On May 26, a 10-year-old Dalit girl was raped in Muzaffarpur, Bihar. She died during treatment at Patna Medical College and Hospital. Her family has alleged hospital negligence.
The incident sparked statewide protests and reignited conversations around caste, gender, and justice in India.
Ten years ago, in Badaun, Uttar Pradesh, the bodies of two Dalit girls were found hanging from a mango tree.
Every day, their fathers work just 100 metres from the site of that horror.
We remember Hathras, Badaun, and now, Muzaffarpur.
But will India remember their pain long enough to change the system that allows it?
00:00A 10-year-old Dalit girl was raped in Muzaffarpur, Bihar, last month.
00:05She died during treatment at Patna Medical College and Hospital.
00:09Her family has alleged hospital negligence.
00:12The incident sparked statewide protests and reignited conversations around caste, gender, and justice in India.
00:21Caste and gender-based violence are not new. It's structural, it's systemic.
00:26Dalits face humiliation, brutality, and silence.
00:31In Amreli, Gujarat, Nilesh Rathodh was beaten to death for calling an upper caste teen beta.
00:37In Mathura, a Dalit wedding was attacked for playing music and riding a mare.
00:43In Tikamgarh, Madhya Pradesh, a groom's wedding procession was pelted with stones for refusing to walk barefoot.
00:50In February 2024, Gujarat, a Dalit groom was slapped, dragged off his horse mid-procession, and told,
00:59You need permission to ride a horse. Only upper caste men do that.
01:04The groom later filed an FIR.
01:07The accused was arrested.
01:09But trauma doesn't disappear with an FIR.
01:1210 years ago, in Badau, Uttar Pradesh, the bodies of two Dalit girls were found hanging from a mango tree.
01:19Every day, their fathers work just 100 meters from the sight of that horror.
01:25The accused got bail.
01:27One was summoned.
01:29The others have never faced trial.
01:32Their case has been pending in the Allahabad High Court for 8 years.
01:36In Outlook's August 2024 special issue, editor Chinki Sinha spoke with scholar and activist Anand Tiltumde about the freedom of fantasy and caste and class in India.
01:49In India, there has not been a kind of politics of the lowest strata, whether it is caste or class.
02:00We will have to create something like what we call a socialist system.
02:07So that's the only way that the human race will survive, this planet will survive.
02:12A caste knows only splitting, like amoeba.
02:16Amoeba splits like things, so there is no end to it.
02:20So that way caste, the future of caste is that.
02:23And class tends to unite on your parameters of life, actual life.
02:34To understand the issue of caste in India, we also turned to Dalit literature for answers.
02:40Daya Pawar's Baluta, published in 1978, was the first Dalit autobiography in Marathi.
02:47In it, he writes,
02:49My sorrow an iceberg, only the tip above the water.
02:54My memories drops of acid that leave me shivering in pain.
02:59We remember Hathras, Badaum and now Muzaffarpur.
03:03But will India remember their pain long enough to change the system that allows it?
03:09This is not about one case.
03:11It's about a country that still asks Dalits to beg for dignity in courtrooms, on horses, in hospitals.
