"She was raped": Mother asks for justice for her daughter's death 2:27
CNN spoke with several activists from Dalit Women Fight (DWF), which campaigns for the rights of women in their community. While Riya Singh and Mohini Bala make their work public, the names of the other activists have been changed for their protection. This story is part of CNN's commitment to cover issues related to identity, including race, gender, sexuality, religion, class, and caste.
(CNN) -
A group of Dalit women activists in India are dedicating their lives to the dangerous task of supporting members of their community who have survived sexual abuse.
Their work usually involves a secret fact-finding mission in the village where a survivor lives to help her build a case, says Rekha, a 24-year-old activist.
"There is an element of fear," says Rekha.
"The perpetrators also live in or near that town."
But working in a group helps, he says.
These women are from the Dalit community, officially also known as the Programmed Caste, traditionally positioned on the bottom rung of an ancient hierarchical structure that can confine Indian women to a particular profession, their choice of marriage partner and who they meet from the moment in which they are born.
Sexual violence and rape against Dalit women and girls have come to the fore once again after a 9-year-old girl was gang-raped and killed in the capital Delhi last month.
Four men, including a Hindu priest, have been charged but have yet to plead guilty.
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In 2012, the year of the infamous Delhi gang rape and the murder of a female student on a moving bus, there were nearly 25,000 reported rape cases in India, according to the Interior Ministry.
And 1,576 incidents of rape cases were against Dalit women.
Since then, reported rapes have been on the rise, with more than 32,000 reported in 2019. For Dalit women, the numbers have more than doubled, to 3,486 incidents.
But the difficulties in reporting rapes in India, especially for the Dalit community, mean that the actual numbers may be higher.
Activists say Dalit women are most affected by widespread caste discrimination, which, although prohibited, is part of the fabric of Indian life and affects their daily lives.
Protesters protest in Delhi condemning the rape and murder of a 9-year-old girl last month.
Anoushka says she was gang-raped at the age of 15 in 2012, the same year as the Delhi case, which attracted media attention around the world and led to stricter anti-rape laws.
But almost 10 years later, Anoushka still hasn't seen justice.
The 23-year-old, the oldest of seven siblings, says she was attacked by a group of upper-caste men with land, money, power and "a political connection."
He says he was demanded to drop the case and claims that his upper-caste attackers paid the officials investigating his case.
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A 2020 report by the non-governmental organization Equality Now found that dominant castes use sexual violence to oppress Dalit women and girls who are often denied justice due to a "prevailing culture of impunity, particularly when the perpetrators belong to a dominant caste. "
A Human Rights Watch report published in 2017 also cited cases in which village leaders may harass survivors of lower caste rape to drop their cases against higher caste men.
The men were acquitted and continue to live in a nearby village and issue threats, she says.
Five years ago, he claims he filed a complaint with the state's superior court, but nothing has come out.
CNN has not seen a copy of the complaint and has not independently verified this case.
The survivor withheld her full name for her own protection.
Indian Dalit Christian and Muslim women attend a 2007 rally in New Delhi against the National Commission on Castes and Registered Tribes after it rejected the special dispensation for non-Hindu Dalits.
"Every time I read about another case of sexual violence, I go back to what happened to me ... It hurts a lot that nothing has changed," he says.
"Until all women are safe in this country, no woman will be."
Dalit Women Fight reached out to her and ended up joining the team as a front-line advocate, supporting survivors of sexual violence.
She asks to be called a rape survivor instead of a victim, and says, "The shame is not mine."
In their daily work, someone from a team of around 200 local volunteers from five Indian states (Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan and Haryana) would contact the survivor of sexual violence, whom the activists consider her "sister," and gets permission to visit, Rekha explains.
They may also need to stay overnight, he adds.
Activists often accompany survivors of sexual violence to police stations and hospital for a medical examination, the results of which would be used as evidence in court.
This support is necessary because the police do not take their cases seriously, activists say.
"As soon as the policemen see us, their tone changes because we are Dalit women," says Rekha.
"And they ask why we accompany the survivors when they can present their own complaint."
Rekha continues this vital work even as people in her village in the northern state of Haryana wonder if they should speak out and fight police officers as women, she says.
Although caste discrimination is prohibited, Dalit women are looked down upon by the police force, admits Vikram Singh, a former director general of the Uttar Pradesh police.
