Untouchability in Rural India

Abstract

The caste system is unique to India. It is deeply implicated in the Hinduism that is India's dominant religion. The caste system remains, as this excellent book shows, firmly and pervasively in place in spite of the ringing declaration in the 1949/50 Preamble to the Constitution of India that ‘We, the People of India, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a Sovereign, Socialist, Secular, Democratic Republic, and to secure to all its citizens Justice, social economic and political, liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship, Equality of status and opportunity: and to promote among them all Fraternity assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation’. This book contains field-survey data from over 565 villages in 11 of the major states of India – India has a federal constitution – which between them contain nearly 80% of all India's 150 million ‘Dalits’, or Untouchables (p. 53). The data referred to immediately below relate to that proportion of the villages in the survey in which anti-Dalit discrimination was shown to operate. Thus, for example, the data show (pp. 63–65) that in 70 + % of these villages Dalits are denied entry into the homes of higher castes, while in 63% of those villages they are denied access to public places of worship or to burial grounds (49%). In nearly every aspect of life – including, for example, using the post office or public transport, wearing decent clothes, or even sun glasses (!) – Dalits experience a regimen of discrimination and regulation that appears to defy (a Western) imagination.

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