| Without electricity, paved roads or running
water, the hamlet is home to landless Mushars, the lowest social strata
of Dalits, who work as shoeshiners, trash pickers, toilet cleaners and
street sweepers. Those occupations are still regarded in much of India
as "polluted" and not deserving of respect. Here
amid the straw and mud villages, two children died of starvation last
year -- not for lack of food in the area, but as a result of prejudice. Chandrika,
a 24-year-old Dalit mother, recalled carrying her crying 2-year-old son
and her weak 20-month-old daughter to a nearby health center. There,
she pleaded for a card that would entitle her malnourished children to
free milk. But
before the nurses could examine her children, she was mocked and shooed
away by doctors, who told the young mother to go beg in the market. "They
said again and again, 'We don't want to see you Dalits here bothering
us,' " said Chandrika, a thin, dark-skinned woman who wept as she
recounted how her children died. "My milk had dried up from stress.
There was no work for me. There was no one to hear my plight." Local
government leaders who came to investigate her children's deaths
insisted that the shy mother and her fellow villagers build a raised
cement stage -- Dalits could be addressed by upper castes only from a
higher platform, Chandrika and other villagers were told. The
three-foot-tall dais remains here in Dallipur today, the only outcome
of the investigation. Everyday vocabulary reinforces caste. In
casual conversations, Indians frequently dismiss certain professions as
"backward," and people inquire about the professions of one another's
fathers. Dalits themselves protested the use of the term "untouchable,"
preferring Dalit, which means "broken people."In
Dalit villages, many like Chandrika, the mother who lost her two
children, say that they are provided little dignity and that they're
persecuted daily by other low castes seen as being just above them. Last
month, Bechan, a thin Dalit with long, wavy hair and bloodshot eyes,
went fishing in a village pond, only to return to find his home
destroyed. His two
huts were burned to the ground, turning his wheat, vegetables and
entire savings for his daughter's wedding into a pile of smoldering
ash. The pond allegedly belonged to the Patel caste, and Bechan had
trespassed. "They
told me I couldn't take any big fish out of the water," he said, his
voice quivering and his eyes beginning to water. "They surrounded me
from all sides and beat me. When I hobbled home, my life's work was on
fire. Even my daughter's dowry was burnt." Bechan,
45, is now living under a tree, with oily shirts stretched out over the
branches to shade him from the 120-degree heat. He filed police
reports. His daughter's wedding was called off. Convening
a group of Patel women to tell their side of the events, Hirvavatt
Devi, 45, shook her head and said the Dalits "burned down their own
huts to get money from the government. You see they're not smart
people. To be very frank, they're very dirty." Some
here hope that Kumari, the Dalit leader elected chief minister in Uttar
Pradesh, will take up their cause and hundreds like it. Meanwhile,
tempers are rising as fast as the gray smoke that still fumes here. "They
abuse us as they always do," cried out Rajender, a 40-year-old Dalit
trash collector, tossing up his hands. "We hear India is booming. But
India is becoming powerful with our blood and our labor. And we still
can not fish here or touch this land or that. We still live half lives." |
