In the flourishing district of Kannur in one of India’s most prosperous states, Kerala, Eramangalathu Chitralekha, 39, was the first Dalit woman to drive an autorickshaw in 2005. Her new profession immediately angered the upper castes, who taunted her and threatened violence. One day, that year, her autorickshaw was set ablaze. In 2013, it was damaged beyond repair. The district collector gifted her a new autorickshaw in June 2014, but on March 4, 2016, it was destroyed again.
Chitralekha is unclear about her future, but she is clear that she is a victim of Hinduism’s deep-rooted caste discrimination. “My house was ransacked by Nair (upper caste) men," she said. "My son was humiliated and forced to drop out of school after Class 8 when stories started doing the rounds that I was a woman of loose morals. He’s 22 now and still to find a job.”
Chitralekha is a Pulaya, a people termed adiyar, or slaves, in her village of Edatt. “We are low- born,” she said. “We are not permitted to draw water from the same well or eat from the same plates or drink from the same glasses used by the upper castes.”
The destruction of Chitralekha’s autorickshaw was one of numerous crimes reported in 2016 against Dalits, lowest of Hindu castes: From stopping their entry into temples – in Uttarakhand, Haryana and Karnataka – to burning homes and beating women in Tamil Nadu, the murder of a Dalit who married an upper-caste woman in the same state and the rape and murder of a law student in Kerala.
These incidents are just snapshots of...
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