A 2018 report on caste and gender crimes by the NGO Sisters for Change, which seeks to combat violence against women and girls around the world, gave examples of cases in which the Indian police were reluctant to investigate crimes of violence sexual violence against Dalit women and girls.
"Things are changing," Singh tells CNN, but "we have a long way to go before ... there is full equality (between) Dalit women and non-Dalit women."
Rekha says that medical examinations are also carried out insensibly "even when (the survivor is) accompanied by us."
He cites a case in which hospital staff made a girl survivor of rape wait for a long time and were rude to her, when the family was already overwhelmed.
Rekha and two of her colleagues were also asked to leave the hospital and told that they were not allowed to enter to help the family or the survivor, it adds.
CNN has not independently verified the details of this case.
Lower caste women threshing maize in a village near Lucknow in northern India.
Hampered by the pandemic
The coronavirus pandemic posed new challenges for DWF members.
Dalits have been marginalized from receiving care or even blamed for the virus.
At the same time, people from marginalized backgrounds are at increased risk of infection due to the manual work they do.
Atrocities committed against Dalit women and families have also increased during the pandemic, says Riya Singh, a member of the DWF steering committee.
The group faces "problems in reporting [cases] to the police and [reaching] the survivors physically."
While no official data has yet been released, many activists have pointed to an increase in all kinds of attacks against the Dalit community during this period.
A report by the Dalit National Human Rights Campaign states that "the term social distancing further reinforced caste exclusion and atrocities during this difficult time."
"All funds were diverted to covid aid, leaving few resources to carry out (the) basic procedure of reporting the crime and supporting the victim," says Singh.
"The local public transport was closed; we could not reach the survivors because the villages are distant and the cases came from different places. We operate by telephone."
But technology presents its own problems.
"We are (a) team of Dalit women and not all of us are equipped with digital means of communication. All this shit from the webinar and online meetings was an added burden," says Singh.
"However (the) only good thing we see in this phase is that our women learned to use technology and tried to deal with the new normal."
A woman in Mumbai protests in June 2020 against caste-based sexual violence that occurs in different parts of the country.
Fighting challenges from within
Women are not only trying to change attitudes in society, but also within their own caste.
"Even today, I face a lot of negativity from my father," says Anoushka, the rape survivor.
"When there is an argument, (the attack against me) comes up over and over again and many victims are blamed and shamed, even by our neighbors."
Mohini Bala, 31, based in Delhi, works for DWF as part of the leadership team.
She lost her mother when she was 6 years old and was raised by her father and grandfather.
He says he was "afraid to open his mouth" in front of his father or relatives, even "to ask for simple things."
She says that she does not feel that Dalit women are considered equal to men of the same caste.
He adds that schools are not always available in Dalit villages, but parents refuse to send their daughters to study elsewhere for fear of sexual violence on their way to or from school.
Bala herself says she dropped out of school because she refused to accept the practice of Dalit students sitting on the floor, she explains.
Bala blames the oppression of Dalit women that "we were denied the spaces we should be in. They do not let us leave the house, to educate ourselves, to go out at night, to work, which is based on the notion that if a woman goes out [and something happens to her], it's her fault, "he adds.
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Neighbors and family members question why they work late into the night, which is considered dishonorable behavior for women.
This adds "another layer of oppression" to the caste and gender discrimination women face, she says.
Dalit women work with cow dung on the outskirts of Lucknow in 2008.
Is there hope for change?
Bala says that after some 14 years of field work, perceptions are changing.
She adds that she is the first woman in her village to leave, get a job and study law after marrying, with a partner of her own choosing, rather than one chosen by her family according to tradition.
"Social media has become a powerful tool for Dalits to share their own lived experiences," says Bala.
"Previously, our stories were presented by people from different communities and they did not resonate with us."
However, activists also warn that the publicity infuriates some upper-caste people, leading to more atrocities.
They believe that people from higher caste communities should recognize the unearned privileges assigned to them from birth.
"It's about time we expelled the breed," says Bala.
Meanwhile, "the conversation shouldn't be a social trend (but) it shouldn't die down," he says.
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Rekha pays tribute to a renowned Dalit politician, the late Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar.
Affectionately known as "Baba Saheb", which means respected father, Ambedkar helped draft the constitution of independent India in 1947.
"I receive my strength from the leaders we have had in the past, Baba Saheb, and other people we follow and who hold in our hearts.
"No matter what happens, these rights have been granted to us by law."
Many of the interviewee responses, obtained through video calls and email, were translated from Hindi into English.
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