Dalits prohibited in public crematorium !

Sandesh Prabhudesai
19 September 2001  

A controversy has erupted in Goa, over cremation of dalits in a Hindu crematorium, incidentally when President K R Narayanan is resting here for a week.

Verla-Kanka, the suburban village of Mapusa city near the famous coastline of North Goa, has become the hotbed of it, with the whole village unanimously opposing the cremation.

After one such cremation in the 'Hindu' crematorium, the villagers summoned seven priests and 'purified' the place.

Though the crematorium land belongs to the Communidade (a commune system of community land holdings inherited from Portuguese colonialists), the village panchayat later constructed a compound wall and sheds there with public funds.

One side of the same crematorium is utilised for burial of children and pregnant women from any community as well as all people from dalit community. This created an impression that the place is reserved solely for dalits.

Following the 'purification ceremony', the unofficial gramsabha proposed to the panchayat to construct similar shed in the part meant for burial, to cremate dalits, whenever they wish to.

Meanwhile, another dalit died on 9 September but villagers vehemently opposed his cremation in 'their' cremation area. Even the police officials, rather than providing security to dalits for cremation, compelled the minority dalits to cremate in the burial area, pending construction of separate cremation shed for them.

"What is the problem when the whole village, including the elderly dalits agreed with it", asks Milton Marques, the ZP member, who has been the village sarpanch for the last 19 years. He prefers to respect the tradition rather than law which bans such discrimination.

Shantaram Redkar, president of the village crematorium committee, goes a step ahead and justifies the stand fully. "What is wrong if a separate shed is reserved for them when they are provided with reservations in several other fields", he asks.

"It is a shame for we Goans, who claim ourselves to be educated and progressive, to think in such manner", opines Adv Satish Sonak. His Goan People's Forum has demanded that the government should immediately stop construction of a separate shed and issue circular to all panchayats not to discriminate any community in such manner.

Agreeing to the proposals the GPF put forward, panchayat minister Babu Azgaonkar has also agreed to convene an all-party meeting besides issuing such circulars, but with chief minister's initiative, since Azgaonkar himself belongs to the dalit community.

"More than us, the non-dalits should come forward to educate people on such issues", he feels, fearing that the dalit community in the villages will be otherwise harassed by the upper castes.

As the panchayat elections are now scheduled in December, the BJP minister however tries to shuck his responsibility to take public stand on the issue while appealing the NGOs to come forward to take up awareness programme.

"It is just not a crematorium issue, the government even utilises public funds to build houses under 20-point programme exclusively for the dalits. How the state can be allowed to segregate certain community to create new dalit bastis", asks Adv Avinash Bhosale, a political activist.

Though Goa has hardly two per cent dalit community in the 13-lakh strong state, the caste factor plays a dominant role even during elections here in spite of the state ranking second in the country on literacy count.

The small issue of a crematorium however has proved that the literacy rank does not mean that it also ranks much higher on the education count and progressive attitude towards human beings.

Your Comments Please