Cast(e) in stone: Why sensitivities on honour killings differ in real and reel life?

Yaad laagla ga (I’m going crazy about you) from Sairat plays for the umpteenth time in the car as we drive to Ahmednagar when driver Sunny Redekar asks if we’ve seen the film. “I’ve seen it twice,” he says of the star-crossed lovers’ tale with a caste twist which continues to rake it at the box office with Rs 110 crores and counting. Since this Kolhapur-native has brought up how his family is looking for a suitable girl for his marriage, dna photographer Hemant Padalkar links Sairat with that to ask if he’s open to marrying outside his caste. Sunny immediately reaches out to reduce the volume. “See that’s a movie. How can real life be like that? After all I'm an upper caste Maratha. I’ve to think of my family and society.”

And just like that he distinctly underlines the gulf in reel and real life

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Seven hours north of Mumbai, we are at Kharda village in Ahmednagar’s Jamkhed tauka. 45-year-old Rekha Aage chops brinjals in the space outside her one-room roadside shack-home, which doubles up as the kitchen. Her one year-old Nitin suckles, popping out from behind her pallu to smile every once in a while. “I named him after the son I lost three years ago. For me, this is my Nitin who has come back.”

The sharp-featured late Nitin who was brutally tortured, killed and then hung from a tree by upper caste Marathas in the village three years ago (April 28, 2013) would have been 20 now. This third born, both of whose elder sisters Rupali and Mahananda are married) was studying in the Kharda English School, barely a stone’s throw from the Aage home. Not only his daily-wage labourer parents, but several upper caste classmates too vouch for his brilliance in studies, his athletic looks and being an avid cricketer. “He was very friendly and seemed to know a lot about mobile phones, even if he used one for the first time,” recounts Ravi Patil, a classmate.

That’s how he met the upper-caste Maratha girl Puja Golekar, two years his junior in the same school. Nitin would often take his father’s phone to school and Puja often wanted to play games and songs on it. “That’s how they became close. In fact she even borrowed the phone to take it home over one weekend.”

Rekha Aage remembers being stern on finding out. “I didn’t have a good feeling about this from day one. She’s upper caste and her family would turn on us. So I told him to stay away from her and concentrate on studies. But the girl kept finding some excuse to talk to him.” Her fears came true, when Nitin was found talking to Puja alone after school, by her elder brother, Sachin Golekar (now 24 and in prison). “Puja, jumped to Nitin's rescue and created a scene when Sachin grabbed him by the collar,” remembers her close friend who was present. “He then warned to have Nitin thrown out of school and also with dire consequences and dragged her away,” she recounted requesting anonymity.

Rekha Aage has named the son born to her last year, Nitin too. "My Nitin has come back," says the mother.

That Saturday night, a shaken Nitin, told his mother what had happened and asked her to come speak to his class teacher S G Zhumbre and principal P S Dhoble. “You know my elder daughters are married and my husband’s illiterate like me. Nitin accompanied me anywhere a form was to be filled or a thumbprint to be put. Because he was good at studies and helped out, I’d treat him like an equal but that night I slapped him and he barely spoke when we ate.” The mother’s tears are in full flow now. “I should’ve prevented him from going to school on Monday,” she repents.

On Monday when her husband Raju left for work at the local stone quarry, she decided to go meet the principal, where she was told Nitin hadn’t come in. “Dhoble began shouting at me to leave. ‘Your son’s a wastrel. He’s always been irregular and uninterested in studies. It’s better if you don’t send him here anymore,’ he told me. I kept asking how he’d performed so well down the years and got good marks but they just pushed me out.” Rekha says she’s never known fear like that. “I sensed danger and began going around like a mad woman asking everyone I met about him.” Her husband and neighbours joined the search. When she ran into Akaash Surve, one of her son's schoolmates (also named in the FIR), he told her: “Forget him. You won’t find him. The Golekars have killed him,” and ran off.

It was only by dusk that Raju Aage and his brothers who had come to help search found his badly bloodied and bruised body, handing from a tree beyond the Golekars’ brick kiln. Though the police first tried to make it a case of suicide, an agitation by Dalit rights groups and activist organizations, the post mortem report was used to frame charges. The report revealed Nitin was beaten up badly on his private parts and a red hot iron rod (used to check bricks in the kiln) was driven into his rectum, killing him. “Later his body was strung up from the tree to make it seem suicide,” says the FIR.

Though Ahmednagar police booked and arrested Puja’s uncle Sheshrao Yevle and her brother, Sachin Golekar for murder and charged them under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, Aages point out how others like her elder uncle Sainath Yevle, 55; Rajkumar Golekar, 22; Sandeep Shikaare, 23; Vindod Abhiman Gatkal, 23; Akash Surve 20, who were all party to Nitin’s killing are still scot free. Raju Aage was warned about the safety of his youngest Durga by Shikaare. “Lets see what happens, if one of our boys does the same thing to your daughter,” he was warned near the bus stop barely a week after Nitin’s death. “Fearful for her safety we shifted Durga to my wife’s maternal home. She is now studying there.”

