” which groups in society were especially prone to criminal activity and might constitute, therefore, the proper objects of policing. ... By enacting this principle of selection [of particular groups], the colonial state was able to create criminal tribes and castes.” Chandavarkar writes that even though they were the focus of much police action, “the criminal tribes were scarcely, by the late nineteenth century, a potent threat to social order." Criminal tribes were just a convenient target, a scapegoat. By acting against them, the state could keep up at least a pretence of law enforcement, even if a lot more crime happened and was left unpunished. Chandavarkar writes: “While in reality crime went largely unreported and unrecorded, police reports and memoirs ... described in painstaking detail, crimes of savage brutality or extraordinary guile and cunning or those which reflected exotic customs and elaborate rituals. This was particularly the case with ... the criminal tribes and castes, whose supposed criminality was represented as an inheritance and a profession, inextricably connected to their lineage and genealogy.”
The Denotified and Nomadic Tribes Rights Action Group (DNT-RAG) was founded after a conference in Baroda in March 1998. Mahashweta Devi, the Bengali writer-activist, had been invited to give a lecture there. She spoke of her work with the Kheria Sabar ex-criminal tribe in West Bengal, leading to the formation of DNT-RAG. Three people founded it: Laxman Gaikwad, an award-winning author and activist from Maharashtra, himself a member of the Uchlya denotified tribe; Dr GN Devy, an exprofessor of English at Maharaja Sayajirao University in Baroda, a well-known writer himself and head of the Bhasha Research Centre to research tribal languages that runs a yearly lecture series; and Mahashweta Devi. DNT-RAG has worked on getting justice for the families of Pinya Kale and Budhan Sabar (a DNT member similarly killed in West Bengal); and were able to get the killers of Bhikabhai Bajania (a member of Gujarat’s Bajania tribe) in Ahmedabad arrested. DNT-RAG has also held numerous meetings in small towns in Gujarat, Bengal and Maharashtra; besides setting up four community development centres for these tribes. It compiled and submitted a comprehensive report to the NHRC on the status of DNTs. It has campaigned for the repeal of the Habitual Offenders’ Act which is routinely used to torment DNTs.
DNT-RAG publishes Budhan (named for Budhan Sabar) every two months. This journal carries news and research reports about DNTs. assumed that they have a propensity for crime. Such an assumption is the starting point for discussion. This is not to say that members of such tribes do not indulge in crime. They do, and their crimes range from stealing pomegranates from fields to burglaries in which people get murdered. A retired police constable I met in Satara district showed me several lists of Pardhi tolis or gangs, each centred on one family that wander the district committing crimes. He knew the particular methods of each toli. The police station in Phaltan, a large town in the district, has pictures of several Pardhis wanted for area crimes, some of whose names were in the tolis that the retired constable showed me. Without doubt, there are Pardhis who commit crimes.But there are reasons for such crimes. They deserve consideration. Take what Stephen Fuchs wrote in The Aboriginal Tribes of India (1973): “A number of such tribes are passionately nomadic, and since Rickshaw and Biscuit, June 1999 No. 122 25 foodgathering and hunting in the jungle, in the traditional manner, is often impossible, they have switched over to the rather dangerous ... life of ‘foraging’ in the fields, villages and towns. ... This has gained them a bad reputation and in the British times some of them were branded criminal and held under close police supervision.
Since Independence this stigma has been taken from them, but the watch over them by the police has not much relaxed. ... They are forced by the prevailing adverse circumstances to practise subsistence thieving.” If there are Pardhis who commit crimes, at least part of the blame lies in the fact that life “in the traditional manner” is no longer an option. Part of the blame also lies with societal attitudes that leave them with no choice. Time and again, I have met Pardhis who tell me the local schools do not allow their children to attend classes. If they do manage to stay in school and graduate, jobs are hard to get. After a meeting near Phaltan where several speakers urged Pardhis to educate their children, and especially their girls, one woman stopped me outside and pointed to her grown daughter. “I struggled so she could graduate from school,” she said. “But now nobody will give her a job because she is a Pardhi. What’s the use of all this talk of education?” So Pardhis continue to be seen as criminal. The police continue to round them up every time there is a crime — petty or major — in the area. This usually means just one thing: a thrashing in the police station. That is what happened to a Pardhi called Pinya Hari Kale at the Baramati (Satara District, Maharashtra) police station, on June 8 1998. Like many Pardhis in Satara, 35 - year-old Kale was a landless agricultural labourer. His 1000 rupees a month was the only income available to support his wife and five children. Late on June 8, three constables picked up Kale in Baramati. Now since the arrest of Pardhis on suspicion is a purely normal thing, Kale’s wife Chandrasena wasn’t particularly perturbed when he did not return home that night. As she told the Bombay High Court in a petition, she “expected him to be detained and released.” That did not happen. When she went to the police station to ask after him the next day, two constables showed her his dead body. A local magistrate and a doctor at Baramati’s Golden Jubilee Hospital produced an extraordinary postmortem report that absolved the police altogether, corroborating their claim that Kale “fell down” while trying to run from the constables and died soon after. A second post-mortem, at Chandrasena’s insistence, found “evidence of multiple concussions”, 14 in number. It concluded that Kale had died “due to multiple blunt injuries with evidence of head injury.”
