One World South Asia Article: The Untouchables Experience A High Level Of Discrimination In South Asia!!
Bangladeshi dalits struggle to make ends meet
In Jessore, a village eight kilometres from the main town in Bangladesh caste system rages on and dalits are forced to live in isolation. Restaurants, shops don’t attend them branding them as untouchables, while children are not allowed to mix with anyone outside their caste.
The din inside the dark tea stall stopped suddenly. All eyes were set on the silhouette of a figure standing by the doorway.
- The Dalits are not allowed in this shabby restaurant in Monharpur village of Jessore/ Photo credit: Emran Hossain
Someone coughed nervously. Another tapped uneasily on the table with his knuckles. At the cash register, the salesman looked sideways to avoid eye contact with the man standing there.
“Give me a jilapi,” the man said. Inside the bamboo-fenced shop, the words sounded like a bombshell.
“Go away,” the salesman said in his clipped voice, without bothering to look at the man. “You know we don’t sell to the Dalits. We don’t have plates and glasses to serve the Dalits. Why bothering us, Robi?”
Robi Das, the Dhopa (washer man), nods knowingly and walks away without protest. When you are a Dalit–the untouchable–you don’t mind being shooed away. You just can’t afford to mind.
In Monoharpur, a dust-bowl village in Jessore, only eight kilometres from the town, the caste system rages on and the untouchables live in the twilight of existence.
The Dalits–the muchis (cobblers), the dhopas, the methors (sweepers) and the napits (barbers)–live a life of social exclusion. Restaurants don’t serve them; those that serve keep separate plates and glasses.
“We are not allowed to even touch any vegetable or chicken or anything for that matter in the market,” Robi Das explains, as he comes out of the tea stall empty-handed. “They say if we touch anything, it is spoilt.”
In Jessore, about 5,000 Dalits live in about 50 villages. Throughout the country there are about 55 lakh. They are the low caste Hindus, and the caste system that started in India ages ago–the exact time and how it was introduced is still debatable–keeps the children of the Dalits secluded in schools. Nobody sits next to them. Nobody plays with them. They just live like shadows, as Robi Das does.
“Football was my life,” Robi Das said. “The smell of the leather football, the sound of ball bouncing off the ground… ahh. I had to leave that too.”
When he was 16 or 17, his playmates one day told him to stay off the ground. They said football required physical contact and they can’t do it with an untouchable. Robi’s passion for ha-du-du also had to end for similar reasons.
“I was not even allowed to watch football matches standing by the ground,” he said. “I tried badminton, but again nobody would play. No Hindu or Muslim would take me for a carrom game or even chess.”
At 45, Robi feels aged twice. An excruciating burden of existence weighs heavy on him and his family. He feels numbed when he finds his 17-year-old son going through the same grinding machine of the caste system.
“He can’t play with anyone outside the caste. He has to receive anything he buys from the shop wrapped in banana leaves specially kept for the Dalits. I watch him grow in the same wilted society that I was born into,” Robi says, as he walks away from the tea stall.
Gayblackcanada 