Bathing damsel, burning Dalit

In 2006, a medical student in Delhi caught India’s imagination with her intense protest against the government’s move to provide 27 per cent reservation to Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in institutes of higher education.

The girl, one among hundreds of protesting students, bravely stood up to a volley of police water cannons, shouting slogans for equality and fairness in the education system.

Her defiance was so full-bodied and full of life that media cameras wouldn’t stop clicking. She was labelled the “face” of the anti-quota agitation.

More than two years later, on April 29, 2008, a six-year-old Dalit girl Kamlesh was brought to a Mathura hospital with life-threatening burn injuries all over her body. It is alleged that an upper caste man had hurled Kamlesh into a pit of burning garbage, right in front of her mother’s eyes. He was angry that the two had dared to pass by his home. For a day or two, Kamlesh became the “face” of atrocities against Dalits.

Could the two protagonists of India’s raging caste war have known each other? Most unlikely… But if they did, what would one say or write to the other?

Dear Doctor didi,

My name is Kamlesh. I live in Tarauli village, about 50 km from Mathura.

Mathura, if you know, is famous for pedas. It has many temples, and many important trains stop here.

Didi, I am a six-year-old girl. Don’t be misled by the name, I am a girl. In my part of India, where you may never have been, boys and girls often take the same name. Kamlesh, Komal, Lakshmi for example.

It’s no big deal. In my part of India, names don’t matter. We are known only by our caste…

So I am ‘Kamlesh’ only to my parents, friends and the community. The upper caste Thakurs of Tarauli call me a Dalit. They hate me; warn me not to show up in “their areas”. By mistake, if I happen to cross their paths, they shoo me away.

“Oye Dalit ki bacchi, chal bhaag...”

My name is Kamlesh, but I insist you call me a Dalit. Believe me, this will make our relationship eternal. Upper castes and Dalits in everlasting hostility. Can anything be more natural, more permanent?

Didi, how are you? Are you still busy with the anti-reservation agitation? Why don’t you come and see me? I am in Mathura these days, at the Swarn Jayanti Samudayik Hospital.

Ma and bapu brought me here on the night of April 29 with 50 per cent burns. A Thakur had thrown me into a pit of burning garbage. He was furious that I and my mother had entered the lane leading to his home.

I burned with the garbage, crying and shouting in pain. By the time some kind villagers pulled me out, the tall flames had cooked my tiny body parts. My arms – shoulder to fingertips – chest, stomach and legs. My forehead too…

Check the photo if you don’t believe me.

The hospital doctors are doing their best to save me. They have put me on a clean bed, given medicines and dressed up my burns.

Didi, you too are studying to be a doctor, right? Then you must come here.

You can examine my wounds…
Feel my burnt flesh…
Smell the rotting skin…
Listen to my shrieks when the nurses change the bedsheets…
Watch me struggle to swallow food, and then throw it all up.

You can learn how to console a patient’s family…
Learn to give out hope when there is none…
Tell ma and bapu, “Oh, she is responding well”, even when you know just how many days I will hold on.

You can see “50 per cent burns” in real…
“50 per cent burns” beyond what medical books can teach…
“50 per cent burns” – Living, breathing, until dead…
Good practice it would be for a budding doctor.

Didi, I used to be a beautiful child. “Soooo cute, soooo sweet!”, as they say in your cities… I’m no longer a pleasant sight. My disfigured body sets ma wailing every now and then. But you can handle it. You’re brave.

You’re brave. I have seen your newspaper photos from the anti-quota protests in Delhi. You and your friends, in doctors’ robes, braving police water cannons. Drenched to the bone, every droplet on your skin screaming defiance. Every strand of your hair disheveled in protest.

Even those powerful water jets, known to blow bodies apart, couldn’t break your spirit. Yet I say you people are fortunate. When Dalits protest, the upper castes don’t drench us with water. Rather, they cut it off.

They don’t let us near the village wells; they bolt the sarkari taps and the handpumps. They tell us, “Drink moot (urine), why do you need water?”

And if that doesn’t shut us up, there’s always a butcher’s knife to hack us with, a burning pit to throw us into.

Didi, you upper caste people are fortunate.
For what’s a blazing water cannon in front of a bolted tap?
What’s a blazing water cannon in front of a butcher’s knife?
What’s a blazing water cannon in front of a burning pit?

I hear that these days there is much debate going on over this reservation thing – whether 27 per cent of the seats in IITs, IIMs and medical institutes should be kept for OBCs.

I can imagine the anger at your educational rights being taken away. Some of you are even worried that quality will be compromised. That a first-rate AIIMS or IIT will be invaded by "second-rate" OBC students. That a first-rate AIIMS will produce "second-rate" doctors.

Yes, some of these second-rate doctors will come to our second-rate Dalit villages, but we'll be happy.

For ask a Dalit father and he will say – Give me a second-rate doctor any day. Right now, we have none…

Ask a Dalit mother and she will say – Give me a second-rate doctor, because you give my children first-rate burns.

Ask a six-year-old Dalit girl and she will say – Give me a second-rate doctor, but please don't give me 50 per cent burns.

Yours truly,
Kamlesh