Because of these conflicting post-mortem reports, an official of the Pune Criminal Investigation Department, BN Mane, was asked to investigate Kale’s death. He found that at the police station, the three constables and a sub-inspector had beaten Kale “with sticks and belt.” Because of this, Kale died early on June 9. The subinspector’s report about the incident said Kale died accidentally; Mane terms this a “false and concocted story.” Mane has filed complaints against all four men. They are under suspension, while a further investigation takes place. Clearly, given Mane’s findings, the state itself has concluded that Kale was killed in police custody. Yet, for months, it did not pay his family any compensation, let alone show that it intends to punish the four policemen. Chandrasena’s petition, now making slow progress through the courts, asks for both these measures. It is important to understand that what happened to Kale is entirely typical of what happens to denotified tribes. Police harrassment happens solely because these tribes are seen as criminal: too often, such harrassment results in death. That is the spectre India’s ex-criminal tribes face every day. There are, nevertheless, some signs of hope. DNT-RAG (see box) informed the National Human Rights Commission about Pinya Kale’s death. The NHRC’s response got far less attention than it deserved. On December 22, 1998, it ruled that “for the limited purpose of awarding interim relief,” it is not necessary to wait for charges against the four policemen to be proved in a criminal court. A “strong prima facie case” is Confronting Discrimination Head On Most of us from third world countries discrimination in some form or another almost everyday. It often leaves a sour taste in our mouth. The following story, downloaded from the internet, shows us the side of human dignity and respect for that would help build a more egalitarian world. The following incident provides a sense of hope for it shows there are companies and individuals who confront discrimination head on, if only one small step at a time. On a British Airways flight from Johannesburg, a middle-aged, well-off white South African Lady found herself sitting next to a black man. She called the cabin crew attendant over to complain about her seating. "What is the problem Madam?” asked the attendant. “Can’t you see?” she said “ You’ve sat me next to a kaffir. I can’t possibly sit next to this disgusting human. Find me another seat!” “Please calm down Madam.” the stewardess replied. “The flight is very full today. I’ll go and check to see if we have any seats available in club or first class.” The woman cocks a snooty look at the outraged black man beside her, not to mention many of the surrounding passengers. A few minutes later the stewardess returned with the good news, which she delivered to the lady, who could help but look at the people around her with a smug and self-satisfied grin: “Madam, I’ve spoken to the cabin services director. Unfortunately, the economy class is full as also the club class. However, we do have one seat in the first class”. Before the lady has a chance to answer, the stewardess continued..."It is most extraordinary to make this kind of upgrade. However, I have had to get special permission from the captain. Given the circumstances, the captain felt that it was outrageous that someone be forced to sit next to such an obnoxious person.” With that, she turned to the black man sitting next to the lady, and said: “Sir if you’d like to get your things together, I have a seat ready for you...” At that point, apparently the surrounding passengers stood up and gave a standing ovation, while the black guy walked up to the front of the plane. People will forget what you said .... people will forget what you did ...... but people will never forget how you made them feel.
. Since the daylight shallow the darkness, Please Write articles to take the intellectual from apathetically approach towards rectification of prevailing maladies as to wake up
ReplyDeleteYogesh Kumar Saxena, Advocate, High Court Allahabad (India) e mail Address yogrekha@yahoo.co.in or yogrekha@rediffmail.com Phone:- 91/ 0532/637720/2436451, Mobile:- 9415284843
To paraphrase the well-known saying, the last refuge of the profiteer is patriotism. But what if patriotism is, in a given situation, the most profitable of options? What if patriotism paid? Wouldn't it be a foolish and eventually pauperised profiteer who in such a scenario did not make patriotism his first resort rather than his last?
ReplyDeleteAccording to the Swiss Banking Association Report 2006, dishonest (and unpatriotic) Indians have stashed away some $1,456 billion in numbered Swiss bank accounts. If the report is to be believed, Indians have more clandestine loot hidden away in foreign accounts than all the rest of the world combined. This suggests that, far from being a poor country as we've always been taught by our net as to believe, India is in fact a very rich country. Except that its wealth, instead of being kept in India, has been taken outside India.
