Some say the caste system would have disappeared by now if the fires were not regularly fanned by politicians. At elections, many caste groups still vote as a block and are wooed by politicians looking for electoral gains. As a result, what was originally meant to be a temporary affirmative action plan to improve the lot of the unprivileged groups has now become a vote-grabbing exercise for many politicians.
BBC - Religion- Hinduism. How did caste come about? Image source, AFP. How does caste work? India's caste system is among the world's oldest forms of social stratification surviving to this day. Is the system legal? BR Ambedkar, a Dalit, authored India's constitution. But the questions kept haunting her. So eventually, she travelled to the roots of them. In the West, caste—a hierarchical class system based on traditional roles—is often understood as a facet of Hinduism.
Gidla belongs to a sect of Christianity that is also untouchable. Growing up, she believed that she was untouchable because of her religion, but when she went to university, she met other Christians who belonged to a higher caste. They were not untouchables. Their untouchability was a mountain that they carried on their backs wherever they went—across states, across religion, across lifetimes.
To live without caste in India is to live a lie. And sometimes, Gilda writes in her memoir, people do that. The journey of her ancestors would not have become so crystal clear to Gidla had she not left home and seen the anti-war and anti-racism movements in the U.
She came to New York in to pursue a degree in engineering, and worked for 13 years as a software programmer. It was during her initial years in the U. Even in the 21st century, an entire population in India and Hindu regions of Nepal, Pakistan , Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh is often considered contaminated from birth. Called "Dalits," these people face discrimination and even violence from members of higher castes, or traditional social classes, particularly in terms of access to jobs, education, and marriage partners.
Dalits, also known as "Untouchables," are members of the lowest social group in the Hindu caste system. The word "Dalit " means "oppressed" or "broken" and is the name members of this group gave themselves in the s. A Dalit is actually born below the caste system, which includes four primary castes: Brahmins priests , Kshatriya warriors and princes , Vaishya farmers and artisans , and Shudra tenant farmers and servants. Like the "Eta" outcasts in Japan , India's Untouchables performed spiritually contaminating work that nobody else wanted to do, such as preparing bodies for funerals, tanning hides, and killing rats or other pests.
Doing anything with dead cattle or cowhides was particularly unclean in Hinduism. Under both Hindu and Buddhist beliefs, jobs that involved death corrupted the workers' souls, making them unfit to mingle with other people. A group of drummers who arose in southern India called the Parayan were considered untouchable because their drumheads were made of cowhide.
Even people who had no choice in the matter those born to parents who were both Dalits were not allowed to be touched by those of higher classes nor ascend the ranks of society. Because of their uncleanliness in the eyes of Hindu and Buddhist gods, they were banned from many places and activities, as ordained by their past lives. An Untouchable couldn't enter a Hindu temple or be taught to read.
They were banned from drawing water from village wells because their touch would taint the water for everyone else. They had to live outside village boundaries and could not walk through the neighborhoods of higher caste members. If a Brahmin or Kshatriya approached, an Untouchable was expected to throw himself or herself face down on the ground to prevent even their unclean shadows from touching the higher caste. Indians believed that people were born as Untouchables as punishment for misbehavior in previous lives.
Sanoj Kumar left his job at a brick kiln in Tamil Nadu to return to his village near Bodh Gaya in Bihar before the lockdown was imposed. He said he faced ostracism as soon as he stepped off the train. They were stopping people in a random manner. Those who well dressed and seemed like belonged to an upper class and dominant caste were not singled out.
The others like me were stopped and sent to the hospital," he said. After his checkup, Kumar was sent home and ordered to self-quarantine for 14 days. He says health workers check on him every two days. He obliges because he understands the need to fight the virus, but every time they visit, it adds to his family's social stigma. Informal workers without ID cards. Lower caste Indians are not only more exposed to the coronavirus and face more stigmatization, but they're also being left out of government subsidies.
On March 26, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced that all healthcare workers would be covered by health insurance for three months, and that sanitarian workers would receive special insurance cover. But to claim it, workers need an employment ID card validating their status as sanitation workers. Many sanitation workers don't have that. India observes nationwide candlelight vigil in a show of solidarity in the fight against coronavirus.
The unique national identification number is required to access many government schemes including getting subsidies and direct cash transfers, and health insurance under the Prime Minister's health project, as well as to open a bank account. Either the information doesn't reach them, or the enrollment camps to get biometric IDs are never set up in their villages and mostly they are asked to pay huge bribes to get these IDs made," said Alladi Devakumar, executive secretary of Dalit Bahujan Resource Centre.
Many sanitation workers who work as informal labor don't even have employment IDs. Salvi says she tried to approach the dean of the hospital where she works to ask for an employment identity card that would enable her to claim health insurance benefits and board the few buses that are running for essential service workers in Mumbai during the lockdown. Without the ID card, she cannot get on the bus and has to walk 90 minutes each way to work.
But when she approached the office, she says the Dean shouted for security. She thinks we are trash, and now she has more reason to treat us like trash," says Salvi. CNN contacted the Dean, but she declined to comment. No access to bank accounts. Estheramma doesn't have a bank account, making it very difficult to access government aid.
Estheramma lives with her husband and two children in a dump yard, five kilometers away from the densely populated city of Guntur in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. She's an Adivasi waste picker and makes a living by collecting the waste from dumps, segregating the waste and selling it.
She and her community live segregated on the dump.
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