WSN-Rights-$175 and seven years in jail for chopping off all limbs of man

because the truth needs to be told

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$175 and seven years in jail for chopping off all limbs of man
WSN Bureau

MANSA: His daughter was raped six years ago. He was fighting to get justice for her. But he was a Dalit, an eternal victimhood status in a paradigm of Hindu society of India which discriminates on the basis of birth. India’s centuries old version of perverse racialism, sanctified by religion. Bant Singh was a communist himself, but the Dalit tag does not wash easily, not even if you spend a life time waving a red flag. To those the Indian society empowers in its caste based system of power dissemination, that is rather an added red rag.

Wrong elements in the right religion?

Those convicted by the additional sessions judge JS Bhatia were Navdeep Singh, Sandeep Singh, Yadwinder Singh, Jaswinder Singh, Harpinder Singh, Gurdit Singh and Deedar Singh. That all of them have the surname of Singh also indicates another problem of how a religion that negates the very construct of caste has such elements in its fold.
When it comes to those who can work the system, the system is extra-ordinarily efficient. In January 2006, the police, even after registering a case on January 7, released the accused on bail and it took massive media pressure to scale up the charges.

So on January 5, 2006, they cut off two of Bant Singh’s hands, and a leg too. The remaining turned gangrenous. Kidneys were damaged due to excessive bleedin. The problem was that Bant Singh wasn’t the kind of man who would buckle just because someone had cut off three of his limbs.

He could sing.

So he sang the songs of rebellion, of freedom, of fight for equality, of the rights of the downtrodden. Last week, Indian judicial system tried to do some justice to Bant Singh. Justice come calibrated for Dalits even in such blatant cases, as often happened when political problems are turned into law and order or criminal cases and courts are expected to deliver justice rather than fix the system. So the best that a Mansa local court could do was to sentence seven accused to seven years of jail and ask them to pay a fine of Rs 7,000 ($175).

Dalit limbs come cheap even after centuries and 11 per cent growth rate talk. The much hyped 5000-year civilization can’t be shamed so easily.

And reporters thought it fit to ask Bant Singh if he was happy. “It is a very mild sentence, considering all that I had to go through.” He is a simple man, and Indian system plays the simpleton. Not a single newspaper thought it fit to comment on the judgement editorially, and in the country’s capital Delhi, not one newspaper thought it fit to carry the news on page one. Bant Singh of course plans to continue his fight. After all, he only has lost his limbs, not his soul.

20 February 2008

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