Compared with India's $1,456 billion, Russia comes a poor second with $470 billion, followed by the UK ($390 billion), Ukraine ($100 billion) and China ($96 billion). These figures, which are four years out of date, relate only to Swiss banks, and do not take into account other offshore tax havens such as the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands which offer similar facilities for the parking of undeclared wealth.
It has been estimated that if the Indian money kept abroad only in Swiss accounts were to be brought back to India, the country's entire foreign debt would be wiped out 13 times over. The foreign debt repaid, the interest earned on the residual amount would reportedly be more than the central budget. You wouldn't have to pay taxes. Every poor person in the country could be given a lakh of rupees.
But why would this huge hoard of undeclared boodle be brought back to India? For reasons of pure patriotism? Certainly not. But what about reasons of profitable patriotism? Now that makes more sense.
The reason that all this wealth was secreted out of the country by politicians, industrialists, businessmen, racketeers, smugglers was that the regulation-strangulated Indian economy did not inspire confidence in anyone, least of all in much of the political leadership whose (deliberately?) misguided policies had made the country economically weak to begin with.
It was deemed to be prudent to keep cash assets in the form of hard currency rather than in the lowly avatar of the despised and worthless Indian rupee. Economic patriotism very definitely did not pay.
But does the same situation obtain today, when the so-called 'advanced' economies by and large are in terrible shape, thanks to their own greed and spendthrift ways which have resulted in enormous and unsustainable accumulations of sovereign debt? Following the subprime crisis in the US, which unleashed a global financial tsunami from which the international economic order will take a long while to recover, Europe has been hit with an epidemic of 'Euroflu' as a result of fiscal mismanagement in the euro zone which has led Greece into virtual bankruptcy and is also threatening Spain and Portugal.
Increasingly, the so-called 'advanced' economies of the world including Japan, which also seems to be on the brink of a sovereign debt trap don't look so advanced anymore. The two big growth centres of the world today as we keep being told over and over again are India and China. In this context, wouldn't it make both patriotic and more importantly profitable sense for India's offshore riches to find their way back to India, instead of remaining in what looks to be an increasingly dangerous economic war zone?
The Underworld of India. In this notquite-
ReplyDeletescholarly treatise, MacMunn
rambles at length about all that he
found dark and dreaded while on his
tour of duty in India. In a chapter titled
“Criminal Tribes and Classes,”
MacMunn wrote: “They are
absolutely the scum, the flotsam and
jetsam of Indian life, of no more
regard than the beasts of the field.”
Sprinkled through the rest of the
chapter are several other references
to such tribes, all as derogatory. The
Chantichors (“bundle-stealers”) are
all “feckless and unstable.” Harnis
have a “gift for humbugging the
world.” Ramoshis were employed by
the British as watchmen, but such a
watchman “is always an incorrigible
pander, being prepared to produce
ladies of the flimsiest virtue at the
shortest notice.” Vanjari women are
“bright and comely [with] wellmoulded
breasts,” and are “adept no
doubt in venery.” In fact, MacMunn
makes it a point to comment on the
women of nearly every tribe. He
mentions: all are invariably “comely”
yet “hopelessly immoral.”
(MacMunn also has an astonishing
tendency to refer to women as
“baggages”, but I’ll let that pass).
In 1871, the British passed the
“Criminal Tribes Act.” It notified
about 150 tribes around India as
criminal, giving the police wide
powers to arrest them and monitor
their movements. The effect of this
law was simple: just being born into
one of those 150 tribes made you a
criminal.
As T.V. Stephens, a British
ReplyDeleteofficial of the time, said while
introducing the Bill that became the
Act: “... people from time immemorial
have been pursuing the caste system
defined job-positions: weaving,
carpentry and such were hereditary
jobs. So there must have been
hereditary criminals also who pursued
their forefathers’ profession.”
Why did the British feel a need
for such an Act? Arguably, it was part
of an entire model of how law and
order was to be preserved in colonial
India. To the British, used as they
were to a highly centralized
governance, India seemed a hairraisingly
volatile place with its
complex array of castes and
communities, functioning as
autonomous, self governing entities,
following differnent life styles and
social norms. Those communities,
which offered the stiffest resistance
to pax -Britannica, were targeted in
different ways for such special
treatment. Among the worst victims
were communities which did not have
a sedentary life style which made it
more difficult to demand subservience
from them.
