According to reports reaching here, Dalit women in Barahwi village of Betul district in Madhya Pradesh were not allowed by their compatriots from a powerful upper caste clan to draw water from taps connected to a tube well, alleged 45-year-old Parwati Ingle, one of the villagers to endure the humiliating ordeal. The incident happened when Prime Minister Narendra Modi was praising Ambedkar at his place of birth, 275 Km away in Mhow.

Ironically, the Dalit women were stopped from fetching water for an Ambedkar Jayanti programme, celebrating his 125th birth anniversary on April 14. Later, women from the Thakre clan relented when the Dalits protested and allowed them to have water from two of the nine taps. But they put a rider that neither the Dalits nor their buckets should touch the water vessels of the other caste, which dominates the village, sources said. The angry Dalit women sought the village panchayat or council's help but it failed to solve the crisis, prompting them to lodge a complaint with police on Friday morning. 'We've recorded statements of both groups and will take necessary action on Saturday,' sub-inspector RK Bisare said.

Alleged incidents of atrocity against Dalits have been increasing in the state, where the age-old caste divide is part of the social fabric. A 13-year-old Dalit boy in chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan's home district, Sehore, was allegedly assaulted and his arm broken when he drank water from the well of an upper caste farmer on April 3. A civil society members’ fact finding team has said that Dalits living in Dudlai village are living under the “shadow of terror unleashed by the upper caste lobby”.

On hearing the report that the boy was brutally beaten when he tried to drink water from a hand pump located in the field of a Jat Kisan, this correspondent along with representatives of some social organisations rushed to the village and heard sordid story of discrimination faced by them in the village. The team which included Rashtriya Secular Manch convener LS Herdenia, Dr Ambedkar Samajik Nayay Kendra’s Anita Malviya, and Action Aid’s Sarika Sinha and Swati, visited Dudlai. The boy had earned the wrath of the alleged offender, Bhagirat Jat, for ‘daring’ to take water from the latter’s tube-well.

The boy told the team that he and his brother’s wife were herding cattle when he felt thirsty and had water from a nearby tube-well. At that point, Jat, who owned the field, turned up and started abusing them. Jat first attempted to hit the woman with a lathi. When she protested, he started beating the minor. “I fell unconscious. I was taken home by my sister-in-law. Later, during a medical check-up I came to know I had suffered a fracture,” the boy said, according to the fact-finding team.

The team said when the boy’s father went to the police station to lodge a complaint, the police station in-charge refused to entertain them. The police lodged the report after the media highlighted the incident, but then the upper caste lobby announced a boycott of the scheduled caste residents of the village. The team also found that the policemen sent to the village for security of the Dalit family were not staying near the family but were staying at the panchayat bhavan. The team demanded that a police outpost be set up at the village and an inquiry should be instituted as to why the Dalit family’s report was not lodged by the police on April 4 and why immediately security was not provided.

During the visit, the team collected a group of young children to find out whether they faced discrimination in the government school. All of them with one voice said 'we don't face any discrimination'. Surprised by their answer the team further asked how it is that you don't face any discrimination, they clarified that because the upper caste parents have stopped sending their children to the government school and have opened their own school, so the question of discrimination does not arise.

About entry in temple, the Dalits disclosed that on one day we held a programme at the Hanuman temple from that day they started the boycott of the Hanuman temple itself.A month earlier in Damoh district, a nine-year-old Dalit boy drowned in a well where he had gone to drink water after being denied access to the hand pump in his school. The same month, a water riot broke out between Dalits and Patels in Chhattarpur District.

Caste-based discrimination is rife even in birthplace of Dr BR Ambedkar, the father of the Indian Constitution who faced untouchability and fought against this social prejudice throughout his life. Like Ambedkar, who confronted fellow teachers at Sydenham College in Mumbai for their objection to sharing a water jug with him, Charmakars and Bhangis in Mhow's Harsola village are not allowed to use the community crematorium even in the 21st century. Charmakars are Dalit people who traditionally work as cobblers or skins dead animals while Bhangis are scavengers. Both groups are considered extremely low in India's deep-rooted caste-based social order.

The dominant OBCs – Malis, Patidars and Malviyas – in the village have been accused of oppressing the marginalised communities for ages. 'This will not go easily,' said a villager.

The consequences of defying the diktat are so extreme that wary Dalits seldom venture into the crematorium of upper castes, who call themselves members of Swarna Samaj or golden community. The caste divide is visibly distinct in the settlement pattern as each community lives in segregated areas within the village.

Social rights campaigner Mohan Rao Wakode, secretary of the Ambedkar memorial society in Mhow, regretted that untouchability was still widely prevalent in the Dalit icon's birthplace as well as in the entire state of Madhya Pradesh. (IPA Service)