India’s Caste System

Dalits (Untouchables) Brahmans Kshatriyas Vaishyas Shudras Dalits (Untouchables) Highest Level- and the least amount of people. Associated with the color white. Associated with the color red. Associated with the color brown. Associated with the color black. Lowest Level- and there are over 100 levels of the Dalits.

Dalits (Untouchables) Brahmans Kshatriyas Vaishyas Shudras Dalits (Untouchables) Rulers, priests, teachers and educated people Lower rulers and warriors Farmers, merchants and artisans Peasants and laborers who work in Non-polluting jobs. Degrading Jobs- Unclean occupations. You have no rights!

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. Jobs—and the prospect of fewer public humiliations at the hands of upper caste Indians—bring many Untouchables to the cities. Though they may blend anonymously with higher castes on city streets, they can't escape segregated housing.

Water Rights - 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.

No Choice -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 numbers—Untouchables now number 160 million, or 15 percent of India's people—many 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 brutality—prejudice that endures even though Untouchability is officially banned by the Indian constitution.