It’s 10 am, and the village of Gidhagram under Katwa subdivision in Purba Bardhaman district, some 150 kms from Kolkata, has turned into a fortress as it prepares for a historic, never-before-seen event: in a few minutes, a group of Dalits from the village will enter the local Gidheshwar temple for the first time in decades — an event they hope marks the end of centuries of discrimination.
“The 16 steps we climbed to enter the temple and offer puja ended generations of discrimination,” Mamata Das, 50, tells The Indian Express after the event.
Mamata was among the first five people of the Dalit Das sub-caste group to enter the temple Wednesday. She, and the others — Santanu Das, 45, Lakkhi Das, 30, Puja Das, 27, and Sasthi Das, 45 — are among the village’s 550 Dalit inhabitants who have, until recently, never been allowed to set foot in the village.
The development came about after the village’s Dalits, which form about six percent of the village’s total population of around 2,000 families, wrote to the district administration highlighting the discrimination.
As a result, the five Dalits were escorted to the temple by the police and the civic volunteers as they walked from the predominantly SC neighbourhood of Daspara to the temple 10 minutes away. At the temple, they offered prayers for an hour while the entire area was cordoned off by the police and the Rapid Action Force.
This story was originally published in indianexpress.com. Read the full story here.