Day 2: Caste Activity

Please read your selection about Untouchables. After you and your group members are finished, please answer the following questions. Each person should add information from what they have read. You must also use the handouts I have provided you, your textbook, and other books.

Everyone must take notes in their notebooks. One person will be the reporter. Another will be the time and resources manager. The third person must make sure everyone is participating.

“When we are working, they ask us not to come near them. At tea canteens, they have separate tea tumblers and they make us clean them ourselves and make us put the dishes away ourselves. We cannot enter temples. We cannot use upper-caste water taps. We have to go one kilometer away to get water . . . When we ask for our rights from the government, the municipality officials threaten to fire us. So we don’t say anything. This is what happens to people who demand their rights?”

A Dalit manual scavenger from Gujarat, from a Human Rights Watch interview in Ahmedabad district, Gujarat, on July 23, 1998 in Narula, Smita. Broken People: Caste Violence Against India's "Untouchables". New York: Human Rights Watch, 1999.

1. Who are the untouchables?
2. What other names are untouchables called? What do they mean?
3. How many people in India are Untouchables?
4. What prohibitions are there on Untouchables?
5. What are their jobs?
6. How are they treated?
7. What protection do they have in modern times?