UP: Who will fight for social justice to women?

- Kumudini Pati

A 20-year old Brahmin boy falls in love with an 18-year old Jat girl. The place is Alinagar of Muzaffarnagar district, UP. The duo ends up on the gallows for this ‘crime’. There are no FIRs, no arrests, no legal proceedings. The death warrant is an unwritten warning to the lovers to stop meeting, and the hanging is smoothly conducted through the sanction of the village panchayat dominated by Jats, who constitute the overwhelming majority in Alinagar (there being only one Brahmin household). Earlier, in another village of the same district, a boy and a girl had been hanged on a decree of the village panchayat for having married in the same village. The bodies were left hanging from a tree as an evidence of the cruelty and severity of the punishment meted out to those who defy the feudal order of the village. Can we forget the brutal manner in which Satish and Sarita were done to death in 1993? Further, in March this year, Naaz Parveen and Jaman were hacked to death in the same way. Even after the police formed Adult Rights Cells in all subdivisions of the district, another lover-girl Seema poisoned herself on 2 September (or was killed?) after having demanded protection from the police. Nothing could be done.

The incidence of such crimes has assumed the proportion of a gruesome phenomenon in Muzaffarnagar district in particular and in western UP in general. Incidents like the sati of Charanshah and several other widows in Bundelkhand region also bear testimony to this fact. Recently, in another incident in the Behda Hatti in Muzaffarnagar, a woman was murdered for bringing along Rs. 20,000 less than the demanded dowry, in a most brutal manner in the presence of her four-year old child, whose statement was recorded in the court. In still another incident in Meerut, a girl student learning driving from an instructor was framed in a false case under Sec. 192-A of the IPC and subjected to third degree torture by the police. The girl was released after a movement was launched on the issue, but the defamation and humiliation that took place has left the family in a state of shock and worry about the future of the girl.

The moot point arising out of these incidents is that even though the region of western UP has been under the influence of green revolution and capitalism has made considerable inroads into agriculture, and even though there is affluence and prosperity in the zone, the shackles of feudalism could not be broken in the social arena. Also, in the entire state of UP, while there have been powerful political movements on the Mandal issue, and parties vowing for social justice, like the SP and BSP have reinforced their political space in the state, incidents like these have continued to take place without extracting so much as a statement on an undending series of atrocities heaped on dalit and extremely backward women.

When one looks at the scenario in UP, it is rather dismal. The social indicators for women show this. A very high fertility rate of 5.19 children, an extremely low literacy rate of 25% (18% in rural UP), a high level of 65% schoolgirls dropping out, a high infant mortality rate and a low life expectancy of 55 years for women as well as a serious gender imbalance — 879 women to a thousand men. According to the UP Zamindari and Land Reform Act of 1950, when a tenure holder dies, according to Sec. 171 of the Act his daughters, son’ daughters and all descendants of his daughters are excluded from inheritance; tenure holding vests with the males heirs, and in their absence, with the brothers and other male relatives of the deceased. As far as atrocities on women is concerned, in 1997 UP stood third in the list of states. Yet these issues have never been the concern of either the governments or the opposition. The Mayawati government, under pressure, had formed a commission for women, which was dismantled as soon as Kalyan Singh assumed power.

For quite some time, even the official left women wings have been harping too much on the issue of communalism, targeting the BJP in the state, but keeping quiet on this aspect of social fascism, which is a consequence of the tactics of blindly supporting any political formation that challenges the BJP in its citadel of power. Thus political opportunism of the Left in rallying behind “social justice” forces harbouring retrogressive and repressive ideas on women’s question, ends up avoiding the challenge to lead women’s democratic rights movement under the pretext of fighting communalism.

If one delves deeper into the increasing frequency and brutality of such crimes, it is true one will end up agreeing that the feudal, patriarchal and fascist ideology of the Sangh Pariwar has given a new logic and rationale to curbing women’s freedom and rights. It is also true that the entire administrative machinery has been made more insensitive to crimes on women, despite all the tall talk on women’s empowerment. But, may we ask as to why the entire opposition and those who have been shouting themselves hoarse on reservation for backward castes and Muslim women, maintain an ominous silence on this issue? Why is it that the Phoolan murder case has been buried under the dust raised by the election race?

The battle is grim and it is up to the fighting women’s organisations as well as the masses of real women to assert their might to bring this question onto the political agenda in the state.