Dalits suffer social boycott in Maharashtra village (The Hindu)
“Suman Tayde, 14-month-old Dipti’s grandmother is growing anxious as the child has gone without milk since Saturday. The village hasn’t run out of supplies, but since October 12, Dalits of Vairagad village in Maharashtra’s Buldhana district have been facing a social boycott. This includes access to the flour mill and other shops in the village.
“On Monday, Suman went to Balaji Kunte, a caste Hindu, and tried to convince him to spare some milk for Dipti. Balaji Kunte’s wife told her, ‘If we give you milk, our caste people would punish us with social boycott.’
“‘We are living on rice. Now they (caste Hindus) are threatening that the road leading to our locality would be blocked’, said Tulsabai Telgote, Suman’s neighbour. ‘Frightened by this, our girls have not stepped out of house since Saturday,’ Tulsabai added.
“On January 26, 2013, caste Hindus in Vairagad refused to allow Dalits to put up B.R. Ambedkar’s photo alongside those of other leaders during the Republic Day ceremony.
“‘We were silent then but on the day of Maha Shivratri in May this year, they uprooted a Panchashil flag (a Buddhist flag) near the Ambedkar statue. They put up a saffron flag in its place’, claims Jagdish Bhandare, an elderly man. Most of the Dalits in Vairagad are landless laborers, and work in farms belonging to caste Hindus. Since the Maha Shivratri incident, labourers from the Dalit locality haven’t been allowed to work in the farms, they claim.”
See other anti-caste posts on the use of social boycott to enforce caste oppression
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