Violence and Atrocities Against Dalit Women in Rural Uttar Pradesh

Atrocities against the rural Dalit women should be located in overlapping areas of caste, class and gender. This paper conceptualises incidences of violence as an indicator of persistence of atrocities against the Dalits. Since mid-nineties, there has been a secular decline in the cases of violence against the Dalits, after a high tide of violence against them. This trajectory is a reflection of changes in agrarian structure, occupational diversification, access to education, and changing caste-class relations in the rural India. In the initial phase, the Dalits' assertion challenging unequal and hierarchal social structure met with retaliation at the hands of the forces of status quo. Their weak material condition made them highly vulnerable to violence, but the second phase of assertion is based on comparatively better material conditions that give them protection to an extent. Still a large part of the Dalit population is deprived of the material gains, and this section still faces the on-going violence against them on a large scale.