In a controversial move, which runs contrary to the current Modi government policy, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), which falls under the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), in a new report has asked the Government of India (GoI) to ensure that the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Amendment Act 2015 – called anti-atrocities Act – should be applied to not just those Dalits which are supposed to part of Hindu religion.
The report, dated August 25, forwarded to Counterview, calls upon GoI to take into account “intersectionality” of the Dalits, insisting on providing “information on steps taken to ensure that Dalit Muslims and Dalit Christians and all members of scheduled castes and scheduled tribes who have converted to another religion are eligible for affirmative action benefits and benefit from the provisions of the Scheduled Casts and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.”
Called “advance unedited version”, the report, which has been released following an 11-page joint submission to the CERD by several human rights organisaations – Dalit Human Rights Defenders Network, National Council of Women Leaders, National Dalit Movement for Justice (NDMJ), International Dalit Solidarity Network, National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights, and Minority Rights Group International – however is not clear whether it considers “affirmative action” as offer of reservation for “non-Hindu” Dalits, which is their major demand.
Reiterating its 1999 stance which stated “that discrimination based on ‘descent’ includes discrimination against members of communities based on forms of social stratification such as caste and analogous systems of inherited status which nullify or impair their equal enjoyment of human rights”, the CERD wants GoI to “provide information” whether the constitutional and statutory provisions “for a prohibition of racial discrimination”, as it had defined, is being followed.
In their submission, the civil society groups had complained: “Despite the consistent position held by the Committee, by UN Special Procedures and by the OHCHR, India has regularly contended that discrimination based on caste cannot be considered racial discrimination”, pointing out, the latest GoI stance was no different – as seen in its contention dated July 15, 2020 on Contemporary Forms of Racism.
The five-page CERD report does not stop here. It wants the GoI – which it addresses as “state party” as it is one of the signatories to the UN convention on eliminating racism – to send information on rights enjoyed by Dalits and Adivasis under “national and international law”, including measures taken to “implement existing anti-discrimination and affirmative action legislation, and the concrete impact of such measures, disaggregated by caste, tribe, gender, State/district and rural/urban population.”
The information, it adds, should include “disaggregated data on the percentages of the Union, State and district budgets allocated for that purpose and on the effects of such measures on the enjoyment by members of tribals’ “right of ownership, collective or individual, over the lands traditionally occupied by them”.
CERD has sought details on discrimination of SC-STs during lockdown restrictions by the police in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic
Referring to the right to education, the report says, the GoI should provide information on dropout and enrolment rates among Dalit children, scholarships or other financial subsidies, discrimination against Dalit pupils by teachers and fellow students, classroom segregation, use of derogatory caste terms, forcing them to perform manual work such as cleaning toilets and picking up garbage, discrimination regarding access to drinking water and midday meals, and so on.
