disinformation | the untouchable black dalits

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the untouchable black dalits
by Preston Peet (ptpeet@cs.com) - October 18, 2000

What they want today is not jobs, but to live without being humiliated and harassed, said the Uttar Pradesh, India, official to the Time magazine reporter, describing the situation of his country's Dalits, or Black Untouchables.

Meaning "broken and crushed," the Dalits are the descendants of India's first people, who were conquered by invading Aryan hordes around 2500 years ago, when Hinduism first took root in that country. They make up about one sixth of India's population, numbering around 160 million. In the Caste system, how you lives your life determines which Caste you will be born into the next time around. You must be convinced of reincarnation's reality, and the debt you owe through past sins, to suffer your fate as a despised citizen. Therefore the upper Castes have spent thousands of years forbidding the Dalits to learn to read or write, banning such practices through their sacred writings. An education has taught many Dalits that something is not right about a system that forces some to live lives of servitude and despair, simply because an antiquated religious doctrine deems it so.

In 1935, the British rulers of India wrote a list of "scheduled classes" to "increase representation by lower-Castes in the Legislature, in Government employment, and university placement," according to a 1999 Human Rights Watch report. India's constitution guarantees that 15 percent of all government posts and university openings be reserved for Dalits. In 1955, "untouchability" was abolished by the Protection of Civil Rights Act. It looks good in print, but the reality doesn't come close.

Dalits would have to carry a cup around their neck to keep any spittle from "dirtying" the streets they walked on. They wouldn't be allowed to enter temples, or even certain parts of town. Once, Dalits had to beat on drums to announce their approach, so as not to dirty an upper-Caste person with even the touch of their shadow. They work the most menial jobs, cleaning toilets, sweeping streets, burning corpses. If a Dalit were to touch an upper-Caste person, they could expect to have that offending limb severed. This includes the poor guy who sleeps with the wrong upper-Caste woman, and his own sexual member. Of course, this doesn't go for the upper-Caste men, who must simply "mutter daily prayers," as one reporter put it, after deflowering a Dalit bride on her wedding night, before her helpless husband's eyes. While some changes for the better have taken place, the progress is slow, too slow for some Dalits.

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, who coined the term "Dalit" was the first Dalit man to force the world's attention onto the plight of his Caste. Born in 1891, he was educated at New York City's Columbia University, by a scholarship from the Maharajah of Baroda, earning a Ph.D., and a D. Sc. from the University of London. When he returned to his homeland, he began urge a change in the system, forming political parties, opening universities for Dalits, publishing newspapers by and for Dalits, and helped write the Indian Constitution. Ambedkar became an outspoken opponent of Hinduism, once leading a mass public conversion to Buddhism of half a million followers. He is now a revered figure to the Dalits.

While a few Dalits attain positions of "power" such as Kocheril Ramon Narayanan, who became the first Dalit President of India in 1997, a largely symbolic post, this is rare. Dalits in many parts of India are picking up weapons and fighting back against the entrenched system of Caste apartheid, demanding their rights and an end to the Caste system. Others toil on in fear, intimidated, terrified to cross the line between servitude and self-governance.

India's Untouchables Gain Political Might
This CNN report (January 6th, 1996) by Ashis Ray outlines the advances made by a very select few politicians from the Dalit classes. While there are a few success stories, the majority of the Dalit's stories are of grief and filth, servitude and poverty, terror and repression.

Blacked Out By Whitewash
This excerpt of an unattributed book outlines the racism inherent in the Caste system. The author contends that the Caste system tends to stomp on Black rights, while promoting those of lighter skinned people.

Broken People: Caste Violence Against India's 'Untouchables'
This Human Rights Watch report on India's Caste system (March 1999) details the harrowing life endured by the Dalits.

Diop and India's Black Untouchables
I just can't seem to get too excited about my own roots, being adopted and all, so I wonder at some people's fixation on the idea that their 'roots' will help them break stereotypes and forced castings; that it is somehow going to help to get them their civil rights and equal protection under the law if black Dalits remember they are the 'first' people on Earth. I don't think that method is going to convince the ones who hold the reigns of power now. Knowing your history is good, in that it is education, but I don't see how teaching folk they used to be on top, but have spent millennia on the bottom, so be proud, is too very helpful at all. Just my take on this: please read for yourself.

