Casting
out Caste
By Chandana Mathur
and Sujani Reddy
An Interview with
Henri Tiphagne
This piece originally
appeared in Samar 15
Summer, 2002
Henri Tiphagne
is the executive director of People's Watch, Tamil Nadu; an organization
that monitors human rights abuses in Tamil Nadu and promotes human rights
education as a tool for their eradication. He was also central to the
Dalit intervention at the World Conference Against Racism, Xenophobia,
and Related Intolerance held in Durban, South Africa in September of
2001. Henri was in the US on a tour sponsored by the Ford Foundation
in the Fall of 2001. SAMAR collective members Chandana Mathur and Sujani
Reddy had a chance to talk to him while he was in New York City.
Chandana: Let us
begin with a little background about Dalits in India. What is the meaning
of the word "Dalit," and what are the dimensions of the situation
that Dalits face?
Henri: "Dalit"
is a word that has been acquired by the community of people who are
known as untouchables in India, about one hundred and eighty million
plus with the current census. What does this mean? Untouchability is
a correlate of the caste system, and Dalits are outcasts; they are not
within the caste system. Dalits are a community of people who are segregated,
who are suffering from exclusion, and who are assigned certain occupations
even today because of their status outside the caste hierarchy.
Sujani: Can you
tell us a little bit about the origins of the caste system?
Henri: Definitely,
the caste system has its origin in the Hindu religion -- that people
know. But it would be wrong to say that it is something that is related
only to the Hindu religion per se because today you have a caste system
in Christianity. I would like to expand a little here because this is
not known to people in a Christian country and people get a shock when
they hear it. Untouchability is practiced in the Christian faith, whether
you are from the Catholic or Protestant church. You have separate cemeteries
in the churches for Dalits and for non-Dalits. This exists today; I'm
not talking about a hundred years ago or fifty years ago. For many years
you never had the Catholic Church drawing upon Dalit Catholic youth
in their recruitment of priests and nuns in the seminaries. The Dalit's
status as an "untouchable" continues whether he is in the
Hindu religion or in Christianity. However, he has had access to education
when he comes into Christianity, so he benefits from certain facilities
that Christianity as a religion brought. However, because of this conversion
from Hinduism to Christianity he has lost his position in terms of access
to the benefits of affirmative action offered by the state. That is
why today the Dalit community within the church is demanding access
to the benefits of affirmative action, be it in terms of education,
be it in terms of employment. And here the church supports them, because
that is one expression of their solidarity with Dalits.
Chandana: How about
the other religions of India, is there untouchability in Indian Islam,
in Sikhism, in the rest?
Henri: We have also
had conversions, to a lesser extent, from Hinduism to Islam. This has
been more as a protest form. But you have had many people returning
back to Hinduism again because in a different form it continues there.
Your caste status will always continue, wherever you are. All that you
find is that you happen to belong to a different faith. It's very unfortunate
that those who convert do not have access to the benefits of being born
a Dalit.
Sujani: Is untouchability
limited to India? What about the other countries of South Asia?
Henri: The phenomenon
of caste discrimination is not limited to India. It is very well prevalent
in Nepal, if you want to grade it that way, also in Bangladesh, parts
of Pakistan, and of course Sri Lanka. The estate workers who went from
India to Sri Lanka were all Dalit, and they continue to be. In the Kandy
area the estate workers are all Tamil Dalits, and this is an internal
problem that Sri Lanka still today is not able to solve. That is in
terms of South Asia. The parallel that we have been able to reach out
to within Asia has been with the Burako community in Japan. This is
a realization, a realization for the Dalit community within our country
and the Burako community in Japan. Lately, there have been a lot of
exchanges to see how caste practices are common, the methods of segregation
and exclusion are similar, and the formal links that are now being built
not only within the South Asian Dalit community but also with the Burako
Liberation League in Japan. It is important to mention that we have
also realized, through studies generated out of organizations here in
the US, for example Human Rights Watch, that caste discrimination is
not an Asian phenomenon alone. Caste discrimination is a phenomenon
prevalent in Senegal, Nigeria, Mauritania, and Somalia. You have a number
of African countries with caste-based discrimination: the same problems
of exclusion, the same problems of segregation, of employment in menial
tasks, of being a servant to people who are in a caste-like structure
in some places. In some of those countries they call it caste. We are
now talking not about India; we are not talking about South Asia anymore.
