Indias Caste System

Highest Level- and the least amount of people.

Associated with the color white.
Brahma
ns
Associated with the color red.

Kshatriya
s

Associated with the color brown.

Vaishyas
Associated with the color black.

Shudras
Lowest Level- and there are
over 100 levels of the Dalits.

Dalits

Rulers, priests, teachers and educated people

Brahma
ns

Lower rulers and warriors

Kshatriya
s

Farmers, merchants and artisans

Vaishyas

Peasants and laborers who work in

Non-polluting jobs.
Shudras
Degrading Jobs- Unclean occupations.
You have no rights!
Dalits

More on the Dalits

or Untouchables
They are put in separate housing because
diseases will spread through touch and
the air.
They are not allowed to touch the other
four castes.
They cannot enter homes or temples that
others castes do.
An untouchables shadow cannot touch
another castes.

The Untouchables of India

Separate and Unequal - Photograph by William Albert Allard

Across a narrow alley children on a stairway seek a stray breeze and

freedom from one-room apartments in a battered housing project for
Untouchables in Bangalore, in southern India. Jobsand the prospect
of fewer public humiliations at the hands of upper caste Indiansbring
many Untouchables to the cities. Though they may blend anonymously
with higher castes on city streets, they can't escape segregated
housing.

WaterRights - Photograph by William Albert Allard

Colorful jugs line a neighborhood well where an Untouchable family takes

its turn at the daily ritual of gathering water. Across India members of
upper castes often refuse to share water with Untouchables, convinced
that any liquid will become polluted if it comes in contact with an
Untouchable. In the countryside Untouchables are often forbidden to use
the same wells and ponds as upper caste villagers. Municipal
governments have begun to install separate water pumps. But in most
rural tea shops, Untouchables still are not permitted to drink from glasses
served to upper caste customers.

Enlightenment - Photograph by William Albert Allard

Untouchable women meeting in southern India focus on such issues as
literacy, malnourishment, and employment. An organization called
Janodaya, run by the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, calls regular meetings
in the Karnataka countryside to educate women on how to press for better
government services in areas such as health and education, and how to
start small businesses. The group operates mostly in villages where less
than 10 percent of the women can read and write. Weighted with some
1,500 years of bitter history, Untouchables face daunting challenges as they
try to shed the burdens of caste.

NoChoice -Photograph by William

Albert Allard
At age nine Kariamma was dedicated
by her family to become a devadasi, or
"servant of God." At puberty, like most
devadasis in India, she was offered
sexually to upper caste patrons. Now,
at age 30, Kariamma has given birth to
five children, uncertain of whom the
fathers are. Unable to marry, many
devadasis, most of them
Untouchables, are auctioned off to
urban brothels. Commenting on the
hypocrisy of the caste system, an
activist working with devadasis in the
southern state of Karnataka
exclaimed, "These women are
Untouchable by day, but touchable by
night. "

Crushing Work
Photograph by William Albert Allard
Hour after hour Untouchtables break rocks to repair a railbed
in Rajasthan. They will earn one or two dollars a day.
Because of their huge numbersUntouchables now number
160 million, or 15 percent of India's peoplemany have had
to leave their villages to seek work beyond their traditional
caste occupations. Yet most Untouchable migrants merely
exchange one kind of backbreaking labor for another, working
in fields, construction sites, brick kilns, and stone quarries.

Entrenched Irony
Photograph by William Albert Allard

Members of the Untouchable Dhobi caste beat the impurities out

of clothes on the banks of the Yamuna River in Delhi. Life's
"unclean" tasks, such as cleaning latrines and digging graves fall
to those born into one of the hundreds of Untouchable castes.
They face a lifetime of discrimination and brutalityprejudice that
endures even though Untouchability is officially banned by the
Indian constitution.