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Banished
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The Untouchables: India's Little Secret (other current features)
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[ under culture ] - 08.01.05 - by: Adrienne-TygerLily Ernst
(email this article to a friend)
In 2004, a Tsunami rocked the coast of India, leaving thousands dead, and countless more without homes. In its aftermath, India has been rebuilding, but one group faces extreme hardship in the face of this tragedy -- the Dalits.
This group engages in a daily struggle to obtain its basic needs. They are being denied access to the essentials such as clean water and food. Even access to communal latrines is denied. Yet as members of a caste that ranks them as less than human, they are expected to fulfill their duties by handling clean up of the victims bodies and waste, even the bodies of family members. However, this kind of persecution isn't new.
* 1955 Mississippi: 14-year-old Emmett Till was murdered in Mississippi after he whistled at a White woman. *
* 2000 India: a teenaged boy was beaten to death for picking flowers from the yard of a member of an upper caste. *
The caste system is an ingrained part of the lives of the Hindu population, used to designate what opportunities will be available to an individual -- from the Brahmans, the top caste, which are destined to become teachers and priests, to the Shudras, the lowest caste, who are known as peasants and workers. Due to the nature of the caste system, to be born an Untouchable is a future of jobs ending life and working with the dead or working with human excrement.
* 1964 Mississippi: three civil rights workers were murdered in Mississippi after campaigning to register Black people to vote. *
* June 4, 2005, India: three Dalit youths shot to death in an area where Dalit killings are on the rise. *
The first Untouchables were Buddhists. Victims of persecution, Buddhists were hated by Hindu leaders hundreds of years ago. As time passed, animosity toward Buddhism grew. A price was placed upon the head of any Buddhist monk; the famous Bodhi tree where the Buddha found enlightenment was uprooted; and the practice of Buddhism in India declined. The term Untouchable continued to refer to those Buddhists who remained.
In addition to Buddhists, some theorize that the origins of the Untouchables lies in descendants of over 400 communities and a multitude of tribes. It is also suggested that Untouchables are men cast off from their tribe, or the result of an Aryan-Sudra union. Others look at the circumstance, such as occupation.
The term Dalit, meaning "Depressed" or "Broken People," was assumed by the Untouchables in the late 1980’s. The replacement was intended to get them out from under a name given because they are considered too impure to touch.
If an upper caste member is touched by a Dalit or gets caught in a Dalits shadow, the person must undergo a purification ritual to absolve the person of this sin. As way to make the upper caste "safe," some Dalits are made to remain indoors until nightfall to protect the upper castes from the threat of contact. Dalits are made to carry pots that will collect their spittle or sweat and carry sticks to brush away their footprints. These actions are to keep anything connected to the Untouchable from potentially coming into contact with members of the upper castes.
* June 26, 2005, India: A Dalit was severely beaten by three of his neighbors, who are members of the upper caste, for touching a public tap designated for non-Dalits only. *
In response to this prejudice, Dalits began converting to other religions, leaving Hinduism to return to Buddhism, or to join the Christian and Muslim religions in an effort to find equality outside of a system that would never allow it.
However, as a result of the interest in conversion, and as a blatant attempt to further control the actions of the Dalits, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a Hindu nationalist party, is advocating the restoration of an antiquated law that penalizes religious conversion and is advocating an anti-conversion campaign.
* June 29, 2005, India: A Dalit youth in Bihar was branded a Maoist, beaten and handed over to the police by upper-caste men for wearing dark glasses, clean clothes and enrolling in college. *
While the nationalist and supremacist groups work to hold the Dalits back, the government of India is making an effort to rectify the wrongs done to the Dalits. Their government developed "Positive Discrimination," a law similar to our own affirmative action. Under positive discrimination positions are set aside in schools and jobs for Dalits.
In 1955 the India Constitution deemed the use of the term Untouchable to be illegal in the India Constitution Untouchable Act. It was this act that essentially abolished the use of the term Untouchable. Later the caste system itself was made illegal. However, government dictating the end of a religious policy that has stood since the inception of Hinduism is not solving the problem. The caste system and its mentality still exist -- legal or not, law or no law.
* An 18-year-old Dalit woman was kidnapped, tortured and set on fire. *
* A four-year-old Dalit girl was sacrificed by a 40-year-old man. *
* A Dalit family was stripped, beaten and forced to parade in front of their village because they chased away hens picking at their crops. *
* When a Dalit man refused to hand over his land to an upper caste family he was tortured, humiliated and shot to death. *
It was in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s that led the United States to experience a change in how we live. There was a mass movement to end the beatings, lynching and other forms of torture and humiliation that was commonplace for African-Americans. Though the examples I have provided here are reminiscent of our own past, they are the experiences of Dalits today. These atrocities are happening now.
While here in the U.S. blacks have obtained most of the freedoms that were fought for not so long ago, the Dalits continue to struggle with a history that mirrors our own. They remain trapped under the weight of an oppressive system.
by the way folks, there are comments attached, but I did not include them, knowing that our fellow World Affairs Board members have more intriguing comments. By the way, I did not read the article, since I am going to work right now. So goodbye
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