By Sneha Rajaram
It’s been ten days since Chitralekha’s auto was damaged to the tune of Rs 20,000 by CPM workers on Friday, March 4, in Payyannur, Kerala.
Chitralekha, a woman auto driver, has been harassed by male auto drivers since 2004, when she first began driving an auto. Since then, she and her husband have regularly been severely beaten up, verbally abused, harassed by the police, slapped with false cases, their property damaged, until they were forced to leave their home.
Now, this might seem like a simple case of men in a male-dominated field feeling threatened by a woman who enters that field. But the additional factors at play here are: these male auto drivers are unionized by CITU (Centre of Indian Trade Unions), affiliated to the CPM. Trade unions have a long history of misogyny. And Chitralekha was also harassed for being Dalit (from the Pulaya community). The first time she arrived at an auto stand with her new auto in 2004, she was verbally abused with casteist slurs; she wasn’t abused just for being a woman driving an auto, but asked, “What the hell is a Pulaya lady is doing with our auto rickshaw stand?” These are the kind of odds Chitralekha is up against.
Chitralekha reported clearly on March 4 that she saw CPM worker Abhilash damaging her auto. She had to appeal to the District Collector to even get a case registered by the police. It’s been ten days now. No update on the status of her case (not that this is surprising, considering how she’s been harassed by the police over the last decade). How long will it take to make an arrest? Or is that never going to happen?
PS: For further reading, do take a look at this interview. And for a comprehensive timeline of the atrocities against Chitralekha and her husband, see here.