15, February 2018 “The Untouchables” – a National Disgrace
According to India’s National Crime Records Bureau, four Dalit women are raped, two murdered, and two Dalit homes are torched every day. Who devised this high-low caste system that condemns people to live in “straitjackets,” caste prisons at birth for which there is no escape – no social mobility? Does a mean and vindictive God condemn these poor souls to a life of misery? The origins of the caste system in India and Nepal are murky, but it seems to have originated more than two thousand years ago. Under the system, people were identified by their occupations. The system quickly morphed into a hereditary system where the higher castes could oppress the lower castes with impunity.
The four primary castes are: Brahmin, the priests; Kshatriya, warriors and nobility; Vaisya, farmers, traders and artisans; and Shudra, tenant farmers, and servants.
Under this tightly controlled system, groups were outcasts - born outside (and below) the caste system. They were called "untouchables," or Dalits. The modern-day system is a caste apartheid condemning the Dalits to a life of daily humiliations.
It is deplorable that not a single modern “spiritual leader” has voiced his outrage condemning this national scourge. Left to their own devices the Dalits (untouchables) are fighting back., Ruth Manorama, a well-known Dalit activist was awarded the Right Livelihood Award (equivalent to the Nobel Prize) for “her commitment over decades to achieving equality for Dalit women, building effective and committed women’s organizations and working for their rights at national and international levels.” The movement is the subject of the documentary, “#Dalitwomenfight!” Dalits and Negros in America have a similar history. The Black Panther movement gave the Negros the less denigrating identity, “blacks” and rejected their prior identity which was based on their facial features. Likewise, the “untouchables” stigma has been replaced by Dalits meaning someone who revolts against oppression and seeks emancipation. There are approximately 260 million Dalits, not only in India, but also in South Asia. In India the Dalits are often referred to as scheduled caste. Women Dalits still do manual scavenging and are forced into prostitution because of punishing poverty. Sexual predators operate with complete impunity getting a free pass from the police and court system. Like Amartya Sen observed , in one of his books called The Uncertain, Uncertainty [An Uncertain Glory, every country faces inequality, but India has cocktails of inequality.
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