We are not talking about Asia anymore. We are talking about a world
phenomenon.
Chandana: You are
involved in a lot of human rights work around Dalit issues in India.
Can you give us a little bit of a human rights picture of being Dalit
in India today, in terms of what it looks like on the ground, in everyday
life?
Henri: Well the
scenario is grim, on the one hand. But at the same time I would not
like the scenario to be portrayed only as grim, so I will come to the
hopeful signs at the end. But today caste discrimination, and particularly
untouchability, is multiplying, not reducing. I'll give you a concrete
example. In the teashops, in the interior-most villages, you have the
two-tumbler system: there are tumblers that are made available to the
so-called upper castes, and the aluminum tumbler that is made available
only to Dalits. The Dalit does not have access to the tumbler that the
upper castes will have access to. It has taken fifty-four years for
governments to acknowledge that thousands of villages in their respective
states suffer from the practice of untouchability exhibited through
the two-tumbler system. Now you have the former chief minister of Tamil
Nadu having acknowledged it. You have the present Chief Minister of
Andhra Pradesh, Chandra Baba Naidu (who respects Bill Gates perhaps
much more than he respects the Prime Minister or President of the country),
who acknowledges it. And he has started a whole campaign against the
two-glass system. Now what is the remedy? The remedy is not that because
the chief minister has recognized it, it has been done away with. The
solution has been through the use of plastic tumblers, disposable tumblers.
So the fact is not that both the communities are willing now to drink
from the same glass. But since there is a lot of stigma to this practice
we are solving it by bringing in disposable tumblers so that there is
no chance of anybody drinking from the same glass that the Dalit drank
from. This is happening in the twenty first century, we are not talking
about earlier days. And this is something that I'm saying the state
has acknowledged.
Chandana: The illustrations
you give are certainly illuminating, and they speak to how far we still
need to go in terms of Dalit rights in India. This might clash with
the fact that a lot of Indians probably assume that the Dalit question
is settled. Indeed, a very important part of postcolonial India and
its sense of itself is the huge campaign against untouchability that
was launched by Gandhi, and the fact that it found certain legal expression
in the Constitution, as spearheaded by Ambedkar. What of this history?
Is it really a finished question and just a matter of implementation
at this stage?
Henri: Well, it
is finished. For the government it is finished. Their tasks are over.
On 26 of January 1950 it was over. What was over? With the Constitution
in place we have Article 17 which abolishes untouchability. We are all
happy about it. We have Article 15 which abolishes discrimination based
on various forms, including caste. We have Article 16, which for the
first time brings in a very positive affirmative action for employment
in the government. These are all very serious directions that our Constitution
indicated in the year 1950. We also have in place today a national commission
for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes [The Indian constitution,
basing its logic on British colonialist categorization, grouped certain
castes, labeled "backward," under the term "Scheduled."
Castes whose names appear in the "Schedule" were to be beneficiaries
of an Indian version of affirmative action.] So, we have a commission
in place. We also have, in the early nineties, the National Human Rights
Commission, which concentrates on the violation of rights. None other
than a former Chief Justice of India heads it. Good. We have a National
Commission for Women in place, which could also be an avenue for taking
up issues of Dalit women, and the very gender-specific violations that
they are subject to. In 1956 we had the Protection of Civil Rights Act,
to address the atrocities committed against Dalits, but its implementation
was so poor that everyone felt the need for new legislation. So in 1989,
we had the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes Prevention of Atrocities
Act which is a very good piece of legislation. In terms of law, in terms
of mechanisms, in terms of legal measures to be accessed, we have everything
in place. But what we don't have is the will of the bureaucrat, particularly
of the police administration as the investigative arm of the state and
sometimes also the judiciary, to stand on the side of the law because
of our caste-built society. It is not only that they don't implement
the law; it is that they implement the law from the position of the
caste that they belong to. Therefore, it is almost never in the interest
of the Dalits. As a result, the benefits we could have gained in the
last fifty-four years, we have not.
