The country wide protests against hathras rape killing is a relief in a sense that it in some way obliterate the fear that our democracy is on a death bed. The tipping point was burning of her body in the darkness of night without the consent of her family, that lead to a national outrage . The country that see many rapes a day , finally woke up to witness the injustice meted out to her ,while she burned in to ashes. But a closer look reveals that protests were actually against the state , against wrong doings of people in power, rather than against the perpetrators or the structure that enabled them to perpetuate it ;caste.One wonder what relevance this issue would have garnered if the state was not as repulsive as they were this time. Like many other rape killings ,it would have gone in to the annals of history without even a handful of people ever knowing about it. This raises a serious question; Are we missing the wood for the trees?

Sadly in all liberal democracies , protests are more noise and less substance .Any miss-happening in the society quickly turns in to a political tool against the state , as any violence is equated with inefficiency of the state. Though this will always keep the state accountable , it sometimes reduces every issue in to a playground of political opportunism.This stops the society from analysing real issues at stake. The nirbhaya incident resulted in congress losing its credibility and sadly nothing else. The issues of caste violence or patriarchy can not be dealt in terms of populism. It requires vigour understanding and commitment to make structural changes. But how well does an average upper middle class indian really know about issues of caste in the first place? How well we have understood caste?

The word dalith means broken.The word sympathizes with the plight of the group. The caste system that created all inequalities and sufferings would not have come up with such a word , as that would be self defeating. So that word must have come from the resistance.Then What are daliths actually called in a caste system? The answer is nothing. The best word we can relate to is avarna. But That is defining something as a negation of something else- the whole existence defined through otherness. The daliths or untouchables are not either outside or inside the caste system. Rather ,it literally does not matter whether they exist or where they exist. This indifference is what dalith is actually according to varna system.Often daliths are grouped along with sudhras , the fourth caste. But that is a convenient lie invented very late to create an inclusiveness , which is very much necessary for the great hindu culture to amplify its vasudeva kudumbakam doctrine. Sadly most people have fallen for it. Shudra is not dalith.The Daliths , according to caste system are some miscreants who were so low and non human that even touching them pollutes you. Its like the garbage in your backyard. You know garbage exists. You know you created it. But you will never own it. Touching it pollutes you. All you want is to get rid of it from your backyard. Thats avarnas according to caste system. Please let that sink in your consciousness. Change should begin from there.

When nehru gave us liberal democracy some seventy years back , he knowingly or unknowingly created a time wrap. The rich and able where taken from a poor orthodox ritualistic ,castiest nation to a liberal democracy where english laws and human rights mattered. The rest of people lived in that old reclusive old nation where everything was defined in structures of caste and patriarchy. This two nations are simultaneously living among us. Some are born in that liberal india and die there. Some are born in that casteist india and migrate to liberal india. Some are born and die in that casteist india , like the people in hathras. This is what india actually is ; a nation of many time zones and eras. If you are reading this , you live in the liberal india. The hathras incident is an once in a while time portal for one to travel in to the other india. Dive in , if you cant anymore bear your inability to make sense of what happened to that poor dalith woman. Your answers have been lying there in that other india for centuries. But only few have ever cared to look for it.what it requires now is not your interpretations of those answers but your privileged position so that many more people will finally see and read about it. Be its torch bearer and nothing more. let them speak , the subalterns , for their reality can never be someone else's reality