The African Presence In India
This very interesting historical review of the beginnings of the Indian/Hindu Caste system, laid out in easy to read language and style. Worth a visit, especially for those who are unfamiliar with the subject matter.

War Between The Castes
This Time magazine article by Tim McGirk (December 15th, 1997) describes the open warfare building between the lower Indian Castes, who are fighting it out for the crumbs that fall to them at the lowest rungs of society, and the most upper classes, who quite possibly promote internal dissent, thereby guaranteeing their continued slot at the very top. Although I have no evidence for this, all that I see while researching this leads me to that suspicion. Keep the lower classes low, from realizing that they are all being subjugated. Pit them against one another, creating hierarchical conflicts for social dominance and access to resources. Granted, there is one hell of a lot more to India's mess than this hypothesis, but still it is something for them to think about.

In India's Caste System, Some Still Suffer Gross Exploitation
Another article detailing the plight of the Dalits.

US State Department 1999 Country Reports On Human Rights Practices: India
This US State Department report (February 25th, 2000) is thought-provoking material. I always think it odd when the US points out other countries' human rights abuses, when we have the indigenous peoples all over our fair land here in the US of A, who have lost all rights to their land, except for the dirt patches our white forefathers (or Caucasian, depending on your political correctedness), guaranteed they could live on in perpetuity, or until oil orother valuables were found, which ever came first.

Broken People: Photos
These are photos to accompany the Human Rights Watch report, Broken People. Pictures are worth a thousand words, so stop by and take a look.

Violence Against Untouchables Growing, Says Report
This press release is a good summary of the Human Rights Watch report, Broken People.

A Peaceful Revolution
This is another biography of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, the Dalit leader who fought tooth and nail for his people's liberation from the Caste system, although through pacifist methods apparently, and by urging a change in faith. Hmmm, the untouchables are still having trouble today, and pacifism hasn't gotten us anywhere. Yet neither has violence. What todo, what to do?

India's Untouchables Are Mounting A Rebellion
This is great Time magazine article (October 27th, 1997) by Tim McGirk, which covers the growing awareness of India's lowest Castes. McGirk reveals what has inspired them to throw off their oppression, and fight back against the system, sometimes through peaceful means, and sometimes not so peaceful.

Dalit Assertion & Casteist Retaliation
This is a review called Broken People by Human Rights Watch analyst Edward A. Rodriguez which gives a good run-down of the situation. Comprehensive background on why the Dalits are so pissed off. Took them long enough.

Art & Identity: The Rise Of A New Buddhist Imagery
This Art Journal essay (1999) by G.M. Tartikov details the career of the great Dalit politician, B.R. Ambedker, who decided that the answer to the problem of the untouchables was for them to simply leave the faith of Hinduism, and go to any other religion, but mainly Buddhism. Quite an educational read, so dig in.

The Gandhi Nobody Knows
This Commentary magazine essay by Richard Grenier (March 1983) puts to bed the idea that Gandhi was a total pacifist. I've never actually seen this before, so it came as some surprise. I can't honestly say I can vouch for this, but if true, it is one more ideal shattered, one more propaganda tool exposed, this time perpetrated by and for the government of India, by their paying at least one third of the price of the whitewash film Gandhi (1982). After reading this, I won't think exactly the same of Gandhi ever again. Not once from beginning to end of that film apparently is the word Caste mentioned.

Dalit Sites DalitNet
This is a great collection of sites dedicated to the Dalit cause. Quite a collection it is too.

Indian History Revisited
This very interesting article (November 1998) by David Frawley decries the Aryan invasion of India theory I perpetuate within the above essay. Turns out that archeologists are finding that this may not be the case. "The Aryan invasion theory has been used to promote various political agendas. British, Communist, Dravidian and Dalit groups have all used it to their advantage, as have Muslim and Christian missionaries portraying the invading Aryans as the bad guys and the invasion as the source of all social, political and religious problems in the country. No other theory of ancient history has been used for so much modern political and religious mileage. That such groups are blaming Hindus for politicising the issue now that it is turning against them is only hypocrisy."

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