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January
28, 2005
Helping
the Dalits By
Congressman Joe Pitts However, the caste
system established by Hindu priests (Brahmins) 3,000 years ago, allow a
powerful few to dominate the many. This
system fails to recognize the worth of all people, and ignores the great
diversity of a nation as large as Today, there are four distinct castes of
people, called “Varnas.” The
Brahmins are the highest caste, followed by the Kshatriyas (soldiers and
administrators), the Vaisyas (artisan and commercial class), and the
Sudras (farmers and the peasant class). Not everyone has a caste.
A group once called the “untouchables,” have none.
The 250-300 million Dalits, as the untouchables are now known, are
so low on the social spectrum they are outside of the caste system.
Sadly, they lack many of the basic services and legal protections
available to the rest of Indian society.
Often, they are treated worse than animals, denied access to water,
food, health care, housing, and even clothing because they are deemed
unworthy of these things. Discrimination
against Dalits is widespread. When
their rights are violated there is little recourse.
The Dalit Freedom Network says, “A Dalit is not considered to be
part of the human society, but something, which is beyond that.
The Dalits perform the most menial and degrading jobs…Dalits
are seen as (pollutants) for higher caste people. If a higher caste Hindu
is touched by an untouchable or even had a Dalit’s shadow across them,
they consider themselves to be polluted and have to go through a rigorous
series of rituals to be cleansed.” When a Dalit
attempts to buy a drink from a street vendor, he or she is often forced to
purchase a separate clay cup that cannot be reused.
In rural Dalits
must often wait by the well for a higher caste person to share from their
jar because by strict religious custom they are ‘unclean’ and are
forbidden to draw from the well themselves. Many Dalits wait all day and
still no one gives them water. The Dalit Human Rights
Monitor gave one account of thirty Dalit homes being burned to the ground
by a mob incensed that the government had given them land.
In another account, a dispute last year over a cricket match
between school children ended up as a battle between castes with upper
caste landlords forcing three Dalit boys, at gunpoint, to drink their own
urine. The Dalits are attacked
not only physically, but various community members, sometimes even the
police, try to prevent the Dalits from building water or sanitation
devices and from carrying out basic human customs such as marriage or
religious worship. In protest of their
treatment by the caste system, thousands and thousands of Dalits have
converted from Hinduism to Buddhism, Islam and Christianity. Countries that protect the rights and
freedoms of all people are more stable and more prosperous.
Once we came to accept that all citizens, regardless of color,
religion, race, or creed were equal and deserved equal opportunity to
build a better life, we became stronger as a nation.
We still struggle with the cultural scars of our past, but our
calls for freedom elsewhere carry more credibility because we grant it to
all of our citizens. Freedom, stability, and prosperity do
not come by simply voicing concern. We
must take action. There
are organizations and individuals in I invite you to visit my Human Rights
web page to learn more about how you can help the Dalits and other groups
like them around the world. Congressman Pitts is a member of the #
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