Soc 1010

https://umsl.mediaspace.kaltura.com/media/untouchables_300k/1_1vfx7ikf
Chapter 9, Untouchables

JLG

Female Speaker:    Sometimes the smallest detail can re--

These untouchable villagers are taking their shoes off -- not because they want to, but because they have to.  

They're about to pass their upper caste neighbors, sitting here in the shade.  It's a daily ritual of petty humiliation.  The untouchables can only wear their shoes again when they reach their own part of town.   

Why are you guys always taking off your shoes and putting them back on again?  

Male Speaker:    If we don't take our shoes off, we'll be fired from our jobs.  

We'd like to stand up to them, but we know we don't have a chance.  

Female Speaker:    Have you ever been punished for anything here?  

Male Speaker:    They're punished us several times.  

We have to fall at their feet two or three times.  

Female Speaker:    You have to fall at their feet?  

Male Speaker:    We have to lie on the ground and beg for forgiveness.  

Female Speaker:    Oh, my goodness.  

[1:00]

[Bell ringing] 

Female Speaker:    And the discrimination continues at prayer.  Untouchables aren't allowed to enter the Hindu temple in this village, so the priest blesses them outside.  

In tea houses all over India, untouchables have to drink from separate glasses.  

And they have to wait until someone comes to serve them outside.  

Even access to clean water is determined according to caste.  

Untouchables can't use this public well, because even their touch could pollute the water, says this upper caste villager.  

Male Speaker:    These customs have been practiced forever.  If the government passed new laws against it, nothing would change, and I personally don't believe it should.  

Female Speaker:    This is where Rangdama [sp?], an untouchable woman, was forced to get her water -- a muddy pond, polluted by animal feces.  

[2:00]

Rangdama's encounter with a pig proves just how dirty this water is.  

Do a lot of people get sick from drinking the bad water?  

Female Speaker:    Yes, and when our children became sick, the doctors blamed us, saying, "You people are unclean."  

Female Speaker:    After enduring years of this kind of discrimination, Rangdama and her friends took up the fight.  It began with a small act of defiance.  One day, they decided to take clean water from the public well, but they were stopped by infuriated upper caste villagers.  Even worse, their own husbands were too afraid to support their cause.  

Female Speaker:    All the women in the village -- we decided that if our men didn't help us get clean water, we wouldn't cook for them.  And so, four days later, they joined our fight.  

Female Speaker:    Rangdama and her friends created such an uproar that, eventually, the upper caste in this village were forced to back down.  

[3:04]

Female Speaker:   Now we have clean water, and water is life.  

[Music] 

Female Speaker:    The caste system is as old as the stones that built this temple.  India's segregation is cemented in nearly 3,000 years of religion, not lore.  

Male Speaker:    It's one of the most complicated, sophisticated systems of social hierarchy and oppression that human beings have every devised.  

Female Speaker:    Professor Sunil Khilnani teaches politics at the University of London.  He's the author of an acclaimed book on contemporary India and the complex legacy of the caste system.  

[4:00]

It's a system that ranks every Hindu, from the highest to the lowest, according to the work they and their caste perform.  

Male Speaker:   Purity is an extremely important facet of religious observance.  For example -- the use of fire, which is very important in Hindu rituals, or the use of water.  There's a very strong sense of certain objects, certain things being taboo -- that you don't come into contact with them.  

Female Speaker:    For instance -- the dead.  Traditionally, it's the untouchables who prepare the corpses for cremation.  

Male Speaker:    They were those castes that perform the work in society that no one else would do, such as dealing with the bodies of the dead, etc.  This was seen as work that somehow was profaning, that was impure.  

[Bell ringing] 

Female Speaker:    The untouchables are considered so unclean that, traditionally, not even their shadows were supposed to defile these temples, and today they are still relegated to the very worst that life has to offer.  

[5:10]

Like Naryanama [sp?] -- she's been using her bare hands to clean public toilet for the past 19 years.  

Female Speaker:   They look down at me, and it hurts my soul.  

Female Speaker:    Naryanama's family has been assigned this filthy job for generations, and for generations it's made them physically ill.  

Female Speaker:    No one has ever offered me water when I'm thirsty.  When I want to wash my face, I have to use another well.  

Female Speaker:    Even though, six years ago, the Indian government banned this practice, today about a million untouchables still do this job.  Ironically, Naryanama's employer is the city government.  

Female Speaker:    No, no, I don't like this.  I don't want this job.  I would leave it if they gave me another one.  

[6:03]

Female Speaker:   As long as toilets need cleaning, streets need sweeping, and the trash needs to be carted away, the job will be assigned to the untouchables.  

In big cities, they may escape the indignities they endured in the small villages, but often their only choice will be to settle in slums where no one else would even think of living.  

Henry Tufine [sp?] is a local human rights worker.  

Female Speaker:    Oh, my lord.  Is this the toilet river?  

Male Speaker:    You see the man walking across it?  