When we visited the upper-caste section of the village, elders blamed media for stoking fires. “The Aages have lost Nitin and our family has a young son in jail. What else do you want?” asked one of them. Rajkumar Golekar, Puja’s younger brother who the police have told the court “is missing,” insisted it was Nitin’s fault. “He should’ve know his limits. My brother and the others simply warned and beat him up. Everything else is lies.”

Ironically even as the hostile, restive crowd made its displeasure known about our presence, refusing to let us take pictures, a phone went off to the opening bars and chorus of the Sairat foot-tapper Jhingat which has seen audiences break into dance mid-movie often even requesting a replay.

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Our next stop: Sonai village off the pilgrimage town of Shani Shingnapur, two hours away in the same district where the first day of 2013 saw a Dalit youth trio being put to death in macabre honour killing. Comrade Anant Lokhande (who was at the forefront of the month-long struggle which saw Dalit rights and human rights groups gherao the Ahmednagar district collectorate forcing then state home minister RR Patil to order an inquiry) asked an activist to take us to the spot where the three youth were barbarically killed. “While families of the three deceased have fled the district fearing for their lives, the perpetrators still don’t think they did any wrong.”

Upper-caste Maratha brothers- the three Darandale brothers families live in adjacent homes surrounded by fields at Ganesh Shivar, Vithalwadi which falls under Sonai grampanchayat. When dna visited them, the family though reticent, didn’t seem repentant about what had happened. “How’d you react if it was your daughter or sister?” asked Prakash Darandale, brother of the prime accused Popatrao.

Sandip Thanwar, Sachin Gharu and Rahul Kandare (It was only his third day on the job and in town) were all from the most backward Mehtar community and working as conservancy staff at Trimurti Pavan Pratishthan School and College at Nevasa Phata six km away. Sachin and Popat Darandale’s daughter Seema (who was studying in the same college) had fallen in love. This was confirmed by Kalabai Gharu, Sachin's mother on phone from Erandol near Jalgaon where the Gharus have fled in fear. “Seema often came home with him and her family got to know. When they threatened him, I tried to make them see sense but blinded by love, they ignored me and insisted on marrying.”

But instead of happy, the tidings soon turned funereal as Seema’s family planned to kill Sachin. They used Ashok Navghire another Dalit youth who worked at the school as a driver on their earth excavator for this. Navghire already had a score to settle with Sandip Thanwar who had caught him red-handed stealing fuel from the excavator and reported it. Navghire told Sachin that the Darandale’s wanted a choked septic tank of their toilet cleaned. Since he was told it was a big tank and he would need help he took Sandip and Rahul along on his bike. 

Sandip Thanwar's mother Lakshmi, his son (who lost his father on his first birthday) and wife Varsha at their Malegaon home

It was Thanwar’s son Neeraj’s first birthday and the family had invited several people over for dinner. His mother Lakshmi remembers trying to stop him. “He said he’ll be back by 3 pm so I kept quiet as it would mean a little more money to spend at the evening get together.” At 8.30 pm, when  families of all the three youth had begun calling them frantically, a call from Sonai police station informed the Thanwars that Sandip had drowned in Prakash Darandale’s septic tank. “Police showed us his body in the tank when we reached there at 11 pm. They said Sachin and Rahul had killed him and fled,” remembers Sachin’s younger brother Kapil.

“Only when we found Sachin and Rahul’s clothes and asked how they could abscond naked in a cold wave did the police begin looking for them.” And sure enough, their bodies were found in a dried up well in the vicinity.

Kailash Darandale stands near the family's well where the bodies of Rahul and Sachin were found. In the background, Seema (in green) can be seen avoiding the camera.

“While Rahul who had a deep gash on his head was recognised, we couldn’t even identify Sachin’s body since all his limbs and head had been severed by putting him through an agricultural shredder.”

A fact-finding committee comprising several well-known sociologists, activists and journalists which visited the spot a month later red-flagged several anomalies in the police’s investigation in the matter. “While Sandip’s dead body was found on 1st January 2013, the FIR was recorded only the next day,” remembers activist Subodh More who adds, “Despite those murdered belonging to scheduled caste, the Prevention of Atrocities (against SCs/STs) 1989 was not applied in the case before 5th January.” He also pointed out how while Sachin’s torso and severed head were handed over to his mother on 3rd January, the pieces of his hands and legs were only handed over to relatives a month later. “Can you imagine what his mother must've gone through to have another cremation for those parts?”

