BORN TO BE UNTOUCHABLE

Financial Times (London)

July 22, 2000, Saturday

Copyright 2000 The Financial Times Limited  

Financial Times (London)

July 22, 2000, Saturday London Edition 1

In a village near Delhi, two lovers lay dead - murdered by their own families in the name of caste. Samia Nakhoul reports on a social system that condemns millions to a life of squalor and inequality and asks whether it can ever change

The young Indian lovers lay side by side on the blazing funeral pyre of cow dung. When police arrived to recover the bodies, they had already been burnt beyond recognition. Their remains, a piece of blue cloth from a sari and torn shoes, were the only evidence left in the fields of Rajpura village of a crime committed in the name of caste.

Kallu, 21, was hanged by his family and Rekha, 18, was hanged by hers.

These neighbours and family friends were as much in love as Romeo and Juliet. But they did not commit suicide. Unlike the rival clans in Shakespeare's tragedy, Kallu's and Rekha's families united to seal their fate.

Both families belong to the lower or "backward" castes but despite their shared poverty they adhere to a 3,000-year-old social hierarchy that forbids inter-caste marriage. Kallu was of the Gugar caste, which, in the ancient pecking order of India, is a few notches above Rekha who was from the Nai, a barber caste.

Their families live opposite each other, separated by a narrow alleyway. They share their cement hovels with buffalo, cows, sheep and flies, toiling in blast-furnace heat and living in filth.

The young couple had eloped to Delhi, 70km away, after harassment by their families. When they returned home a week later on January 27, their loved ones got together, killed them and made an unsuccessful attempt to cremate them to erase any proof of the murder, said police officer Udai Singh at the nearby Sikandarabad police station. A police post-mortem examination showed that the couple had been hanged.

Seven of the lovers' relatives were arrested for the murder, three from the girl's family and four from the boy's. But there is no precedent of a conviction in a case such as this because villagers have tended to show solidarity in crimes related to caste.

Rekha's sister, Guita, and other relatives of the couple, repeated the line they gave to the police: that the two committed suicide because they "were having an illicit relationship".

But a cousin of Kallu spelled out the motive: "We can only marry from our own caste. It is not possible for one to marry outside his caste," said Kaulta Bhati. "This does not happen in our society. It is not possible."

As a result, such killings are a recurrent tragedy in rural India, where purity of caste is more valued than human life. A similar crime occurred in a village in Haryana state recently and another in Chandigarh.

"Caste is India's social reality, reflected in all phenomena of life, in marriage, voting, work and social relations," says Ravi Nair, executive director of the South Asia Human Rights Documentation Centre.

An India that has the scientific skills to produce nuclear weapons, an international software industry and award-winning writers, still remains shackled to a rigid caste order which has deep religious roots. This ancient social hierarchy, on which Hindu society is based, is the legacy of a religion devised by a ruling elite that denounced any principle of human equality and continues to use ruthless force against the lower castes to maintain its dominance.

The obsession with maintaining the purity of caste is on public show every week in Sunday newspapers which devote up to eight pages to match-making matrimonial columns. In a country where few make their own choice and marry outside their caste, brides and grooms are categorised by caste, religion, region and profession in often comic specificity.

Demand is high for software engineers among men while "wheatish" (fair complexioned) and convent-educated girls are prized. "Beautiful girl wanted for highly qualified MA, B. Ed, Kanyakubja Brahmin boy aged 32, height 5ft 5in, well settled in London as Minister of Religion, Astrologer and Palmist. Send bio-date of girl with recent photograph," runs a typical entry.

'Alliance from tall, fair, beautiful, convented, qualified/professional Brahmin girl for smart, fair, handsome software engineer, 184 (cml tall, 67kg, working at Canada, Dollars 110,000 PA, belonging to high status Gaur Brahmin family. Girl's merits main consideration another proclaims implausibly.