Sujani: What is
your own your own personal background? How did you become politicized
around these issues?
Henri: Well, I should
reveal a little more of myself. Not many Indians would have the position
that I have, which is unique. I happen to be an adopted child, and somebody
who, luckily for my own sake, did not know my caste background. So we
are six adopted children. My mother was French and she came as a missionary.
The six of us do not know our caste, and none of us were willing to
go through any exercise of trying to dig out what caste we belonged
to. So here we are talking about a country where the caste system is
prevalent and you have somebody from India who says, "I do not
know my caste." This is quite rare; you don't have people who can
have the luxury of saying so. I'm mentioning this because it provided
me with the opportunity of looking at things from a whole different
perspective; one that is not thrusted upon me.
So, with that being
my background, my eyes were not opened until I finished school. It was
only after I finished school and I was at the university, and I got
into the university students' movement, that I had lots of exposure
to what it means to be in rural India. This was through exposure programs
that led me to make a commitment of working for three years in a part
of Tamil Nadu organizing the poor. And it was by organizing the poor
that we came to know that we were organizing Dalits. It was while we
were in that process of engagement that we came to know what the practice
of untouchability is because we were actually living in a Dalit village.
It was a later part of my life, so this experience made a very strong
impression on me and the decision to be an activist grew from there.
That led me to law. And of course, that led me to take certain positions
in terms of the law, the civil rights movement, and on to what we are
doing today. So that was my route.
Sujani: Can you
talk a little bit more about the work that has come out of these life
experiences and People's Watch, the organization that you currently
work for?
Henri: I must begin
with a little bit of history of the civil liberties movement within
India. This movement came out of the Emergency, during the regime of
Indira Gandhi. The Emergency was a shutdown of civil liberties on the
pretext that there was a national emergency. Out of this grew the People's
Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), for claiming civil liberties and democratic
rights. In the early eighties, I was part of it. I was part of it, I
grew out of it, I learned from it, and I contributed towards it. However,
this was a movement of people, not an organization that has resources
at its base to set it going. It was a spontaneous voluntary organization
that we all belonged to. And the state was very happy with it, because
the state knew that the maximum we could do was make a little noise.
The state knew that our capacity to make noise was a very short-lived
one -- of one week, ten days, maximum. They knew that we were functioning
from our own offices, from our own resources. And they knew we could
not make an impact on this criminal administration system that doesn't
work. So they were extremely happy about the type of work we were doing.
They knew we were only noisemakers and it was only in 1993, at the Second
World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna, that I was able to see how
in different countries you have a whole different professional approach
to human rights. As long as you don't take recourse to such a professional
approach to holding the state responsible for its violations, the state
enjoys you. But the moment you are able to put some pressure on the
state, monitor the state and hold it accountable, then that is painful
for the government. This was my learning in the World Conference in
Vienna, and it was this learning that brought me back home saying that
the PUCL is good, but the PUCL is not enough. I need to be of more use
professionally, put my expertise to better use to make the state accountable
to it citizens, and particularly the victims who suffer from violations.
