http://www.human-dignity-forum.org/2012/05/lenin-raghuvanshi/
Lenin Raghuvanshi Submitted by: Tanweer Ahmed Siddiqui
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It has been 65 years since India — the largest democracy in the world — attained independence.
Yet, justice for all is still a far cry in the country where the caste
system continues to determine political, social, and economic lives of
a billion people.
Money and muscle power, together with political string-pulling, often
result in denial of justice for the hapless ‘have-nots’, especially the
Dalits (untouchables), ravaged by poverty and illiteracy.
Atrocities and extortion on the Dalits, fake encounters, refusal to
register complaints against the well-heeled, arbitrary arrests on false
charges, illegal detention and custodial deaths are in commonplace.
In the absence of a modern social audit system, the keepers of the law
often unleash a ‘police raj’, especially in rural India. A crippled
National Human Rights Commission and its state subsidiaries with
limited re-commendatory control and a dysfunctional Legal Aid System
depict a gloomy picture indeed.
In a unique way, Lenin Raghuvanshi, a veteran human rights activist,
fighting the case-studies primarily drawn from Uttar Pradesh,
registering the highest rate of crime against the Dalits, chronicles
how with implicit support from the administration, the Dalits are
tortured and subjected to humiliation by the higher castes, like being
garlanded with shoes, their faces blackened or being forced to ride an
ass; yet, in most of the cases, violence, deaths or custodial tortures
that are committed against the marginalised and deprived castes go
unrecorded.
Ironically, even after having shed the colonial yoke, its legacy
continues in the administrative framework of our independent India
marked with widespread corruption which has rendered many
government-sponsored schemes in rural India a failure.
Lenin Raghuvanshi, an Ayurvedic physician by profession, has been
working for the rights of bonded and child labourers and other
marginalised people in Varanasi and eastern part of Uttar Pradesh,
India. In 1996, he and his wife Shruti founded People’s Vigilance
Committee on Human Right (PVCHR), a community-based organisation, to
break the closed, feudal hierarchies of conservative slums and villages
by building up local institutions and supporting them with a high
profile and active human rights network.
He has become the symbol of nonviolent resistance among millions of
Dalits fighting for dignity. For his commitment in favour of
marginalized people, he has periodically suffered death threats.
Already an Ashoka Fellow, Lenin was the President, United Nations’
Youth Organisation (UNYO),Uttar Pradesh (India) Chapter. Lenin’s work
has been recognised with Gwangju Human Rights Award for 2007. In 2009,
in collaboration with the Rehabilitation and Research Centre for
Torture Victim (RCT), Denmark, Lenin developed Testimonial Models for
torture survivors in India. City Council of Weimar in Germany selected
Lenin Raghuvanshi for the International Human Rights Award for 2010.
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