Almost 75 years after the Constitution eliminated caste-based discrimination, the scourge continues to be prevalent in some parts where a two-tumbler system is in vogue and access to temples and cremation sites is denied. State governments are alive to the situation and are actively combating it. What, however, was shockingly sanctified by the executive was the discrimination explicitly written into the jail manuals of as many as 10 states in the country.
The problematic portions broadly are on the division of manual labour, segregation of barracks and labelling people as habitual offenders. For example, one manual specified that sweepers should be chosen from the ‘Mehtar or Hari caste’ inmates. The Supreme Court last week quashed such offensive provisions as unconstitutional.
The court said the right to live with dignity extends even to the incarcerated, and rued that criminal laws from the colonial era continue to impact the postcolonial world. Rules that discriminate among individual prisoners directly along caste lines or indirectly by referring to proxies of caste identity are violative of Article 14 (equality before law), the court held.
The bench dwelt at length on the constitutional scheme, fundamental rights, life with dignity, abolition of untouchability and the right against slavery. The Constitution, it pointed out, is not just a legal document, but in India’s social structure, it is a quantum leap because it gives dignified identity to all citizens.
It cited previous rulings to underscore that dignity is intrinsic to and inseparable from human existence, adding it includes the right to protection against torture, or cruel and degrading treatment. The dignity of human existence is fully realised only when one leads a quality life, the judges said.
While legislations on habitual offenders were enacted to replace the Criminal Tribes Act, in some states, they continue to refer to members belonging to the denotified tribes. A whole community ought not to have been declared a criminal tribe in the past or a habitual offender in the present, the court observed and quashed the provision. It directed the Centre and the state governments to amend all such offensive rules and file a compliance report in three months. It’s appalling that oppressive colonial mechanisms that were designed to dehumanise and degrade their subjects continued to exist for this long. Minders of prisons need to wake up and smell the coffee.