A strategy was evolved to
ReplyDeleteconcentrate the limited resources and
efforts of the police on selected,
visible targets. This was the only way
to give the appearance of effectively
guaranteeing “public peace” . In
Imperial Power and Popular
Politics: Class, Resistance and the
State in India 1850-1950, the
Cambridge University historian,
Rajnarayan Chandavarkar explains:
“[The police had] necessarily to rely
upon a general consensus about
Declared Criminal at Birth
India’s “Denotified Tribes”
which groups in society were
especially prone to criminal activity
and might constitute, therefore, the
proper objects of policing. ... By
enacting this principle of selection [of
particular groups], the colonial state
was able to create criminal tribes and
castes.”
Chandavarkar writes that even
though they were the focus of much
police action, “the criminal tribes were
scarcely, by the late nineteenth
century, a potent threat to
social order."
Criminal tribes were just a
convenient target, a scapegoat. By
acting against them, the state could
keep up at least a pretence of law
enforcement, even if a lot more crime
happened and was left unpunished.
Chandavarkar writes: “While in reality
crime went largely unreported and
unrecorded, police reports and
memoirs ... described in painstaking
detail, crimes of savage brutality or
extraordinary guile and cunning or
those which reflected exotic customs
and elaborate rituals. This was
particularly the case with ... the
criminal tribes and castes, whose
supposed criminality was represented
as an inheritance and a profession,
inextricably connected to their lineage
and genealogy.”
The Denotified and Nomadic Tribes Rights Action Group (DNT-RAG) was founded after a conference in Baroda in March 1998.
ReplyDeleteMahashweta Devi, the Bengali writer-activist, had been invited to give a lecture there. She spoke of her work with the Kheria
Sabar ex-criminal tribe in West Bengal, leading to the formation of DNT-RAG. Three people founded it: Laxman Gaikwad, an
award-winning author and activist from Maharashtra, himself a member of the Uchlya denotified tribe; Dr GN Devy, an exprofessor
of English at Maharaja Sayajirao University in Baroda, a well-known writer himself and head of the Bhasha Research
Centre to research tribal languages that runs a yearly lecture series; and Mahashweta Devi.
DNT-RAG has worked on getting justice for the families of Pinya Kale and Budhan Sabar (a DNT member similarly killed in
West Bengal); and were able to get the killers of Bhikabhai Bajania (a member of Gujarat’s Bajania tribe) in Ahmedabad arrested.
DNT-RAG has also held numerous meetings in small towns in Gujarat, Bengal and Maharashtra; besides setting up four
community development centres for these tribes. It compiled and submitted a comprehensive report to the NHRC on the status
of DNTs. It has campaigned for the repeal of the Habitual Offenders’ Act which is routinely used to torment DNTs.
DNT-RAG publishes Budhan (named for Budhan Sabar) every two months. This journal carries news and research reports about
ReplyDeleteDNTs.
assumed that they have a
propensity for crime. Such an
assumption is the starting
point for discussion.
This is not to say that
members of such tribes do
not indulge in crime. They do,
and their crimes range from
stealing pomegranates from
fields to burglaries in which
people get murdered. A
retired police constable I met
in Satara district showed me
several lists of Pardhi tolis
or gangs, each centred on
one family that wander the
district committing crimes. He
knew the particular methods
of each toli. The police
station in Phaltan, a large
town in the district, has
pictures of several Pardhis
wanted for area crimes, some
of whose names were in the
tolis that the retired
constable showed me.
Without doubt, there are
Pardhis who commit
crimes.But there are reasons for such
crimes. They deserve consideration.
Take what Stephen Fuchs wrote in
The Aboriginal Tribes of India (1973):
“A number of such tribes are
passionately nomadic, and since
Rickshaw and Biscuit, June 1999
No. 122 25
foodgathering and hunting in
the jungle, in the traditional
manner, is often impossible,
they have switched over to
the rather dangerous ... life of
‘foraging’ in the fields,
villages and towns. ... This
has gained them a bad
reputation and in the British
times some of them were
branded criminal and held
under close police
supervision.
Since
ReplyDeleteIndependence this stigma has
been taken from them, but the
watch over them by the police
has not much relaxed. ... They
are forced by the prevailing
adverse circumstances to
practise subsistence
thieving.”
If there are Pardhis who
commit crimes, at least part
of the blame lies in the fact
that life “in the traditional
manner” is no longer an
option. Part of the blame also
lies with societal attitudes that leave
them with no choice. Time and again,
I have met Pardhis who tell me the
local schools do not allow their
children to attend classes. If they do
manage to stay in school and
graduate, jobs are hard to get. After a
meeting near Phaltan where several
speakers urged Pardhis to educate
their children, and especially their
girls, one woman stopped me outside
and pointed to her grown daughter.
