Saturday, October 22, 2005
Anita/Stories of Life and Faith
To Be Free from Caste Discrimination
( this was published sometimes back in a hong kong based site and found now it will also be interesting to post here).
UNTOUCHABALITY in the name of caste is a deep-rooted problem in South Asia. Today, there are 260 million "untouchables" or Dalits in the world and out of them 240 million are in India and 4.5 million are in Nepal. There are many hidden stories of pain, agony, sorrow and tears.
I come from a family of seven children (four daughters and three sons) and we live in the eastern part of Nepal. Having been born into a tailor's family, I am known as a Dalit or Untouchable in Nepal's Hindu society. As a tailor's family, our sub-caste is considered the lowest even among Dalits. My parents are not well educated, are economically disadvantaged, politically neglected, and socially untouchable as are about 20 percent of the total population of our country of 23 million. My mother gave birth to a child when she was 19 after getting married at the age of 18. She had to bear many children since my father required her to have sons.
My father was not happy when I was born because he had hoped for a son. My village likewise thinks that to support a daughter is "like pouring water into the sand." However, my parents encouraged me to study. They wanted me to have a better life than theirs so that I could lead other women of the community.
I was 12 years old when I received a scholarship and had to go to a different district, Siraha-Bastipur. It was a major task for my father to find my accommodation as there was no hostel for girls. No one was ready to provide a room, even if we paid rent, because they thought it would be impure to provide a room to a Dalit.
My father found one Dalit family and after some negotiation, they allowed me to stay with them. There was no place to study, however. After one week, I decided that I could not study if I stayed with them because no one understood the problems of a young student since they did not send their children to school.
My father had to find another place for me. A meeting was held in the village to find a room for me. Although his friends had rooms, they could not provide one to their friend's daughter. The domestic helper of one of my father's friends heard my problem. He belonged to an ethnic community that dared to help me and allowed me to stay in one of their homes. In the evening, I saw that it was a hut with two rooms. I entered inside and found two goats. I told my father that I liked it. I cleaned the rooms, made it warm with firewood — there was no electricity — and I stayed there alone. The owner took me inside their home at around 11:30 p.m. and woke me up at 3 a.m. so I could go back to my room. Neighbours shunned the family for providing me with a room. As a result, the man's wife used to scold me and quarrel with her husband for accepting me.
The house owner used to provide food to students so I joined them for meals. All the other students were boys. As a girl, I could not eat first. As a Dalit girl, I could not serve myself. I had to wait until they had finished and left. Even if we all paid for our food, I had to wash my dishes, whereas it was not necessary for them to do so. I could not touch the tap that they were using. After each time I used the tap, they would clean it to ‘purify' it. I spent four years there and finished my schooling. During that time, people, especially women, used to make complaints to my teachers, saying that I was making them impure.
I went to college in Kathmandu where again there was a problem of finding a place to stay. Since I did not have relatives there, I started to stay with my friends at a so-called non-Dalit house. After several months, when they realised that my surname belonged to the Dalit community, they said I had to leave. The house owner was a chief district officer. I have left three places just because I am a Dalit. There is always a social gap between Dalits and non-Dalits.
There is a temple near my house which all my friends could enter, but which I was not allowed to enter. As one born in a Hindu society, I wanted to worship and touch the statue of the so-called god. But my mother used to say that it was not good for me to go inside the temple. How could I go there if my mother thinks it was not good for me? Now I realised that she did not want to say that I was impure and could not enter the temple.
I am a young woman fighting against caste and gender discrimination. I have had many bitter experiences at work, while visiting rural areas, and right within Nepal's capital city. I have had to face many problems because of my caste. For example, I am not allowed to enter the temple, use public water taps, restaurants and the houses of so-called higher castes —but which a dog can do.
A UNICEF report said that about 60 percent of Dalit women are victims of trafficking because of their poverty. These are all factors that motivate me to press ahead as a Dalit woman activist. I am involved in gathering information about these acts of inhuman behaviour toward Dalit people and in building a coalition and support network to influence people for positive change and to reduce the inhumane treatment towards Dalits. This I do through my work and network of the Feminist Dalit Organisation (FEDO).
FEDO was established in 1994 with the mission to uplift and empower downtrodden Dalit women economically, educationally, socially and politically and to advocate against caste and gender discrimination from the grassroots level. By generating awareness and unity among Dalit men and women and by cooperating with our international friends, we strongly hope that such problems will gradually be eliminated. Working together, it is possible to change the views of society and attain justice. We have about 1,100 general members in different parts of Nepal. We work at the grassroots level because we believe that if we can create change from the bottom to the top there will be effective results and we will not have to hang our heads.
