Earlier this month, I went to Jantar Mantar, Delhi's official site for protests, to revisit a
story I had covered. Exactly a month before.
Late on the night of August 9, several Dalit families from Haryana protesting at Jantar Mantar for three years, were allegedly driven out by the police, who used batons. A colleague got a call from a volunteer in former Aam Aadmi Party leader Yogendra Yadav's "Swaraj Abhiyaan" party, who reported the lathicharge on the protesters and alleged that his group too was attacked by the cops when they tried to intervene.
Assigned to cover the story, I reached Jantar Mantar around midnight, met witnesses and took copious notes. Yogendra Yadav was present and detailed on camera what he had seen, condemning the police brutality at a legitimate site of protest in the capital.
What fascinated me was how the incident was reported the next morning by different TV channels and newspapers. There was almost no mention of the attack on the Dalit protesters. They reported it as police action on the Swaraj Samwad volunteers, who had just happened to pass by and intervene.
NDTV, however, reported the use of batons by policemen on the Dalit protestors, basing our report on what bystanders and witnesses, including injured Swaraj Samwad volunteers in hospital, said they saw. They said the police had first attacked the group of Dalit protesters - about 100 families, driven out in May 2012 from Bahagana, their village in Haryana some 200 km from the national capital, allegedly by the Khap Panchayat, a court of village elders dominated by upper caste Jats.
Just a day before, the heads of these 100 Dalit families, had converted to Islam at Jantar Mantar, to escape years of alleged abuse and brutality by the upper caste Hindus in their village. They said their women were gang-raped, and if anyone complained, they were shot at.
They said they had little access to common areas and facilities in the village and were socially boycotted. In 2012, the Khap Panchayat ordered a boycott of these families, forcing them to flee. They came to Delhi and sat on protest.
Both the national and the international media widely covered the conversion of these Dalit families on August 8 this year. But they were mostly silent the next day about the police lathicharge on them.
The selective reportage demonstrated how the lower caste Dalits or the oppressed, are not only vulnerable to police and upper caste brutality, but also to the tendency of the media and other structures of our society to perpetuate and reify these socio-economic hierarchies without probably even realising it.
The decision of these Dalit families to shun caste and embrace Islam in a bid to escape atrocities and lead a life of dignity and respect, might correspond with what Dr Ambedkar called "annihilation of caste". But the treatment of the lathicharge episode by most of the media did exactly what the protesting villagers were trying to break free from by converting to Islam. The partisan coverage reinstated caste hierarchies.
When I revisited the site of the lathicharge at Jantar Mantar a month later, I found the large tent that had housed the Dalit protesters gone. So were a number of the protesters.
Of those who remained, a protest leader introduced himself to me as Abdul Kalam, called Satish Kajla before he converted, he said. He recounted the number of times their struggle caught the media's attention.
"The 2008 gang rape of a Dalit woman, the gangrape of another Dalit woman in my village in 2014, the shooting of two young Dalit men, ensured indirect coverage of our protest. But these were all negative events," Abdul said.
He added, "I wonder if the media would have been directly interested in covering our struggle. I wish the media's coverage would move beyond Dalit squalor and violence".
But, he also vowed, "This agitation of Dalits from Bahagana is far from over...it has been three years and we are still going strong."
As I left Jantar Mantar, I wrote my name and number in a register where Abdul has compiled a list of journalists who have met him. As I began to write, he said, "Write it down in either Hindi or English please. I haven't learnt Urdu yet."
He was probably telling me how he and others like him are still coming to terms with their new identities.
(Kinshu Dang is a reporter with NDTV 24x7)Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. The facts and opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of NDTV and NDTV does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.