By Omar Rashid
New Delhi: A Dalit man in Bulandshahr was forced off his horse during his wedding procession by dominant caste Thakur men who also allegedly assaulted the baraatis (those attending the wedding procession) on February 20. A day later, the wedding of two Dalit sisters in Mathura was disrupted and later called off after a group of Yadav (a backward caste community) allegedly assaulted the baraatis following a minor accident between one of their bikes and the car in which the two brides were travelling.
The news of the two incidents from western Uttar Pradesh prompted Member of Parliament Chandra Shekhar Aazad to describe them as “planned terror against Dalits” in the state, while Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav suggested that only a unity of the backward castes, Dalits and minorities would bring about a change against such attacks. Referring to the Mathura incident, Aazad said, it “shows that casteist forces even today have the mentality of humiliating the Dalit community and crushing their constitutional rights.”
Casteist abuses, a ‘horse-riding’ clause
In Bulandshahr, a case was registered against 29 persons and 8-10 unidentified others, after members of the Thakur community on February 20 objected to a Dalit bridegroom riding a horse through their locality in Dhamrwali village and attacked the procession. According to the FIR lodged in the case by Surendra Singh, his son Arun Bharti’s wedding procession was passing by the house of the village head’s husband Kripal Singh at around 7 pm, when a group of men, already assembled there, attacked the procession with sticks and sharp objects. They also threatened the Dalits and hurled casteist abuses at them, said Singh in his complaint, a copy of which is with The Wire.
Six persons, including two women, received serious injuries in the assault, said Singh.
The Jatav villager said that a similar incident took place in the village at the same location on February 16 during the wedding procession and ‘gudchadi’, or horse riding ceremony, of a Dalit man Bhagwat Singh. It was around 8 pm when the procession was passing by Kripla Singh’s house when four Thakur men, Sachin, Nitin, Pradeep and Deepu, abused those in attendance with casteist slurs and told them that they would not allow them to pass through their locality, said Singh. The Thakur men stopped the horse-riding and forced the procession to go back, said Singh, adding that they threatened the Dalits that they would have to pay a cost if they attempted to ride a horse in their locality again.
An FIR was lodged regarding the February 20 incident under various sections of the Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita, including assault without provocation, criminal intimidation, wrongful restraint and intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace. Relevant sections of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act were also slapped against the accused persons.
This story was originally published in thewire.in. Read the full story here.