One in six Indians - approximately 200 million people in all - is born a Dalit. From the day a Dalit is born, life is predestined. Caste discrimination seeps through social symbols, practices and traditions, dooming Dalits to a lifetime of inequity and a position on the lowest rung of Indian society.
The few jobs Dalits are allowed to do demand the most from their bodies and give them the least in return. This allows those high in the caste order to live a life in which Dalits cost little and depend upon the upper caste for their economic survival. A tradition of melting caste and occupation together means that for most Dalits, work is not an escape out of poverty, but a purgatory.
Photographer Firoz Ahmed, humanitarian group NoLogo and I explored some of the discrimination Dalits face in their every day lives in photo exhibition that opened last week at the British Council Library in New Delhi.
Among the Dalits, the most unfortunate is the manual scavenger, a euphemism used to describe the two million people, mostly women, who are forced to remove the feces of other castes with their bare hands. While the rigidity of caste and pressures of close-knit families and societies mean that these women are forced to do this wretched, inhumane job, the real, often overlooked, nightmare is that an escape is nearly impossible.
Having been born into the caste of Valmikis, and having cleaned human excreta for their livelihood, they are now trapped in a stigma, which denies them other sources of livelihood - people won't buy tea from a shop they may try to run, and rich women won't hire them as household help. If a manual-scavenging community member steps out of line, the entire social system responds to close down on him or her.
Beyond the horror of their lives, there are certain forms of discrimination that I personally feel exist around us but are not visible to the naked eye. Yet if you scratch the surface, it is fairly evident. The sad part is that the social structure has complied with it for hundreds of years without questioning its legitimacy.
This invisible discrimination exists at the bus stop, where you'd see an upper caste member sitting on the bench whereas the Dalit sits on the floor. Glass cups are pre-designated for Brahmins or other members of the higher castes in case they want tea, whereas the Dalits are served in disposable plastic cups. Just as the plastic cup is weak, crushed at will and disposable, so is the Dalit who drinks from it.
This discrimination exists at the river, where upper castes have the privilege of using the upper stream to bathe and wash their clothes. But the Dalits are forced to go downstream, the shallow, dirtier end. Human excreta and other wastes often are dropped off not very far from this end of the river. The Dalits' very presence is considered impur e, so they are expected to stay out of sight when Brahmins go early in the morning to pray at the riverbanks.
At the well, there is a designated time for Dalit women to fetch water, and if they go earlier or later when the upper caste women are around, the Dalit women have to step aside for the upper-caste women to fill up their buckets first.
Almost all restaurants and sweet shops deny manual scavengers the right to sit on the benches in the premises. The sweet shop vendor selects sweets and leaves them out so the Dalits can collect them later.
Dalits are even denied the basic human right to worship freely. A Dalit is not allowed to enter the four walls of a temple. They all line up outside the temple stairs and offer their prayers from outside, and a Brahmin takes their offerings to be blessed by the gods. This entire transaction has no human touch involved - the Dalit keeps the packet on the floor and the Brahmin picks it up and brings it back after the blessing, leaving it at the same place for the Dalit to collect.
Discrimination also exists within the Dalit communities and Other Backward Classes, known as O.B.C. The barber community, which falls under the O.B.C. category, denies manual scavengers the right to get a haircut in the salon. The barbers find it beneath them to render services to Dalits.
Not willing to live with these restrictions and bindings of society, which have been practiced for hundreds of years, some women have finally decided to quit the caste's age-old profession, and they have the law on their side. The manual removal of human excreta has been illegal since 1993, but what is most shocking is that not a single person has been convicted. Parliament is now considering an amendment that would impose a 50,000 rupee ($920) fine and imprisonment for those who break the law.
There is no dignity in what these women do every day. The community has been sidelined and discriminated for genera tions. The law is in place, the government is willing to act and change, but the bigger challenge is to change the mindset of people and of the community and to stop these outrageous acts of discrimination against its own people.
The “Breaking Margins†exhibit runs through Dec. 21 at the British Council in New Delhi.
Sanjit Das is a freelance photographer based in New Delhi.
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