The Hindu : National : Khap panchayats conceal caste issue by bringing up gotra: Brinda

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Khap panchayats conceal caste issue by bringing up gotra: Brinda

Amruta Byatnal

PUNE: The Congress leader who eats in Dalit houses should also take care that the Dalit people are allowed to live, CPI(M) MP Brinda Karat said at the Kalindi Deshpande Memorial Lecture here. She was speaking on the ‘Women's movements and confronting contemporary challenges.'

Referring to the recent incident of a Dalit boy eloping with a Brahmin girl in a village near Delhi and his family getting threats from the police and the Brahmins of the village, Ms. Karat said caste and citizenship were the biggest challenges in front of the women's movement. “We are living in an India today where democracy is being subverted in many ways,” she said.

Launching an attack on the khap panchayats, she said they were bringing up the gotra issue only to conceal the bigger question of caste.

Threat to Dalits

Narrating her visit to the families of the Dalit boy and the Brahmin girl, she said the Dalits had been threatened by the Brahmins that if they didn't return the girl, they would ‘take' one of the Dalit girls. The father of the boy had spent Rs. 1.5 lakh and sold his land to search for the couple. The police had even picked up another Dalit youth from the village to threaten the others.

Ms. Karat, who demanded a separate law on honour killings earlier this month, said the fear was so large that it showed ‘the vulnerability of the Dalit boy, who was only one and a half hours away from Delhi and yet couldn't point a finger at the police and say they were wrong.'

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