Adivasi's Are Still Treated Barbaric

She stepped out of her safe cover in a protest march, to get her birth rights. Alas! The lady didn't know that she would be the prey of humiliation and distress even in the fast progressing 21st century. Read about the most humiliating incident of the human world of the year that took place in Guwahati, where a tribal woman was stripped and assaulted on the streets by the local residents.

The incident took place on 24th November 2007, during a clash between local residents and tribal protesters belonging to the All Adivasi Students Association (AASA), in which one person was killed and more than 230 injured. As the mob violence spread like wild fire over to various city localities, a group of youths stripped a young Adivasi woman in full public gaze.They later kicked and punched her private parts with a naughty grin of winning over a helpless woman. She ran terrorized like a scared chic to find some help from somebody only to realize, that she was getting beaten by every man on the streets. The photographs of the helpless woman running naked for her life were splashed in local newspapers, and every news channel evoking a nationwide debate about the police inaction.

Later, when the tribal woman had lost all hopes on something called humanity some people took off their shirts and helped her cover herself, before arranging a vehicle to ferry her to the nearest police station. Just to end the story with a note that there is still a ray of hope.

After three successive day police framed charges ranging from rape to molestation on the three youths involved in the act among which two of them were postgraduates. The Chief Minister of Assam announced a financial assistance of Rs 100,000 to the woman. However what would the charges and the money mean to the girl who lost all that she owned in the mid heat of gruesome protest? Has anybody thought about the physical and the mental agony she is going through? Can that be replaced with few years of punishment to the molesters or a handful of priced papers?

How can men who have gather postgraduate degrees act like macho kings on a woman who sometimes takes her hand to either cover her blissful assets and sometime to protect her private parts? Isn't the act a sure cry against human rights?

The Adivasis or tribals of Assam are descendants of those brought from central India by the British more than a century ago to work in the tea gardens as indentured labour. They are now demanding recognition as a "Scheduled Tribe" which would bring them benefits in education and employment.

Whether they would ever get their demands is a debatable question, and the answer is known only by the authorities who own the ruling seat. However after the inhuman and barbaric incident, our land has proved that some people still lack moral values. Where do we rank ourselves still? Back in the cave man's age? Wake up world.... there is lots to fight for?