Immolation of minor Karbi girl in Raha: Not a judicial case in isolation but unveils layers of socio-cultural undercurrents and biases

An immolated corpse of a 12-year-old Karbi girl who worked as a domestic help for a family in Raha in Assam’s Nagaon district was discovered in the early hours of April 23. This brutally inhumane event, with allegations of sexual abuse and murder on the alleged perpetrators is far away from being actively discussed and debated. Though hashtags demanding justice for the deceased have caused rounds in social media, it is yet to create a buzz in the State which cuts across class and community lines. As a criminal case where the victim is a juvenile female domestic help coming from a tribal background and the alleged perpetrators being males from the upper echelons of the ‘mainstream’ society, it unveils several layers of socio-cultural undercurrents that demands a proper scrutiny.

Reflects the Tribal Reality

While discussing the arrival of various stocks of races that now populate the geography of Assam, Hem Baruah, in his book ‘The Red Rivers and The Blue Hills’, draws a witty parallel with the literary classic Ulysses noting the ‘wanderlust’ that the early immigrants carried with them. These indigenous inhabitants, whom we now refer to as ‘tribals’- a colonial classification that we have adopted as a regular terminology with time, constitute a major role in the socio-political scape of the region. Though the region has seen days of agitation, secessionist militancy and counter insurgency flush-outs, the demand for federal autonomy and socio-economic safeguards are still sacrosanct for the tribal people. What one can learn from a study of recent political history of Assam is that due to neglecting the tribal voice in political decision making and cultural assimilation, albeit the tokenism of using tribal handicrafts in felicitation programmes, a major tribal-mainstream fault line sprouted in the due course.

The aforementioned incident, thus, fits into this binary of tribal mainstream dichotomy by default. Though a crime is a crime irrespective of whoever commits it, the pretext and the consequence of certain crimes have socio-political and economic nuances attached to them by the virtue of their context. The heinous murder of the tribal girl unveils the bleak economic underdevelopment of the tribal people and the saddening state of inter-community affairs that is prevailing in the State. The under representation of this news and the delayed response in public outburst brings out the dismal picture of the accrued marginalisation that tribal affairs witnesses in social space of today’s time. A majority of the hashtags demanding justice for the deceased are coming from the victim community solely, although voices from the educated, urban spaces followed after a moment of silence. The ever-vigilant people from the urban spaces who unleashed a reign of social backlash against the Karbi community after a mob lynching of two Guwahati youths back in June, 2018, are now comparatively silent and seem to have tamed their angst against social injustice that raged with fury just three years ago. Such prejudicial response reflects the caste, class and clout hegemony that the urban spaces and the educated middle class holds in today’s time while side-lining the voice of the marginalised.

Gender in a Subaltern Space

Gayatri Spivak, in ‘In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics’, writes about the intertwining of several marginalisation in a recently decolonised space – the interplay of factors like poverty, economic inefficiency, political uncertainty along with gender subjugation that operate together with each other. Tribal womenfolk, therefore, face dual marginalisation - one for being the ‘other gender’ and the other for being in an isolated community. The deceased being a girl child who served as a domestic help brings out this clear picture of how socially and economically unequipped tribal womenfolk are in actual terms.

If we look into the gender gap in the literacy level of the tribal population, the 2001 census indicates a literacy gap of 24.95 per cent whereas the 2011 Census denotes a literacy gap of 19.9 per cent. The Bodoland Territorial Council elections of December, 2020 too showed a meagre representation of tribal women in tribal politics. Hence, subjugation of women in political spaces is an omnipresent phenomenon. The sorry state of affairs is that tribal women are underrepresented even in a politically exclusive space [like that of Bodoland Territorial Council] and this speaks volumes on how severely unfavourable the arena of politics is on the gender spectrum.

The tribal political parties aimed at tribal development should take an obedient note of this. This makes Sasmita Mohanty’s question on why is there so much of politics on tribal women and politics for tribal women and not politics of tribal women - more relevant. (Gender and Tribal Politics in India, Handbook of Tribal Politics in India, Sage Publications, 2020) Mohanty also asks that who shall address the vulnerabilities of tribal women and children if the tribal womenfolk do not have the opportunity to represent their voices at the decision-making bodies in the very first place. Therefore, the infatuation of popular masses with the rhetoric of tribal societies being a safe space for women or claiming such spaces to be gender equal needs to be less cheered and more empirical and tangible work is to be done on educating and empowering tribal women - politically, economically all alike.

Servitude and Child Labour

A lesser discussed attribute of this entire case is the legitimised prevalence of child labour in urban and peri-urban areas where the labourers belong mostly from economically backward regions and tribal areas. What is more problematic in this case is that the deceased girl has been associated with household labour from a tender age of seven onwards. Her elder sisters too, currently work as domestic help. Abolition of child labour, being a fundamental right, dies a slow death in cases like these. This issue of child servitude and as alleged, sexual assault on the deceased too, are important points of emphasis that one shouldn’t override while assessing this particular case.

The Tale of Rongpharpi Rongbe

In the ‘Deodhai Assam Buranji’, a heroic tale of a Karbi women by the name of Kareng Rongpharpi, finds due mention. A Kachari king ruled over the terrains of Karbi hills and is said to have domesticated a few tiger cubs. A royal decree was passed according to which village women had to provide their breast milk which was to be fed to the cubs. Once, when the royal guards arrived in a village called Rongteplong, they forcefully attempted to milk a woman called Karen Rongpharpi who was breastfeeding her children at that moment. Infuriated with such actions, Rongpharpi took a hatchet lying nearby and sliced the head of the sentry into two halves. This tale of valour and heroism in Karbi folklore signifies how women were vocal and active in matters of social life and how they acted as agents of resistance against injustice and draconian laws.

The case of the 12-year old minor girl is not a judicial case in isolation. Her case brings out several inherent socio-economic notions and biases that we as a society need to assess and reform. Her death represents the fate of tribal womenfolk, their socio-economic backwardness and their inability to garner social capital to fit into the ‘civilised mainstream society’. This is perhaps a time to analyse the ‘civilized’ notion which is popularly attributed to the educated and the privileged gentry. Stuck between demographic isolation, socio-political exclusion and twin colonialism, the tribal voice is still on the margins.

Unmilan Kalita

( Unmilan Kalita is a student of Political Science, Ramjas College, University of Delhi, New Delhi. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own. He can be reached at [email protected] )