Female Speaker:    He's walking, basically, through an open sewer.  

Male Speaker:   Yes, an open sewer.  

Female Speaker:    Kids are playing in this sewer!  

Male Speaker:    That's normal.  

Female Speaker:    That's normal.  

Male Speaker:    That's normal.  

Female Speaker:    That's normal for an untouchable.  

Male Speaker:   Yes.  

And these are the sanitary workers of the town.  

Female Speaker:    The sanitary workers of the town?  

Male Speaker:    Yes.  

Female Speaker:    They're the people who clean the latrines and things?  

Male Speaker:    They clean the latrines, clean the streets.  

[7:00]

Female Speaker:    Now that is truly disgusting -- the latrine business.  I mean, how people can expect to clean public toilet with their hands is beyond me.  

Increasingly, India's 200 million untouchables are resisting, through the power of the ballot and political protests.  And it's changing the face of India.  

Male Speaker:    Caste is a form of social imprisonment.  It's beginning to break down, I think.  People are beginning to assert their rights.  They're beginning to say, "Look, constitutionally, this is illegitimate.  These are my rights as an Indian citizen."  

[Music]

Female Speaker:    There are rights enshrined in India's constitution which ban discrimination against untouchables.  Progress has been difficult.  But now, for the first time in history, an untouchable has managed, through his own efforts, to become president of India, though the office is largely symbolic.  

[8:06]

But it's the local untouchable leaders, like Dr. Krishna Swani [sp?], who are really shaking up the system, by building a political movement on centuries of pent-up anger.  

Is India a democracy for all?  

Male Speaker:    No.  It is a fake democracy.  We are fighting for our self-respect.  

Female Speaker:    Some local officials have been killed.  Are you not afraid?  

Male Speaker:   There are thousands and thousands of people that are ready for the fight.  

Female Speaker:    But the upper caste is fighting back.  These young men are furious at the Indian government for increasing the number of sought-after civil service jobs that the government reserves for untouchables.  It's India's own war over quotas and affirmative action.  

[8:57]

Male Speaker:    What's at stake is, I think, whether the upper castes are going to continue to maintain their privileged positions, or whether they're going to have to cede some room and some place to those in the lower castes who want a slice of the cake.  

Female Speaker:    Almost every time untouchables assert their rights, it provokes violence in the cities and especially in the countryside, where upper caste landlords still reign over their untouchable laborers.  

That's what happened in the village of Bhati [sp?] one night.  More than 200 upper caste men, armed with guns and knives, attacked this village.  They went from hut to hut, killing anyone they could find, even children.  All these villagers had been asking for was what they considered a fair wage -- one dollar's worth of rice a day for their work in the fields.  

[10:00

This is what they got for their trouble -- unspeakable horror -- the bodies of 58 villagers haphazardly sprawled where their killers found them.  Whole families were murdered, including Pawahi Dehbi's [sp?] son and his wife.  Only her grandson survived, hidden in his dead mother's dress.  

Female Speaker:    There was no reason to kill my son.  He never argued with anyone.  Like all of us, he just worked in the fields for his daily wage.  

Female Speaker:    A pittance of a wage, paid by the landlords who own these fields and who now are accused of leading the slaughter.  

Nohman Chadri [sp?] is the upper caste village priest.  

Male Speaker:    We never start the violence.  It's the untouchables who pick the fight.  The landlords just retaliate.  

Female Speaker:    So in this part of India, untouchables are arming themselves.  

[11:01]

Only women are allowed in this militia.  They are being trained to shoot, because they are most at risk.  

Female Speaker:    Nobody else will protect us.  That's why I carry my own gun.  

Female Speaker:    Recently, a young girl was kidnapped and raped by the landlords.  

There's more violence everyday, and the police don't help us.  

Sister Suhda [sp?] is trying to help, but she uses the law.  She's an attorney and a Catholic nun who chooses to live with and defend the very lowest castes.  

Female Speaker:    When you see untouchables -- men or women -- cleaning human excrement with their hands, being forced to drink from separate cups in tea rooms, having to take off their shoes when they walk past an upper caste, is there a sense of outrage?  

Female Speaker:    Well sure.  It's really a curse on humanity -- the whole caste system.  

[12:06]

Female Speaker:    Is there any escape?  

Female Speaker:    Impossible.  See, in India everyone knows his caste.  

Female Speaker:    So no matter how well you do in life, you'll always be considered an untouchable.  

Female Speaker:    Yes.  

Female Speaker:    Unclean?  

Female Speaker:    Yes.  

Female Speaker:    And less than human.  

Female Speaker:    Right.  

Female Speaker:    The untouchables' burden has been carried from generation to generation.  Now, Naryanama, the toilet cleaner, pleads that it not be passed on any further.  

Female Speaker:    All I'm begging for is that my children don't inherit this job.  It should end with me.  

Female Speaker:    What does the government say about all of this?   They don't want to talk about it.  

[Clock ticking.]  

[END]