Two kids killed for defecating in open!

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Shivpuri (Madhya Pradesh) [India], Sept 25 (ANI): Two children were allegedly beaten to death for defecating in the open in Shivpuri on Wednesday morning. The children were identified as 12-year-old Roshni and her nephew, Avinash aged 10. "Both of them had gone out to defecate when two men Rameshwar and his brother Hakim came and beat them up. We have no enmity with them.

My son and my sister, who is 12 years old are dead. I had only one son. This incident happened at around 6 am in the morning," said Manoj, father of Avinash and brother of Roshni. The police have taken both the accused into custody. "The two children were hit over the head after which they died. We have taken into custody the accused and they are being interrogated... The boy and girl were defecating in open and these two men came and started beating them up," said Rajesh Singh Chandel, Superintendent of Police, Shivpuri. (ANI)

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As India inches towards declaring itself an open-defecation-free (ODF) country, two Dalit children in Madhya Pradesh’s Shivpuri have been beaten to death for defecating in the open. This reflects an intersection of three central concerns — sanitation, caste, and the rule of law.

The laudable ODF initiative has covered a staggering 5.5 million villages. The number of Indian defecating in open has gone down from 550 million in 2014 to under 50 million in 2018-19. But traditionally, caste dynamics and notions of purity have played a role in Indian sanitation practices. In Where India Goes: Abandoned Toilets, Stunted Development and The Costs of Caste, Dean Spears and Diane Coffey argue that open defecation is not the result of poverty, but a direct consequence of the caste system, untouchability and ritual purity. Dalits, almost exclusively, are tasked with cleaning toilets.

The ODF campaign’s tone may appear caste-neutral, but there is an implicit, and sometimes rather explicit, caste dynamic on the ground. The Shivpuri victims had stopped outside the Panchayat building on September 25 to defecate. The boys’ father has alleged caste-based animosity led to the crime. That the accused are from the same village and were aware of the victims’ identity lends credence to this allegation. Besides age-old prejudice and an unequal power dynamic, the reluctance of law enforcement agencies to take on culprits reinforces a sense of impunity. As witnessed in the recent investigations into lynching cases, the rule of law is often observed in breach when it comes to hate crimes. Unless India takes on caste atrocities, refines its ODF campaign to take into account caste realities and battles impunity, an equal and dignified society will remain elusive.

When caste, sanitation, impunity come together | HT editorial

The killing of Dalit children for defecating in the open reveals the long battle ahead

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