In grappling with the horrors of Hathras, the absence of Anand Teltumbde’s voice resounds. In the writings of Teltumbde, who is currently ...
In grappling with the horrors of Hathras, the absence of Anand Teltumbde’s voice resounds. In the writings of Teltumbde, who is currently incarcerated in Taloja prison in the Bhima Koregaon case, the horrific singularity of caste atrocities are distilled as a precipitate of a long-enduring history and deep-rooted societal structures. Few public intellectuals in independent India have shown as much insight and courage in chronicling the cunning and cruelty of state and society.
A few weeks after the woman in Hathras died after being brutalised allegedly by four Thakur men, the Allahabad High Court has raised damning questions about the manner in which the district administration handled the case, cremating the woman in the middle of the night without allowing her family a last glimpse of her body.
Already, there were stories in the media claiming that the death was actually the result of a love affair gone awry. Teltumbde’s work painfully shows that none of this is new – not the brutality, the destruction of evidence or the wild sordid manipulations in the press.
“It is impossible to draw a line separating the atrocity from the state’s response,” he had written in his book Republic of Caste in 2018.
Police lapses
The flogging of four Dalit men in Una in 2016 might still tug...
