India Must Stop Denying Caste and Gender Violence

When I think of Badaun， the small village in India's Uttar Pradesh state near the spot where two young girls were raped and then hanged from a mango tree， one detail out of all of the horror is inescapable: their deaths were by no means inevitable.

The cousins were members of a caste grouping known as Other Backward Classes (OBC)， low on the caste totem pole， which made them fatally vulnerable to the men from the far more privileged Yadav caste， accused of their rapes and lynchings.

The girls had gone out to the fields late at night as is the practice in places where there are no indoor toilets.

The simple act of going somewhere - to see a film in a city mall， to buy soap at a small-town shop - can be weighted with risk for women. Many girls and women wait till night before going to the open fields to relieve themselves， in order to avoid predators. It does not always work.

According to a Reuters report， when the girls did not come back， the father of one went to report the missing children to the police. The constable on duty slapped him and sent him away. This is the detail that cannot be forgotten.

If the father had not been from a less privileged caste， if the police had searched for the girls， they might have been found before their assailants hanged them from the tree on the village common.

The media frenzy around the deaths in Badaun， and the outpouring of public anger， marks a return to the reporting of gender and caste violence in India.

As terrible as the lynchings in Badaun are， this incident was not an isolated one. Nor had the killings and caste atrocities inflicted by high-caste perpetrators against lower-caste or tribal men， women and children miraculously ceased over the last four months.

The preceding months had seen their full freight of witch-burnings， caste rapes and other caste-driven acts of terror against men， women and children， domestic violence cases and dowry deaths.

But the media's attention had been fixed on the elections. There was a pause in the otherwise constant， disturbing flow of news stories on gender violence (chiefly rape).

Just as dowry deaths had been the crime that haunted India across the 1980s， rape - especially gang rape in rural or urban India - has become the crime that defines this decade. And the lynchings in Badaun， which happened at the intersection of caste， poverty and rape， might reverberate longer than many equally tragic crimes.

But the Badaun crimes highlighted two factors common to many similar atrocities: the refusal of the chiefly privileged caste police officers to intervene in time to save the lives of victims from less powerful castes， and the determination of the local community， however underprivileged， to force a response from an indifferent state and civil society.

印度北方邦的小村莊布道恩發生了一起令人發指的針對種姓及女性的暴力事件，兩名低種姓階層的年輕女子被強暴并絞死在樹上。此舉引起了巨大公憤和媒體對類似情況的重新報道。在印度，女性外出會面臨極大威脅，強奸特別是輪奸已成為近十年的主要犯罪行為。與此同時低種姓階層人民會遭受高階層種姓者的種種暴行。布道恩事件揭示了諸多類似殘忍行為的兩個共同因素，即特權等級警察拒絕救助低種姓受害者以及國家和公民社會對低階層社區人民的漠視。

[http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-27774908]