Sandip Thanwar's brother Pankaj (who is with the Indian army) with his nephew Neeraj at their Malegaon home.

Pankaj, the deceased Sandip’s brother who is with the Indian army and has often been deployed on the Indo-Pak border remarked. “We don’t show such cruelty even to enemy soldiers or infiltrators too.” For now the Thanwars have shifted to Malegaon but here too Pankaj points how difficult it was finding rented accommodation. “We were always asked what community we are from and then suggested that we go live amongst our own. This means a shanty town for conservancy workers near dumping ground. We have had to keep our identity on a don’t-ask-don’t-tell basis. If we could get this current house its only because I said I’m with the army.”

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The conspiracy of silence...

Whether Kharda or Sonai, mainstream political parties have been indifferent. Neither Ahmednagar MP Bhausaheb Wakchoure (Shiv Sena) nor Nevasa MLA Shankarrao Gadhak Patil (NCP) have visited either village or met victims’ families. Incidentally former Ahmednagar MP Yashwantrao Gadhak Patil, resides in Sonai has also shown little interest in the case. When contacted he told dna to reach out to those in power. The sitting MLA refused to comment and the MP said this was a state subject.

Newly-appointed Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment Ramdas Athawale who had visited the village expressed unhappiness that the cases continue to drag in 'fast track courts.' “Unless we set an example with swift and harsh action in atrocities against SC/ST communities we will not be able to prevent others from daring to do so again.”

Many have expressed shock and dismay at the deafening silence on this issue by the two otherwise loquacious well-known activists of Ahmednagar district Anna Hazare and Popatrao Pawar. “Such silence raises serious questions about the civil society and its commitment to the right to life and the quest for justice among most oppressed sections of Indian society - Dalits and Adivasis. This also speaks volumes about the complex paradox of moral voices and caste atrocities in our society,” laments More.

Human rights and expert Dr Nitish Nawsagaray helps explain the silent acquiescence. This faculty at Pune's Indian Law Society's Law College says that the caste system is a reflection of Indian society's gender politics. “This is just patriarchy enforcing control on a woman's sexuality. Hindu scriptures repeatedly stress this by pointing out how control of a woman passes on from her father to her brother and then her husband and son. Any woman who is seen outside this paradigm is seen as 'surplus.' She has to then either be done away with, with practices like sati or divesting her of all visible feminine traits by tonsuring her, preventing her from wearing any jewellery, kajal or bindi. And woe be to the man who chooses to give her the freedom to explore her feelings. If he's Dalit, so much more worse.”

While expressing his irritation at the way the family as an institution is glorified in India he added, “ Nobody wants to talk about how family is used to perpetuate worst caste, religion and class prejudices,” and explained: “Inter-caste love marriages shake and challenge the hegemony of the structural stranglehold of family. No wonder then that and hence society strikes at them really hard.” 

Dr Nawsagaray lamented how a 100 years after ( May 9, 1916) Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar presented his paper Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development at an anthropology seminar at the Columbia university little had changed. “Ambedkar categorically identified how the Brahmins follow a strictly endogamous matrimonial regime and how other communities then do the same in order to aspirationally emulate them thus reinforcing and keeping the caste system alive.”

Echoing him filmmaker Nagraj Manjule who with his Pistulya (2009), Fandry (2013) and the blockbuster hit Sairat(2016) has powerfully portrayed caste-based exclusion said: “The curse of caste denies equality among humans but the way women across castes and communities have been made Dalits by their own is baffling. Caste, gender oppression and inequality are not only interlinked but feed off each other.”

Perhaps a reason why a mere 5.4% of the 42,000 households covered in the largest non-government, pan-Indian India Human Development Survey (IHDS) 2011-12, conducted by the National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER) and the University of Maryland had had an inter-caste marriage.

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On our way back to Mumbai, as we discuss the spate of honour killings over the last three years, the driver Redekar jumps into the conversation. “Its not like upper castes are always wrong. Sometimes Dalits can be pushy.” All ears, we ask him to elaborate. Turns out he left Kolhapur after a police case against him by a Dalit girl he was seeing. “We once went to a lodge in the neighbouring town of Sankeshwar to get intimate. Later she went back to the lodge to get bills while filing the police complaint. So you see?” he says in dead earnest. And why did he break up with her? “There would have been a big issue because of caste. Even if I overlook that, how could I marry a girl who slept with me just like that? Where's the guarantee that she hasn't done it before or won't do it again?”

Questions on why he can sleep around while she can't are simply met with a glare in the rear view mirror and pumping up of the music system volume... Its Sairat again: Hey Urat hoti Dhad Dhad Lali Galavar Aali / Ana Angat Bharla Vaara Hee Pirtichi Baadha Jhaali (My heart's beating fast and my cheeks have reddened / I'm floating on the winds, possessed by love...

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