Nearly all of India's five-star hotels and top restaurants assign upper-caste Brahmins to attend to their rich clientele. When Germany's Daimler-Benz launched in India, it took its managers about a year to realise that the only way they would sell Mercedes cars was to replace their dealers with Brahmins who could deal with upper-caste clients.

A defining feature of Hinduism, caste encompasses a complex ordering of social groups on the basis of ritual purity. A person remains in the caste into which he or she is born until death. Differences in status are traditionally justified by the religious doctrine of Karma, a belief that one's caste or place in life is determined by one's deeds in previous lifetimes.

"People have been for centuries oppressed, passive, paralysed and marginalised by beliefs of Karma and destiny. People are accepting their misery in the name of religion and beliefs," said Prakash Louis, a researcher at the Indian Social Institute, a Delhi think-tank.

Most historians believe India's social order originated 3,000 years ago with the Aryans, fair-skinned invaders from Central Asia who imposed strict stratification, based on colour and occupation, on the sub-continent's indigenous, dark-skinned tribes.

The ancient Hindu religious scriptures that codify this inequality say the gods created the world and the social order within it by sacrificing a primeval man, Purusha. From his face and mouth came the priestly elite of the Brahmins, from his arms the warrior class or Kshatriya, from his thighs the merchants and farmers or Vaisya, and from his feet the servants and artisans, the Shudras. Hindu society is divided into these four main categories, known as Varnas, although each caste has a plethora of sub-castes.

Beneath them all were added the "untouchables", or Dalits seen as so unclean that they were assigned the dirtiest and lowest jobs. Any physical contact with these "outcastes" was defined as physically and spiritually polluting, not only for the upper castes but also for all "caste Hindus".

"Untouchability" was abolished under India's constitution in 1950 but the practice remains part of everyday life in Indian villages. Except for a minority who have benefited from India's policy of quotas in education and government jobs, the 160m Dalits and 80m indigenous tribals nearly one in four of India's 1bn people are still condemned by the sub-continent's old social hierarchy to lives of poverty, humiliation and suffering.

They are systematically bullied and assigned the most menial jobs such as manual scavengers, removers of human waste and dead animals, leather workers, street sweepers and cobblers.

If they rebel or resist, they are often killed.

Provided with a broom, a tin scoop and a bucket and without any protective gear, manual scavengers are made to clear faeces from public and private latrines. Forty-year-old Brham Singh, employed by the municipality, describes the humiliating work his caste, the Balmikis, were born to.

"I start at six and finish at three, cleaning latrines and unblocking drains. When I clean the latrines the smell and dirt comes on to my face and hands. I cannot do anything about it, I have to clean them. When there is a drainage problem we have to go deep down into manholes to unclog them from human waste."

Like many scavengers, Singh suffers from skin allergies and breathing problems. Many also suffer from trachoma, a chronic bacterial conjunctivitis commonly resulting in blindness. Scavengers say they do not dare ask for more money or sanitary tools to collect human waste for fear of losing their jobs.

But perhaps the greatest cruelty for manual scavengers is that theirs is a hereditary occupation and their worst nightmare is to pass it on to their children. They say that without education and with the caste tag haunting them it is impossible for them to progress in life and find different jobs.

"I feel sick of doing this dirty work. I have to pick up the night soil and clean latrines with my bare hands. The smell and the gas burn my eyes. It is a sickening job but nobody will give me another job. My father and mother did the same work. I don't want my children to do this dirty work but they might end up doing it out of desperation," said Savita, a mother of three who looks much older than her 25 years.

Yet the lot of Dalits can be worse. Significant numbers continue to be sold as bonded labourers working in slave-like conditions in large farms owned by upper-caste landlords for pitiful wages often paid in a few kilos of rice.

In certain parts of India, Dalits are still prevented from reading or learning Hindu scriptures, on pain of severe corporal punishment. Day after day India's press reports new atrocities committed against "the untouchables"; recently seven Dalits, including three women, were burned alive in a raid by higher-caste members of the Reddy clan at Kambalapalli, 120km from Delhi.

