Violence and Abuse

Please read this very short article about a Dalit woman being raped by a doctor before a surgery.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news/city/lucknow/Doctor-rapes-Dalit-woman-inside-OT/articleshow/4931822.cms

Even if the accusation is completely false (which it most likely isn't), it still says something significant that the "Times of India" made a clear point to establish the fact that it was a DALIT woman who was potentially raped. If you took the word "Dalit" out of the article completely, it would have a totally different meaning. It shows that this wasn't just a crime of power and lust, but also of discrimination and prejudice.

Look at some of these other newspaper headlines. These truly tell the Dalit story of oppression in themselves.
"Dalit boy beaten to death for plucking flowers"; "Dalit tortured by cops for three days"; "Dalit 'witch' paraded naked in Bihar"; "Dalit killed in lock-up at Kurnool"; "7 Dalits burnt alive in caste clash"; "5 Dalits lynched in Haryana"; "Dalit woman gang-raped, paraded naked"; "Police egged on mob to lynch Dalits".

Lets look at that last one in perspective of modern-day America. If the headline read, "Police egged mob to lynch African Americans in Los Angeles", I think the impact would be huge. Things like this don't really happen in modern-America very often anymore, and when they do, you are bound to hear about it and the perpetrators do not (usually) get away with it. I'm not saying that racism is completely dead in America, because we know that's not true. However, I'm saying that beatings, lynchings, murders, robbery, torture, or people being publicly paraded doesn't often occur solely because of your class (upper-middle-lower), which is semi-equivalent to a "caste" in India.

Just walking through an upper-caste village is a life-threatening experience for many Dalits. Statistics show that
EVERY SINGLE DAY....
3 Dalit women are raped
2 Dalits are murdered and
2 Dalit homes are torched.

These statistics have been proven by multiple studies and are included in the article below.
What's even more interesting is that these statistics are believed not to be even close to what the real crime rate actually is. Those stats are based solely on crimes reported against Dalits, and the majority of crimes go unreported. Why? Because the people in power- the police, government officials, village councils, etc. are all upper or middle caste people.

Many people don't believe these atrocities that are being told because they think that there's no way that this many people can be treating others so horribly. I'll explain what a lot of people don't understand. The caste system is based on Hindu traditions from 1,500+ years ago, and it says that you are borne into that caste. Well, Hindus traditionally believed that you were born into that caste based on how you live your previous life. It's hard for Americans to understand how upper-caste members can be so cruel, when really, since they were born, many of them are raised to believe that because they are born Dalit, that is the way they deserve to be treated, and they see no problem in that.

This is the article from National Geographic in 2003 that many of the information in this post comes from:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/06/0602_030602_untouchables.html

What I really don't understand is how powerful articles like these are not having a drastic effect on the world and why most people on this Earth have never heard the Dalit story.