A RECENT check-up at the doctor’s showed up that though all the health parameters were fine, only the heartbeat was missing. The perplexed doctor, ordered and monitored all further tests to understand this strange phenomenon, where a live person, breathing, walking and talking does not have a heartbeat. Naturally, nothing came out of these medical tests. This further aroused concern in the doctor, who was baffled and started palpitating. Summoning all the years of experience gained through observing and treating thousands of patients and knowledge of keeping update with the latest medical developments, the doctor resorted to a socio-economic case study to understand the condition. It is then that the truth had emerged. The heart went missing!

In fact, it is a travesty to expect the heart to stay where it is and continue beating, when all these things are happening. A dalit woman lives at least 15 years less than a woman from other communities in our country, according to a recent UN study. Can any heart with sanity continue to do its work, without being flabbergasted by this awful piece of statistics? How can it be otherwise, witnessing what has happened and is happening in Hathras?

If the culprits are heartless to commit such a heinous crime, what is our heart for, if it at least does not bleed for the victim? The tongue is cut, the spinal cord is broken, private parts are meted with gruesome brutality and her entire body is bloody brutalised. How can the heart still beat? It stopped beating for the victim and for the entire society.

And for the victim’s family – father, mother, brothers and sisters – their hearts are broken. As if the incident was not sufficient to break their hearts, the government got into its act. No it is the State. S-T-A-T-E – State that sprung to act. The police force, who set aside their hearts and failed to immediately register an FIR, the deliberate delay in providing for proper medical attention; the medical personnel who violated the great Hippocratic oath they had taken and failed to suitably attend to the violated girl, and then the decorated police officer, who earned his stripes, feeding on public money for completing the civil services course, only to be found there is nothing civil left in his utterances wherein he denied rape. Did all these people display heartfelt empathy towards the victim, who was pushed into such a severe suffering? What made them act the way they did? STATE.

It is not only the orders from the government, if there were any, that made them act or not act. It is the way our society and its all other institutions are being run that made them act or not act, the way they did. First, the gender of the victim. A girl. How many times didn’t we discuss, debate and act? Beneath the slogan ‘Beti bachao…’, lies only the sneer contempt for this gender called woman. The contempt towards women has history. And a long one, running from the ancient scriptures to the modern media. What does it take for a woman to be recognised as a human, a simple fact, which this long history has refused to acknowledge? A heart.

Second, the caste. This social construct is no less in claiming a long history for itself. A history of hierarchies. Denial for those down the ladder and forced acquiescence to authority. This is a peculiar social institution that survived many attempts to rewrite its history or change it. Whenever there was(is) an assertion from those subjugated by the hegemons, it unleashed its brutal force – the force of the State, to survive. Ask history, the great narrator of times. In spite of many attempts to cut its tongue, it is still surviving to tell all such tales. History, the great recorder, notes that from 2013 through 2018, there is a substantial increase in the number of attacks on dalits, those who are forced to stay put on the lowest rung of the hierarchical ladder of caste. Why so many attacks on dalits? And why are they increasing year on year? Again it is the refusal to recognise a simple fact that dalits are also humans. The refusal to recognise this simple fact, as history teaches us, has got to do with power – State power. And what does it take to acknowledge that dalits are humans? A heart.

Third, the class. It is here that the State appears with its naked wrath. Those who do scavenging, cleaning, washing, producing wealth and ensuring the wheels of the economy continue to run, should do only that. Their heads are not to think, but only to bow and continue doing what they are doing. It is their duty to work. Not enjoy. It is their duty to produce. Not consume. There is a separate class to enjoy and consume. They do not produce. The hierarchy between them should be maintained. Those who produce should not aspire to consume and change their lifestyle. Aspiration is not tolerated. Is it not the stated dictum of this society that ‘all human beings are born equal’? Of course, but who said, producers are human beings too. (For the record, the victim in Hathras comes from a poor dalit family of agricultural labourers, who work on the lands of the rich and ‘upper-caste’). Historically, labouring classes produce wealth, work under inhuman conditions, live in inhuman surroundings but are labelled as squalid and inhuman. All that is dirty and uncouth is associated with these producers. Read this: black cat is considered to be a bad omen and black duckling is ugly. Similarly, look at these words: ‘black’mail, ‘black’ magic, ‘black’ money and ‘black’ sheep. All that is bad is ‘black’, a colour associated with the labouring classes and ‘lower castes’ like dalits.

The question is, what are these wealth producers doing by living their lives in squalor? Why are these people who work hard for civilisation to bloom, termed uncivilised and inhuman? What does it take to change their inhuman conditions, to human? A heart.

But, can all these changes be brought about with a change of heart? If only that was the case, there were many mahatmas and good Samaritans who worked their lives out to bring in a change of heart. But that did not result in a change in society. Then why do we need a heart for?

In a world full of individuals, me’s, mine’s, egos, mistrusts, doubts, CCTVs, surveillance, intimidation and attacks, a heart is needed to recognise and feel pain. It is needed for that human nature called empathy, for that thing called humanity.

All the more, it is needed to understand, UNDERSTAND, in bold. Understand the society and the relations within it. Understand the power structures. A heart is needed to understand the need to change those very discriminative power structures that are violating our lives. A heart is needed to push our bodies to change society and better it.

After a thorough investigation and diagnosis, the doctor tagged along to search for our hearts. We found it in Jantar Mantar, that perennial site of protests against all sorts of injustices committed in this country. It is found beating in the struggles of workers in Agra, Aligarh and thousands of other towns and cities in our country. Again, we found the heart pounding in those distant farms in Punjab, Haryana, Karnataka, Kerala, Tripura, West Bengal, Tamilnadu, Telangana….It is found pumping hard creating that adrenaline rush among the students and youth of our country who were protesting against the gruesome rape and murder of the brave girl from Hathras. Surprisingly we found out that the heartbeat is the same in all these people. And surprise, surprise! It is the same heart that is beating in the US, among those who are demanding justice for George Flyod, Breonna Taylor….

Ah, this indeed is what is called surviving. SURVIVING.

Heatbeat. Is it now an international conspiracy?