A 291-page report last year by Human Rights Watch, called "Broken People, Caste violence against India's Untouchables", described India's caste system as a form of "hidden apartheid" and listed harrowing tales of barbaric crimes committed against Dalits. "Dalits are discriminated against, denied access to land, forced to work in degrading conditions and routinely abused at the hands of the police and of higher-caste groups that enjoy the state's protection," the report says.

"Untouchables" may not cross the line dividing their part of the village from that occupied by higher castes. They may not use the same wells, visit the same temples, drink from the same cups in tea stalls or lay claim to land that is legally theirs. Dalit children are made to sit in the back of classrooms and communities as a whole are made to perform degrading rituals in the name of caste, it said.

Dalit girls have been forced before reaching the age of puberty to become prostitutes for upper-caste patrons and village priests. Sexual abuse and other forms of violence against women are used by landlords and the police to inflict "political lessons" and crush dissent within the community by Dalits demanding better pay, fairer treatment or just for trespassing on high-caste land, the report added.

Dalits who have managed to prosper from jobs in Gulf Arab states find themselves still treated as outcastes when they return home. There have been numerous reports of them being attacked when they try to buy land for their families.

Those who made it to universities are still shunned in private business, unable to establish a foothold in professions dominated by upper-caste Hindus.

Human Rights Watch said legislation and constitutional protection serve only to mask the social realities of discrimination and violence faced by Dalits, despite the upsurge of low-caste political parties in the past decade.

The expanding power base of these parties, the election of low-caste chief ministers to state governments, the allocation of job and educational quotas for Dalits and even the election of a Dalit, K.R. Narayanan, as president of India in 1997 signalled the arrival of "untouchables" on the political stage.

But none of this has significantly altered the lives of most Dalits. Laws on land reform for protection of Dalits remain unimplemented in most lndian states.

"A lot has changed since independence," says Fernando Franco of the Indian Social Institute. "Fifty years ago you would not have thought of a Dalit as minister of state, today there are a few.

Yet President Narayanan, addressing the nation on India's 50th birthday as a republic this year, said although untouchability had been abolished by law, shades of it remained in the ingrained attitudes nurtured by the caste system. He said "reservation", or affirmative action in education and the civil service prescribed by the constitution, was a dead letter.

"Fifty years into our life in the republic we find that justice - social, economic and political - remains an unrealised dream for millions of our fellow citizens," the president said.

"We have one of the world's largest reservoirs of technical personnel, but also the world's largest number of illiterates, the world's largest middle class, but also the largest number of people below the poverty line, and the largest number of children suffering from malnutrition.

"Why is it as a nation we do not feel the desperate urgency of making our people literate?" he asked. "I hope that vested interests have not been fearful of awakening the masses through education.

"Our giant factories rise from out of squalor, our satellites shoot up from the midst of the hovels of the poor. Not surprisingly, there is sullen resentment among the masses against their condition erupting often in violent forms in several parts of the country. Dalits and tribals are the most affected by all this."

Unless the conditions of Dalits improve, Narayanan concluded, the edifice of India's democracy would be "like a palace built on a dung heap".

Sociologists offer different explanations for the survival of such an ancient and rigid social order in modern India. Some say it is still in force because it has the imprimatur of the Hindu religion, while others blame it on the oligarchy that maintained this social order to serve its political and economic interests.

"There is a religious sanction behind the caste system in India. It is divine and godly. It has been going on for centuries," says R.M. Pal, editor of Radical Humanist, a human rights journal.

On the other hand, Prakash Louis, says: "The religious text has been interpreted in terms of stratification and division of society. The one who wrote this text is a Brahmin, so naturally they created a system of this type and they want the system to continue because they benefit from it.

"It is a social phenomenon which gets validity and legitimacy from the religious text. Many Hindus say this is destined by God and should be observed."

