Posted on 01/28/2005 1:31:36 PM PST by TBP
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.
Could someone please explain how this caste system came into being? I have heard about India's Untouchables before but have never learned how the entire system began.
Thanks
I don't know the details of the caste system but a very good friend of mine is a member of what used to be the high caste in India. He told me that the caste system is old news there and is similar to the formerly segregated black and white America. To say it is still rigidly enforced is sensationalism if my friend is being truthful in his description to me.
Where not a day goes by, that the Washington Post and New York Times fails to point out how we are not so fortunate to live in America.
If either paper, or both papers, or is it more accurate to say, they're the same side of both sides of one paper? ... anyway, if they spent some portion of their efforts, on matters where hundreds of thousands of people die overseas, from the failure to use DDT at least on some occasions, and the failure to stop mass genocide at least in Rawanda, then they might actually be papers of record.
Instead of gluttons for fussy people who are not in need of anything more than a spare tire for their limousine liberal limousine services.
We unfortunately cannot count on either paper to address real poverty and real terror and real dictatorships and brutality and torture and tyranny.
Because for such papers, being a champion against what is wrong, is untouchable.
.......lawyers called priests....
Caste discrimination is illegal in India, and they have the equivalent of affirmative action for the lower castes.
We should cut off all aid and trade with India until the vcaste system is eliminated.
They also elected a president who's an untouchable.
The caste system is technically illegal now and out of favor but I remember researching it once and it was incredibly elaborate, it seemed to me. I don't know how they kept it all straight.
I'd go along with that.
The caste system was outlawed in India's constitution, but it is still going strong.
"Caste discrimination is illegal in India, and they have the equivalent of affirmative action for the lower castes."
That is essentially what my friend told me. He said the affirmative action was so good that a person formerly identified as lower caste could essentially go to university for free, even when it meant displacing a person formerly identified with the higher caste.
<< Could someone please explain how this caste system came into being? I have heard about India's Untouchables before but have never learned how the entire system began.
Thanks >>
The [Primitive and systemically-bigotted "caste" system fulfils the purpose for which it was evolved which is simply and cynically to permit the self-styled Brahmins and others in the delusionally-fantasized "upper orders" to act with Absolute indifference, scorn and derision toward the bottom rungers -- and especially toward the Dalits -- or "untouchables -- Harijans and Scheduled castes."
The hinduism cultists cunningly invented this obscene "system" to give the contrived appearance of "good motive" to cover up their Absolutely evil intent.
I believe that the caste system arrived with the fair skinned Aryians in about 1500 BC. It is based in the Vedas and was originally tribal in nature. One reason for the rapid spread of Buddhism was the rejection of the system. The lack of a caste system also aided the spread of Islam although this was limited by the slaughter accompanying the Hindu / Muslim wars. It is a truly repulsive system.
You are correct. Although the caste system has been banned by law, it is still practiced less openly within the less educated and/or rural Hindus. The 'untouchables' are the lowest of the low on the Hindu caste hierarchy, and with no chance of changing their state. The discrimation against them is thousands of years old. That's why waves of 'untouchables' (Dalits) have recently turned their backs on Hinduism to become either Buddhists or Christians, where they face a better life without being despised as they are now.
What caught my eye in this article is that the government is promising 100,000 rupees for each Tsunami victim. That's the equivalent of winning the lottery for these mostly poor fisher-folk. Much as I would like to think they will get the money, I really wonder if they will. In India, corruption is an ingrained way of life. That's just the way it is. I know. I've lived there. These 'untouchables' just might get the shaft yet again.
IN my opinion it seems to be the class system gone haywire -- they seem to have 4 basic castes -- the warrior, priest, trader and laborer. The rest beyond that gets confusing! Anyway, it seems that this initially started as jobs which were passed from father to son, but soon were restricted to the sons of fahters and then to specific clans. For example, the British class system could so easily have gone that way if the industrial revolution hadn't given men equality.
Yes and we should cut off ALL aid (economic, military, whatever) to all Muslime countries as well.
I kind of doubt it's got to do with the Aryans -- because there are Brahmins in the south of India which is not Aryan territory -- it's Dravidian
Probably, when the Aryans arrived, they recognised chieftan clans of the Dravidians and probably accorded them a higher status relative to the other members. These members were probably taught Sanskrit and Hinduism, and they in turn, spread it to the other members of the Dravidian races.
Just a hypothesis.
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