EDITORIALS
Transferring Prejudice to Other Places
Are police personnel trained to rise above caste and communal consciousness?
T
he Maharashtra government has transferred Indian
Police Service (IPS) officer Bhagyashree Navtake from
Beed district after a video of her boasting about how she
filed false cases against Dalits, harassed Muslims, and protect-
ed Marathas, went viral on social media recently. Transferring
bureaucrats and police officers is considered a punitive meas-
ure. However, governments and powerful politicians can use
the mechanism of transfer in both ways—either to punish of-
ficers who displease them or to please the public who demand
action against certain officers. Navtake’s boastful statements
detailed her hate-filled prejudice against Dalits and Muslims.
Two aspects arise from this episode: will the transfer diminish
Navtake’s purportedly (as seen in the video) casteist and com-
munally prejudiced outlook? Despite the training manuals, can
bureaucrats and police officers be above the prejudices and
hatred that infect the society around them?
It is not difficult to understand that the police force, like other
bureaucratic institutions, continues to be influenced by the
dominant ideology that is built up around caste, communalism
and patriarchy. The police force has got a dubious distinction
of being deeply patriarchal and discriminatory against social
sections such as women, Adivasis, Dalits and minorities.
In an overall comparison of states based on socio-economic
indicators, Maharashtra continues to be counted among the
“progressive” ones. That said, however, the woman officer’s
detailed harangue about her methods and treatment of the
accused from marginalised sections resonates more in the
state’s current situation. If one were to start from recent history,
the Khairlanji massacre in 2006 to the various acts of violence
against Dalits and culminating with the Bhima–Koregaon
incident, the dominant impression is that the police is biased
against this section of society. Again, in 2016 during the muk
(silent) morchas by the Maratha community demanding the
repeal of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention
of Atrocities) Act of 1989, there were many complaints and even
a petition before the Bombay High Court alleging police inaction
in cases of violence and arson against the Dalit community. In
Uttar Pradesh, especially in the past few years, the police has
been notorious for either being aggressive or passive, depending
on which religious community the accused hail from. Police
“encounters,” which are actually cold-blooded targeted shootings,
the so-called Romeo squads that publicly shame and humiliate
young couples, particularly Hindu–Muslim ones, the vicious
campaign against the alleged “love-jihad,” and the highly
8 decEMBER 15, 2018
publicised lynching of alleged cow smugglers all point towards
the police in that state going with the flow of popular biases and
prejudices. In fact, after a corporate company executive who
was unarmed was shot in cold blood in Lucknow, colleagues of
the accused policemen wore black arm bands protesting the ac-
tion against them. This is a state that witnessed a verdict of the
Delhi High Court in the Hashimpura case. It came 31 years after
personnel of the Provisional Armed Constabulary (PAC) killed
42 Muslim men deliberately and threw their bodies into a canal.
The high court said in its ruling that the massacre “reveal(ed)
an institutional bias within the law enforcement agents.”
Considering that it is the agency that is frequently called
upon to act, mediate, arbitrate, pacify and compel in acts of vio-
lence even in private spaces, disturbance of public law and or-
der, rioting and other disputes, the police force is the most visi-
ble arm of the state. Its members—both men and women—deal
with members of the public and citizens daily. There are fre-
quent public relations campaigns to portray the police as friend-
ly and eager to “serve.” But how do the communities and neigh-
bourhoods that they serve, view the police? Considering a mul-
ti-religious, plural society like that in India, how well are the
police equipped to deal with plurality? More importantly, how
is their training devised to deal with prejudices and biases that
they grow up with?
Police reform is a subject that is much discussed but rarely
effectively indulged in by state governments. There has been no
dearth of suggestions starting with those made by the National
Police Committee of 1978, the public interest litigation filed by
ex-Director General of Police of Uttar Pradesh in 1995 in the
Supreme Court (which is still being heard), the Julio Ribeiro
Committee of 1998 and followed by three others—Padmanab-
haiah, Malimath and Soli Sorabjee Committees. In 2006, the
apex court passed six directives of which the fourth one says
that police training “must be designed to sensitise the recruits
to democratic norms to be observed in policing a plural society
such as India.” Obviously, the training of the police men and
women involved in the countless cases of police discrimination
against the marginalised, has clearly failed.
A number of states, including Maharashtra, have passed a
model police act that has brought in some reforms. But these
cannot work in isolation or in a piecemeal fashion. It will take a
long time to iron out prejudices and biases from society at large.
Perhaps, the police need to be trained to go against the grain of
such societal biases.
vol lIii no 49 EPW Economic & Political Weekly