We’ve always been discriminated against, say Dalits in Oly star Vandana’s village

Roshnabad: About two months ago, Rahul Kumar set up a roadside eatery in Roshnabad. It was on the village thoroughfare. Then one day, a group of dominant caste men asked him to shut it down. “They said their cars couldn’t pass if a Dalit’s establishment was on the way,” Kumar, 20, told TOI on Friday.

Caste schisms run deep in this village of 3,000-odd people, home to Vandana Katariya, India’s first woman to score a hat-trick at the Olympics. The houses are stacked along clear caste lines — the Dalits huddle along the Shiv Temple lane and the dominant Pals live on the opposite side of the road. Everyone mostly sticks to their side.

On Wednesday, three men from dominant castes allegedly harassed Vandana’s family with casteist insults after the Indian women’s hockey team lost to Argentina in the semi-finals. While the incident shocked the nation, Dalits at Roshnabad said it wasn’t new to them.

“It is not the first time we have been oppressed. We are often targeted for small things,” said Kumar. Vandana’s brother Shekhar Kataria added, “We treat everyone with respect but the dominant castes seem to hold a grudge against us. After what we went through, not one person from the upper caste in our village came to talk to us. Things could have been resolved had they tried to reach out. But they didn’t.”

Dalits in the village said prevailing caste dynamics were entrenched in 2004, when industry hub Sidcul came up. “Before that, Pals were landowners and we, the workers. With Sidcul, the dominant castes had a windfall after selling off their land for industrial units and became property dealers. We remained workers, and the economic gap widened,” said a Dalit local. Mithun Kataria, 21, a daily wager, added, “Most Dalits work at Sidcul and some run small businesses. We are nowhere nearly as powerful as the dominant castes.”

Those from the dominant caste TOI spoke to largely said they harbour no ill-will. “We had good relations with the Dalits in our village. We want peace,” an upper caste man who didn’t want to share his identity said. “We want a fair trial.” But while Dalits in the village said they had grown more aware about their rights over the years, those from the dominant caste saw it as a “problem”. “They have become too conscious of their caste,” said Binder Pal. “Yet, we stood by Vandana’s family and continue to do so.”


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