“I struggled so she could graduate
from school,” she said. “But now
nobody will give her a job because
she is a Pardhi. What’s the use of all
this talk of education?”
So Pardhis continue to be seen as
criminal. The police continue to round
them up every time there is a crime —
petty or major — in the area. This
usually means just one thing: a
thrashing in the police station. That
is what happened to a Pardhi called
Pinya Hari Kale at the Baramati (Satara
District, Maharashtra) police station,
on June 8 1998.
Like many Pardhis in Satara, 35 -
year-old Kale was a landless
agricultural labourer. His 1000 rupees
a month was the only income available
to support his wife and five children.
Late on June 8, three constables
picked up Kale in Baramati. Now since
the arrest of Pardhis on suspicion is a
purely normal thing, Kale’s wife
Chandrasena wasn’t particularly
perturbed when he did not return
home that night. As she told the
Bombay High Court in a petition, she
“expected him to be detained and
released.”
That did not happen.
When she went to the police
station to ask after him the
next day, two constables
showed her his dead body.
A local magistrate and a
doctor at Baramati’s Golden
Jubilee Hospital produced
an extraordinary postmortem
report that absolved
the police altogether,
corroborating their claim that
Kale “fell down” while trying
to run from the constables
and died soon after. A
second post-mortem, at
Chandrasena’s insistence,
found “evidence of multiple
concussions”, 14 in number.
It concluded that Kale had
died “due to multiple blunt
injuries with evidence of
head injury.”
Because of these
ReplyDeleteconflicting post-mortem
reports, an official of the
Pune Criminal Investigation
Department, BN Mane, was
asked to investigate Kale’s
death. He found that at the police
station, the three constables and a
sub-inspector had beaten Kale “with
sticks and belt.” Because of this, Kale
died early on June 9. The subinspector’s
report about the incident
said Kale died accidentally; Mane
terms this a “false and concocted
story.”
Mane has filed complaints against
all four men. They are under
suspension, while a further
investigation takes place.
Clearly, given Mane’s findings, the
state itself has concluded that Kale
was killed in police custody. Yet, for
months, it did not pay his family any
compensation, let alone show that it
intends to punish the four policemen.
Chandrasena’s petition, now making
slow progress through the courts,
asks for both these measures.
It is important to understand that
what happened to Kale is entirely
typical of what happens to denotified
tribes. Police harrassment happens
solely because these tribes are seen
as criminal: too often, such
harrassment results in death. That is
the spectre India’s ex-criminal tribes
face every day.
There are, nevertheless, some
signs of hope. DNT-RAG (see box)
informed the National Human Rights
Commission about Pinya Kale’s
death. The NHRC’s response got far
less attention than it deserved. On
December 22, 1998, it ruled that “for
the limited purpose of awarding
interim relief,” it is not necessary to
wait for charges against the four
policemen to be proved in a criminal
court. A “strong prima facie case” is
Confronting Discrimination Head On
Most of us from third world countries discrimination in some form or another almost everyday. It often leaves a
sour taste in our mouth. The following story, downloaded from the internet, shows us the side of human dignity
and respect for that would help build a more egalitarian world. The following incident provides a sense of hope for
it shows there are companies and individuals who confront discrimination head on, if only one small step at a
time.
On a British Airways flight from Johannesburg, a middle-aged, well-off white South African Lady found herself
sitting next to a black man. She called the cabin crew attendant over to complain about her seating. "What is the
problem Madam?” asked the attendant. “Can’t you see?” she said “ You’ve sat me next to a kaffir. I can’t possibly
sit next to this disgusting human. Find me another seat!” “Please calm down Madam.” the stewardess replied.
“The flight is very full today. I’ll go and check to see if we have any seats available in club or first class.”
The woman cocks a snooty look at the outraged black man beside her, not to mention many of the surrounding
passengers. A few minutes later the stewardess returned with the good news, which she delivered to the lady,
who could help but look at the people around her with a smug and self-satisfied grin: “Madam, I’ve spoken to the
cabin services director. Unfortunately, the economy class is full as also the club class. However, we do have one
seat in the first class”. Before the lady has a chance to answer, the stewardess continued..."It is most extraordinary
to make this kind of upgrade. However, I have had to get special permission from the captain. Given the
circumstances, the captain felt that it was outrageous that someone be forced to sit next to such an obnoxious
person.” With that, she turned to the black man sitting next to the lady, and said: “Sir if you’d like to get your things
together, I have a seat ready for you...” At that point, apparently the surrounding passengers stood up and gave a
standing ovation, while the black guy walked up to the front of the plane.
People will forget what you said .... people will forget what you did ...... but people will never forget how you made
them feel.