Posted on 01/07/2005 9:24:07 AM PST by kipita
KESHVANPALAYAM, India (AFP) - India's untouchables, reeling from the tsunami disaster, are being forced out of relief camps by higher caste survivors and being denied aid supplies, activists charged.
Kuppuswamy Ramachandran, 32, a Dalit or untouchable in India's rigid caste hierarchy, said he and his family were told to leave a relief camp in worst-hit Nagapattinam district where 50 more families were housed.
"The higher caste fishing community did not allow us to sleep in a marriage hall where they are put up because we belong to the lowest caste," Ramachandran said.
"After three days we were moved out to a school but now the school is going to reopen within three days and the teachers drove us out," he said.
"Where will I take my family and children? The school had no lights, toilets or drinking water," available for the displaced.
More than 6,000 people died when tsunamis struck this southern Indian coastal district on December 26 and activists said that included 81 Dalits, who were daily wage earners working in agricultural lands.
The ferocious wall of sea water destroyed swathes of farm land and the Dalits no longer have any employment.
At Keshvanpalayam, the Dalits had only flattened homes to show while survivors elsewhere enjoyed relief supplies such as food, medicines, sleeping mats and kerosene.
No government official or aid has flowed into the village which houses 83 Dalit families more than 30 kilometres (20 miles) from Nagapattinam town.
Cranes and bulldozers cleared the debris of a neighbouring fishing community, but they are yet to reach the Dalit village.
Chandra Jayaram, 35, who lost her husband to the tsunamis, said her family has not received promised government compensation of 100,000 rupees (2,174 dollars).
"At the relief camps we are treated differently due to our social status. We are not given relief supplies. The fishing community told us not to stay with them. The government says we will not be given anything as we are not affected much," Jayaram said.
S. Karuppiah, field coordinator with the Human Rights Forum for Dalit Liberation, said in some of the villages the dead bodies of untouchables were removed with reluctance.
"The Dalit villages are in most places proving to be the preferred choice of the fishing community to bury the dead. If the Dalits ask for relief materials the government says they can only give the leftovers," Karuppiah said.
"The government is turning a blind eye," he said. "When Dalits bury the dead they are not given gloves or medicines but only alcohol to forget the rotten stench."
Another activist, Mahakrishnan Marimuthu, who heads the non-governmental Education and Handicraft Training Trust, said tsunamis dealt a double blow to the caste.
"They lost their jobs, houses and relatives. On the other hand the social discrimination is proving to be worse," he said.
The government denied the allegations and said it was providing relief to every tsunami-affected family.
"There is no intention of closing down any camps and we are providing relief to each and every family. We will provide temporary shelters as these relief camps are getting overcrowded," said Veerashanmugha Moni, Nagapattinam's senior government administrator.
The United Nations (news - web sites) Children's Fund UNICEF (news - web sites) said government, relief agencies and aid workers did not discriminate against the Dalits but the caste issue always exists.
"All the aid going in is distributed the same way to all survivors. The social discrimination has been there during normal times," said Amudha, who heads a team of UNICEF volunteers in Nagapattinam.
"After the disaster happened it is still continuing. That is nothing new," she said.
Vijaya Lakshmi, spokeswoman for South India Federation of Fishermen Societies, agreed and said one could not wish away a centuries-old caste system when a disaster struck.
"If they (Dalits) are comfortable by staying separate they will," she said
"In diversity is our unity."
Or something like that.
Earth to the looney, leftist media: yes, people in different cultures think differently than we do. Just remember to keep celebrating diversity.
Ness will get this straightened out.
I don't care how far they've come and how much they've improved, India still sucks, Big Time.
India needs a civil rights movement to get rid of this caste system mentality once and for all. I am constantly amazed at the attitudes and prejudices this system perpetuates!
e pluribus unum
Me too.
Even recently being in Englad, I was shocked at how "class conscious" that effectively socialist country was.
Completely alien to Americans, really. We have classes --- but it is based on eduation, what job you do, and money really. Ample room to move up (and down).
Only in patrician New England (and old Dallas/Highlanbd Park around SMU, strangely) have I seen class stratification based on what grandpa did.
You know, this gets to the heart of most of the world's problems. How to get untold millions of people to give up the dark-ages thinking and mores that keep them Third World.
So much so that when the modern world tries to help them in times like this, the backward systems-and thinking- they cling to make it impossible.
Caste systems, women as property, honor killings...how do we get people in 2005 to get past the retarded thinking that is killing them- and threatening us?
There shouldn't BE any human beings squatting in dirt with bugs on their faces in 2005. Places with no toilets, sanitation, education.
There shouldn't BE any women kneeling in burkhas getting their brains blown out in 2005-or tribes killing each other.
The entire world is, literally, in reach of civilization. Why the hell isn't it civilized? What is so insurmountable in their thinking that they have not progressed as far as the Western world? Especially when THEY are the ones who suffer from it the most!
Pretty sad, that in this day and age, a society still sanctions the oppression of a permanent underclass.
A feudalistic mindset exist throughout Europe and the rest of the world. It’s the reason the worlds intellectuals come to America (and succeeded).
Just goes to show you how far the HILLDEBEAST will go to get her name up front.
Read your own tagline. The answer is there.
Bill Clinton is treated like a god in India. It's one of his favorite places to visit and I'm sure he's profited greatly from his relationships with high ranking Indians. It would be nice if he'd come out against this perverse caste system.
FOLLOWS BAD UNPC 'JOKE' - "she's so out of touch she an untouchable!!!"
Just think, all the Indian doctors I know brag about how great the quality of life is in their country. Hum! I wonder if that is because most of them came from higher caste families.
Of course, the Barbarian's Bible( aka. The Koran) explains most of it, but the caste system is Hindu. I don't think tribes like the Bantu and Masai are Muslim( are they?) How about the people living in squalor in South America?
Granted- elimintating Islam from the planet would go a long way to bringing a large portion of the population into this century- IF you can change their thinking!
The sad thing is, there seems to be some kind of NEED that causes people of the Third World to cling to self-destructive thinking.
I used to know well educated, professional people from Sri Lanka. Business people, medical doctors, and they honestly believed cows were sacred and believed the caste system was good. Completely baffling and contradictory.
The only way out of the castes is to drop Hinduism, usually to pick up Islam.
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