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INDIA'S CASTE SYSTEM
National Public Radio

29 August 2001

Anchors: Renee Montagne

Reporters: Michael Sullivan

RENEE MONTAGNE, host:

Another potential for the Durban conference is the question of India's untouchables. In a report released yesterday, the New York-based Human Rights Watch said caste-based discrimination affects 250 million people. It said the World Conference Against Racism should discuss the issue. Untouchables are well represented among the non-governmental groups in Durban, but India's government is lobbying to keep the issue off the table. Indian officials insist caste and race are not comparable and that caste discrimination is an internal issue. NPR's Michael Sullivan reports from New Delhi.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN reporting:

Gandhi called them 'harijan' or children of God. Most people know them as untouchables. But they prefer to be known as Dalits, the Hindi word for oppressed. In the Hindu religion's rigid caste system that assigns a person an occupation and social status at birth, there are four distinct groupings: the priestly or scholarly caste, the warrior caste, the merchants and finally the laborers. Then come the Dalits or untouchables. Technically, they are not even part of the caste system, because their traditional jobs, handling human waste and animal carcasses, are considered religiously impure.

Mr. BOGWAN DAAS: We sit at the lowest rung of the ladder. SULLIVAN: Bogwan Daas(ph) was born into a subcaste of Dalits known as balmikis(ph) or manual scavengers. For centuries their job has been to clean the toilets and houses of the upper castes. In some parts of India, where modern plumbing has not yet reached, this still means removing feces, sometimes by hand, each morning. Bogwan Daas does not clean toilets. Through good fortune, a little money and an education, he became a lawyer who argues cases before India's Supreme Court. He says of the thousands of lawyers entitled to do so, only five are Dalits, or untouchables, though he suspects there may be a few more who hide their identity.

Mr. DAAS: They're afraid in case people get to know that it might affect their clientele, because the prejudices are very strong in the minds of the people. And they judge you not on the basis of merit and performance; class comes in the way.

SULLIVAN: There are an estimated 160 million Dalits in India, roughly 16 percent of the population. And most find escaping the caste-based social order difficult if not impossible.

(Soundbite of sweeping)

SULLIVAN: In the Hos Kos(ph) section of New Delhi, a man and woman sweep the courtyard of a middle-class apartment block. When they finish outside, they'll go inside to clean the toilets. Roshan(ph) and her husband, Keyshon(ph), are both members of the balmiki subcaste, and both desperately want to be doing any job but this one.

ROSHAN: (Through Translator) Nobody does this work because they want to. We do it because we have no other opportunity. Jobs are difficult to find, and for us Dalits, it's even harder. So that's the problem. That's why we do this job, the same job our families have been doing for generations.

SULLIVAN: Keyshon, her husband, takes the long view.

KEYSHON: (Through Translator) I believe in the dignity of work, so any work I can get, in my opinion, is respectable. But I don't want my children to have to do this job, so I'm using the money I earn here to make sure my children get an education, and that way they may be able to find something better. My dream is that in my family this profession dies out with me.

SULLIVAN: In the anonymity of the city, where strangers rub up against each other on crowded buses and eat at the same restaurants, it's difficult, if not impossible, to tell who is an untouchable and who is not, a fact Dalits say makes city life a little easier. In the villages, however, where most Indians still live, untouchability flourishes. Many villages are still strictly segregated by caste. Dalits are often forbidden from drinking from upper caste wells or worshipping at their temples, Dalit children denied access to education, Dalit women used as sexual slaves by upper caste men; this, despite the fact that India outlawed untouchability more than 50 years ago. India's attorney general, Solee Sorabji(ph).

Mr. SOLEE SORABJI (Indian Attorney General): No constitution in the world, and I say it with all the emphasis at my command, has such extensive provisions to affirmative action as the Indian constitution.

SULLIVAN: On this point, there is no disagreement even from Dalit activists. In addition to outlawing untouchability, India has reserved nearly 20 percent of the seats in parliament for Dalits. A number of government jobs and places in India's schools are reserved for them as well. The problem, says Ravi Nair of the South Asia Human Rights Documentation Centre, is one of compliance, and this, he says, is why India wants to keep caste off the table in Durban.

Mr. RAVI NAIR (South Asia Human Rights Documentation Centre): They want to make sure that caste does not figure at the international level, because they will be then forced to take on a much more affirmative action program than what they've been doing so far. They've been getting away with no compliance, no enforcement with even national legislation, because there has been very little national scrutiny on this issue.

SULLIVAN: Ashis Nandy of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies says there is another reason why the government of India is reluctant to discuss caste at the conference.

Mr. ASHIS NANDY (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies): I think that is the current of India's fear, that once human rights bodies are allowed to probe, you know, things we consider internal, they will look into other kinds of discriminations, other kinds of violation of human rights--for example, in Kashmir--and government of India wants to avoid that. It wants, basically, to affirm a sovereignty in this matter.

SULLIVAN: Attorney General Solee Sorabji says that sovereignty is not the issue. The Indian government, he says, simply believes bringing caste into a conference on racism would distract participants from the main agenda.

Mr. SORABJI: Racism cannot be equated with caste discrimination. That there is caste discrimination in India despite several affirmative provisions in the constitution and several laws is undeniable, but caste and race are entirely distinct.

SULLIVAN: Human rights activist Ravi Nair disagrees.

Mr. NAIR: Like racism, this is an issue of dominance by one group against another. If I was born into a Dalit community, irrespective of what vertical mobility that I had because of my class background, I would still not be able to change by caste hierarchy in the social pecking order.

SULLIVAN: Dalit activists and human rights groups say they find it ironic that India, which championed a civil rights movement in the United States and the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, is now reluctant to discuss its own discrimination problem in front of the world.

The Indian government may succeed in keeping caste off the agenda at the Durban conference, officially anyway, but many non-governmental organizations will be in Durban to plead their case in hopes of persuading India to enforce the progressive laws it already has on paper. Michael Sullivan, NPR News, New Delhi.

MONTAGNE: For more on NPR's coverage of the UN racism conference, log on to our Web site, npr.org.

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