So that led me, in short, to People's Watch. People's Watch Tamil Nadu
is an organization that concentrates in the state of Tamil Nadu. We
concentrate in a particular state because we want to make that state
accountable. If I were working throughout the country, every state would
be extremely happy because, again, I wouldn't possess the skills and
capacities to be able to make a state accountable. So this geographical
limitation is something that we have imposed upon ourselves to make
sure that our effectiveness multiplies. This doesn't mean that we don't
believe in networking, it only means that we are concentrating here
while we learn from experiences outside. Our focus area is monitoring
a variety human rights violations in the state. So that is one area
which leads from monitoring, through fact finding missions, to intervention,
using courts and commissions within the country and now also trying
to use UN mechanisms. The second major area is the whole area of human
rights education.
Chandana: Can you
talk about the Dalit interventions in Durban?
Henri: Well, the
Dalit intervention in Durban must start from New York. In 1997 Human
Rights Watch, a well-known organization within the US, had wanted to
study the problem of caste discrimination in India. They came out with
a report that was undertaken by a researcher of Indian origin, Smita
Narula, and came later to be known as Broken People. This was research
which was undertaken with a number of people who were acknowledged in
the book but who decided, within India, to say, "Fine, Human Rights
Watch, but we would like to contribute to the recommendations that come
out of this research." For the first time you had an international
human rights organization recognize that recommendations have to be
drawn with the victim community. And that did take place. You had the
research done. You had the researcher come back to India. You had the
researcher sit down -- and I'm purposefully mentioning the methodology
because it was a participatory process resulting in the very good recommendations
which the book has. Further than that, it resulted in people there saying
-- it was July 25th, 1998 at that time -- "Fine, thank you, Human
Rights Watch, but we feel we have a task ahead. We are in 1998, which
is 50 years of our Independence. And we are also into the 50th year
of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Here are two historic
movements, one of the constitution making within the country, the other
of the UDHR, both of which have not meant anything to the Dalit community
within the country." This was the context that was set up through
this research. And we said it's high time we learn from the women's
movement. Let's be honest about it. It took women throughout the world
to come together in 1993 for one year and assert that women's rights
are human rights to finally getting the acceptance of the Second World
Conference on Human Rights in Vienna and leading later to Beijing. So
we have to now assert that Dalit rights are human rights. Here was the
birth of what later came to be known as the National Campaign on Dalit
Human Rights within India, with the slogan: "Dalit Rights Are Human
Rights. Let Us Cast Out Caste." This led to people coming together
from throughout the country, not for fighting at the grassroots because
this is what we have been doing a lot, but trying to say we need now
to make this popular, using the visibility that the 50 years of Indian
independence and the 50 years of the UDHR would provide us. We thought
that after a year we would get back to our normal work, but the national
campaign continued. While doing so there were responses from other countries,
of people saying, "We also want to stand in solidarity with Dalits.
Why don't you allow us to participate in this signature campaign?"
We said, "Of course." You then had the origin of the Dalit
Solidarity Forum in the US, in the Netherlands, in Denmark, Germany,
the UK, France, and in Japan where the Buraku took up the issue. In
March 2000 we had the formation of the International Dalit Solidarity
Network in London. So while the national campaign grew, there was this
international solidarity which also grew.
The United Nations
processes, its World Conferences, its Commission on Human Rights, Sub-commission
on Human Rights, in all its 54 years of its existence had not recognized
caste discrimination. Since 1996 the UN Convention on the Elimination
of Racial Discrimination committee, a body of the UN, had opened the
doors and said that caste falls within racial discrimination. It was
logical for us to conclude that since caste falls within the ambit of
racial discrimination, caste should form part of the agenda of the World
Conference Against Racism (WCAR) in Durban in 2001. This was a very
logical conclusion for us, and we said, "Let's use this opportunity."
That is how we were drawn to the WCAR. We were not formed for the WCAR,
as people would like us to be. That's not the truth but that's what
the government says. The truth is that we started at the closure of
50 years of our Constitution's existence, at the closure of 50 years
of the UDHR, shouting loud, "Dalit Rights Are Human Rights."
Then we saw this conference in its preparatory stage and we jumped onto
the bandwagon.
