The CHRGJ report says India has failed to uphold its international legal obligations to ensure the fundamental human rights of Dalits.
NEW DELHI: India would have some embarrassing explaining to do at the United Nations (UN) later this month, trying to defend its record and official stand on the situation of dalits in the country.
A report by New York-based Centre for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) titled ‘India: Hidden Apartheid of Discrimination Against Dalits’ has held that the central government has failed to end caste-based segregation and attacks.
The 113-page report, ‘Hidden Apartheid: Caste Discrimination aagainst India’s Untouchables’ was produced as a “shadow report” in response to India’s submission to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), which monitors implementation of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD). The committee will review India’s compliance with the convention during hearings in Geneva on February 23 and 26.
India has held that the caste can not be equated to race and had not filed a report for eight years. It sent one in December 2006, for all eight years and Manmohan Singh became the first sitting Indian prime minister to openly acknowledge the parallel between the practice of “untouchability” and the crime of apartheid. Singh described “untouchability” as a “blot on humanity” adding that “even after 60 years of constitutional and legal protection and state support, there is still social discrimination against Dalits in many parts of our country.”
The CHRGJ-HRW report says India has systematically failed to uphold its international legal obligations to ensure the fundamental human rights of Dalits, or so-called untouchables, despite laws and policies against caste discrimination.
More than 165 million Dalits in India are condemned to a lifetime of abuse because of their caste. “PM Singh has rightly compared ‘untouchability’ to apartheid, and he should now turn his words into action to protect the rights of Dalits,” said Professor Smita Narula, faculty director of CHRGJ.
“The government can no longer deny its collusion in maintaining a system of entrenched social and economic segregation,” she said.
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