Manjula Naksi, a "factfinder" from an Indian NGO called Sakshi, listens to the story of Bujji Govinda, a Dalit fruit seller who was raped on her way home from the market. A cluster of Dalit human rights organizations are trying to confront caste oppression in rural villages.

Untouchability is a fact of life for 160 million people living in India.

They are born into a caste system that brands them as unclean. They are known as Dalits, and face discrimination in every aspect of their lives.

In the cities, caste affects your chance of getting a job or finding a place to live. Dalits are expected to use separate water taps, temples and graveyards. At school, Dalit pupils may be told to arrive early to clean the classroom for other students. And to sit at the back of the class during lessons.

According to government statistics, caste prejudice is responsible for at least 25,000 crimes against Dalits each year. Every two hours, a Dalit woman is raped. Dalits are beaten, murdered and their homes are burned.

Dalits are also the street sweepers, the toilet cleaners, the butchers and the leather workers.

Scavengers at work cleaning filth off tracks in Hyderabad. More than one million Dalits clean excrement from toilets and public facilities in India, usually with no protective clothing or equipment.

Across India, the job of more than one million Dalits is to remove human filth by hand. These workers earn about 70 dollars a month. In the cities, they clean the sewers. In rural areas they clean village toilets, which often have no water to flush away the excrement.

The bulk of India’s 160 million Dalits are landless labourers, working other people’s land in return for a share of the harvest. Even though their work isn’t considered impure, they can’t escape the label of impurity.

Even the lay-out of villages reflects the caste hierarchy. Dalit hamlets are often separated from the rest of the village, and are on lower land so that their runoff doesn’t contaminate upper-caste households.At one time, in some places, Untouchables were forbidden to even cast a shadow on Brahmins. Dalits were forced to wear bells to herald their arrival, and to hang buckets around their necks so their spit would not touch the ground.

Such extreme forms of Untouchability no longer exist. But upper-caste Hindus continue to own the land on which Dalits must work to survive. Human Rights Watch estimates that there are more than 40 million bonded labourers in India. Most are Dalits. They spend their lives working to repay debt, with interest calculated by the landlord. Human Rights Watch calls it a form of slavery. The landlords also control the local police and judges. If anything goes wrong, Dalits can be helpless.

Statue in Mumbai - As the former Untouchables have become more assertive, thousands of statues have been erected in honour of their greatest hero, Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar.

A great Indian statesman, Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, a contemporary of Gandhi, did fight to abolish the caste system.

He is the undisputed hero of the Dalits, and by far the best-educated Dalit of his time. Studying on scholarship, by 1914 he had earned a Ph.D. in Economics from Columbia University in New York, a second degree from the London School of Economics and had been called to the British Bar. This at a time when few Dalits could read or write.

When he returned to India, Ambedkar was shocked to realize he was still treated as an Untouchable. He dedicated the rest of his life to the emancipation of the Dalits.

Amdbedkar wrote dozens of influential books on economics, politics and religion, and was the principle drafter of the Indian constitution.

The new Indian constitution guaranteed that a percentage of public funds be set aside to educate Dalits. It was the beginning of a vast program of affirmative action that remains at the centre of public life in India today.

In the last year of his life, Ambedkar made one final grand gesture for his people.
He converted to Buddhism, a religion without a caste system. Five hundred thousand Dalits followed his example, on the same day.

Ambedkar’s funeral in Bombay, in 1956, was attended by more than a million people.


- Richard Phinney, excerpts from the program.

Audio

Once a year, in a Hindu temple in Andhra Pradesh, a young Dalit girl is dedicated to the goddess. From that point on, the girl is called a Jogini and is not to marry.
Instead, as journalist Richard Phinney explains, she becomes a village prostitute, serving men from higher up on the caste ladder.

Listen to an excerpt from The Untouchables, Part One

As many as 10,000 Dalit girls are still sold into prostitution each year under the pretense of being dedicated to the goddess.