There is a consensus that the caste order has an economic base - otherwise it could not have lasted this long. In this view, if upper castes were systematically prevented from exploiting bonded labour and lower castes were given some land and a degree of economic independence, it would be easier for them to oppose their tormentors.

"Most Dalits have no land and the fight is over government land available in villages which has also been taken by the upper castes. If Dalits had greater access to land then it would be easier for them to obtain some economic freedom. If you make the lower castes economically independent the entire edifice will change," says Fernando Franco.

Caste also plays an increasingly important part in the electoral process where, typically, intricate caste equations are worked out by upper castes to bring different castes together to win the elections. Over time, this may translate into leverage for India's dispossessed.

While some governments in India have tried to chip away at caste, human rights activists say the ruling Bharatiya Janata party, backed by militant Hindu fundamentalists, is determined to preserve the privileges of the Hindu elite, for whom caste is an unchallengeable social order, a division and distribution of labour.

"I don't think caste should be abolished. Why should it be abolished?" says Onkar Bhave, joint general secretary of the World Hindu Council, a BJP front organisation. "If we have a proper division of work, where is the need to abolish this proper division? With caste each level of society is preserved and those who have extraordinary minds and intelligence can get a lift.

"Religion has nothing to do with caste, it is a social order. It is a distribution of work. This whole society has been kept together by Hinduism, this feeling of oneness. Caste, the feeling that each one performs his duty, has kept the country and society together," says Bhave, whose council's main task is to spread Hindu scriptures and manage temples. it also runs shelters to take care of tens of thousands of cows which are sacred for Hindus.

According to Bhave, a Brahmin, the mixing of castes amounts to the mixing of blood from rival groups which would cause contamination.

"Hinduism is based on Varnashram, the four orders. It is similar to a blood group; if a certain blood group is added to another it might create problems and complications," he said, adding that "untouchability has a cleanliness and hygienic aspect".

Like most Hindu militants, Bhave is touchy about Dalits and tribals who try to escape their misery by converting to Christianity or Islam, saying the millions who have done so acted "out of ignorance, under inducement by Christian missionaries".

BR. Ambedkar, the first untouchable to hold high office in India and the man who wrote India's constitution, demanded the liberation of Hindu society from casteism and priestcraft. But he ended by denouncing Hinduism and converting - with more than 100,000 of his followers - to Buddhism.

"The religion that does not teach its followers to show humanity in dealing with its co-religionists is nothing but a display of force," Ambedkar said.

"The religion that asks its adherents to suffer the touch of animals but not the touch of human beings is not religion but a mockery. The religion that compels the ignorant to be ignorant and the poor to be poor is not religion but a visitation. Religion is not the appellation for such an unjust order. Religion and slavery are incompatible."

One remedy suggested by Amhedkar was intermarriage. Fusion of blood alone could create a feeling of kith and kin, and kill the spirit of caste.

Yet many opponents of the caste system are not so sanguine: "Change cannot be achieved overnight. It is a deeply ingrained tradition. It will take a few generations. It should start in social areas. The government can abolish it by trying to encourage and give preference in housing, scholarships to people of mixed castes. The process has to be systematic and coherent," Ravi Nair argues.

In the absence of such a concerted effort, there is little prospect of improving the mutilated lives of hundreds of millions of people that suffer the caste system.

"There are two different Indias. There is one India which is software, technology and modern to the world and one which is barbaric against its lower caste and helpless people," Nair says.

While modern India's founders preached a caste-less India, 50 years on caste remains a resilient force. Dalits themselves have no illusions about their future, they believe that their Karma will never change unless the Indian oligarchy decides to uplift them.

"We have no hope and no future in this country. This is not a life," says Brham Singh, the scavenger.

"We do what we do because we are born in a low caste. I don't want to spend my life cleaning toilets but we get no education or qualifications to do anything else. Animal life in Europe is better than our life in India."