Sujani: Can you
tell us a little about the controversy between Dalit NGOs and the Indian
government concerning the mobilization for Durban?
Henri: Yes, the
Indian government's position from the beginning until the end was that
they were committed to doing away with racial discrimination. And their
understanding of doing away with racial discrimination was that they
did not want to dilute the agenda of the conference. I'm speaking in
their terms, in their language, to make it clear. They gave expression
to this by saying that by including issues of caste discrimination we
were diluting the agenda of the conference. They said they were particularly
concerned for the Indian diaspora in many countries, including the US,
whose interests they want to represent in terms of racial discrimination.
You bring caste here, and you are working against our own people who
are being discriminated against because of color and Asian/South Asian
origin in different countries. This was their argument. Whereas we were
saying, well, we agree with you in terms of the concerns of the South
Asian diaspora.
The Indian government
had constituted a National Committee against Racism towards the WCAR,
thinking that all of their nominated members would be the government's
mouthpieces. To our happiness, five members of the committee ultimately
resigned because of the government's position. This was a national committee
appointed by the government with the foreign minister as the chair of
the committee -- five of them resigned saying that they believed that
caste discrimination had to be discussed in Durban. This was a victory
that we scored within the country. I'm not talking about Durban; I'm
talking about New Delhi. Another success was (and this is because of
the pressure that the Durban conference created within the country)
that political parties started recognizing that caste should be discussed
in Durban. Both the Communist parties, and to a certain extent the Congress
party, took a position. There were parliamentary debates on the question,
which for us within the country is much more important than a small
paragraph that we were fighting to get in to the resolutions at Durban.
There was a movement of people who were asserting their rights and who
were supported by people of different castes and from different backgrounds
in the country. I think that matters. That was a success.
What was the failure?
According to the government the failure is that we got nothing out of
the conference. Yes, we got no paragraphs, we got no lines, and there
is no reference to caste. But what did we get? We got visibility. We
have a huge task ahead in terms of enhancing this visibility and concretizing
the visibility that we have got into specific mechanisms within the
UN. But we have made progress. And this is not the success of the Indian
group. This is the success of a variety of peoples -- from different
continents, from different color backgrounds, from different racial
backgrounds, beyond these national territories that we belong to or
are said to belong to -- who are committing themselves to the 260 million
people throughout the world who suffer from caste discrimination. I
think that is important.
Chandana: That was
a very inspiring vision for all of humankind, can you tell us what the
post-Durban scene looks like from India in terms of building upon these
gains?
Henri: There was
a lot of scope within India to pursue the agenda. What has post-Durban
meant? In concrete terms, post-Durban has meant, and I would like to
mention them because these political actions matter, that Chandra Baba
Naidu has recognized caste discrimination. Chandra Baba Naidu is well
known perhaps in US more than India. He comes in quite frequently to
US for fundraising, okay. He is the chief minister of the state of Andhra
Pradesh, which is the Silicon Valley of India; we have a number of IT
companies based there. He has recognized that caste discrimination is
something that he has to acknowledge and work to abolish, and he has
made several efforts. Here is a commitment of a particular state against
caste discrimination that never happened before Durban. In January,
on the 13th and the 14th, the Madhya Pradesh state government debated
the Dalit agenda for the 21st century. You could never, never dream
of a state government doing this. The chief minister was personally
present two days. Two hundred and fifty delegates from throughout the
country were there to look critically at the state government's agenda
for the 21st century. This is something that you don't see. These are
very positive indications. Of course post-Durban, there were hundreds
and hundreds of meetings throughout the country. All of this now has
to translate into much sharper vigilance and documentation of the violations
of human rights against Dalits. That is our commitment for the future.
Our commitment is not for the internationalization of the issue alone.
That is five percent of our work. Ninety-five percent of our work has
to be, and will continue to be, the mobilization of Dalits, empowerment
of Dalit leadership, and of course, broadening the solidarity of Dalits,
minorities, and the Other Backwards Castes in our country.