( this was published sometimes back in a hong kong based site and found now it will also be interesting to post here).
UNTOUCHABALITY in the name of caste is a deep-rooted problem in South Asia. Today, there are 260 million "untouchables" or Dalits in the world and out of them 240 million are in India and 4.5 million are in Nepal. There are many hidden stories of pain, agony, sorrow and tears.
I come from a family of seven children (four daughters and three sons) and we live in the eastern part of Nepal. Having been born into a tailor's family, I am known as a Dalit or Untouchable in Nepal's Hindu society. As a tailor's family, our sub-caste is considered the lowest even among Dalits. My parents are not well educated, are economically disadvantaged, politically neglected, and socially untouchable as are about 20 percent of the total population of our country of 23 million. My mother gave birth to a child when she was 19 after getting married at the age of 18. She had to bear many children since my father required her to have sons.
My father was not happy when I was born because he had hoped for a son. My village likewise thinks that to support a daughter is "like pouring water into the sand." However, my parents encouraged me to study. They wanted me to have a better life than theirs so that I could lead other women of the community.
I was 12 years old when I received a scholarship and had to go to a different district, Siraha-Bastipur. It was a major task for my father to find my accommodation as there was no hostel for girls. No one was ready to provide a room, even if we paid rent, because they thought it would be impure to provide a room to a Dalit.
My father found one Dalit family and after some negotiation, they allowed me to stay with them. There was no place to study, however. After one week, I decided that I could not study if I stayed with them because no one understood the problems of a young student since they did not send their children to school.
My father had to find another place for me. A meeting was held in the village to find a room for me. Although his friends had rooms, they could not provide one to their friend's daughter. The domestic helper of one of my father's friends heard my problem. He belonged to an ethnic community that dared to help me and allowed me to stay in one of their homes. In the evening, I saw that it was a hut with two rooms. I entered inside and found two goats. I told my father that I liked it. I cleaned the rooms, made it warm with firewood — there was no electricity — and I stayed there alone. The owner took me inside their home at around 11:30 p.m. and woke me up at 3 a.m. so I could go back to my room. Neighbours shunned the family for providing me with a room. As a result, the man's wife used to scold me and quarrel with her husband for accepting me.
The house owner used to provide food to students so I joined them for meals. All the other students were boys. As a girl, I could not eat first. As a Dalit girl, I could not serve myself. I had to wait until they had finished and left. Even if we all paid for our food, I had to wash my dishes, whereas it was not necessary for them to do so. I could not touch the tap that they were using. After each time I used the tap, they would clean it to ‘purify' it. I spent four years there and finished my schooling. During that time, people, especially women, used to make complaints to my teachers, saying that I was making them impure.
I went to college in Kathmandu where again there was a problem of finding a place to stay. Since I did not have relatives there, I started to stay with my friends at a so-called non-Dalit house. After several months, when they realised that my surname belonged to the Dalit community, they said I had to leave. The house owner was a chief district officer. I have left three places just because I am a Dalit. There is always a social gap between Dalits and non-Dalits.
There is a temple near my house which all my friends could enter, but which I was not allowed to enter. As one born in a Hindu society, I wanted to worship and touch the statue of the so-called god. But my mother used to say that it was not good for me to go inside the temple. How could I go there if my mother thinks it was not good for me? Now I realised that she did not want to say that I was impure and could not enter the temple.
I am a young woman fighting against caste and gender discrimination. I have had many bitter experiences at work, while visiting rural areas, and right within Nepal's capital city. I have had to face many problems because of my caste. For example, I am not allowed to enter the temple, use public water taps, restaurants and the houses of so-called higher castes —but which a dog can do.
A UNICEF report said that about 60 percent of Dalit women are victims of trafficking because of their poverty. These are all factors that motivate me to press ahead as a Dalit woman activist. I am involved in gathering information about these acts of inhuman behaviour toward Dalit people and in building a coalition and support network to influence people for positive change and to reduce the inhumane treatment towards Dalits. This I do through my work and network of the Feminist Dalit Organisation (FEDO).
FEDO was established in 1994 with the mission to uplift and empower downtrodden Dalit women economically, educationally, socially and politically and to advocate against caste and gender discrimination from the grassroots level. By generating awareness and unity among Dalit men and women and by cooperating with our international friends, we strongly hope that such problems will gradually be eliminated. Working together, it is possible to change the views of society and attain justice. We have about 1,100 general members in different parts of Nepal. We work at the grassroots level because we believe that if we can create change from the bottom to the top there will be effective results and we will not have to hang our heads.
