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The life of the lower castes in the western part of
Nepal.
by Berit Madsen
“In this hamlet we are all low caste people. The upper caste who
live further up the village cannot touch us. If they do so they get
polluted”, says Sunga Kami. She is an elder Dalit woman from Ratoli, a
small village in Doti district in the far western part of Nepal. “But
sometimes a woman from one of the higher castes comes to our house. Her
name is Raju Bohara. She likes to sit in our yard. But when she returns
home she has to purify herself by sprinkling gold-treated water over her
body. That is the custom up here”.
Today Raju Bohara, who
belongs to the Chhetri caste, visits Sunga Kami’s household. Her hamlet is
only a few minutes away by foot. Raju sits down in the yard. It is a sunny
afternoon and all the women in Sunga Kami’s household are busy drying
lentils and rice grains on straw mats. A young woman begins to grind the
already dried lentils in a stone grinding mill. She is dressed in pink and
has a yellow marigold flower behind her ear. Goats and hens are walking
around in the yard. It is the children’s job to keep them away from the
straw mats with rice and lentils.
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Sunga Kami and her household
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There are twelve family members in Sunga Kami’s household. Four of
her sons live in India. One of them has just returned to Ratoli to pay his
mother a visit. Two daughters are married and they both stay with their
husband’s families in neighbouring villages. Sungi Kami’s household
belongs to the Kami caste which is one of the many lower castes in Nepal.
A common denominator for the lower castes is Dalit. The term originally
means people living in the swamps (daldal) or oppressed people, but today
it refers to all low caste people in Nepal. The Dalits is the group of
people who are considered untouchable by the higher castes. It is believed
that the Dalits can pollute higher castes and therefore any kind of close
physical contact must be avoided. As Sunga Kami explained above, Raju
Bohara has to clean herself ritually after a visit to Sunga Kami’s
household. She has namely exposed herself to pollution just by entering a
Dalit household.
The untouchability of the Dalits has an
immense influence on their daily life. In most parts of Nepal the Dalits
are not allowed into Hindu temples; they cannot use the wells, taps or
other water sources that are reserved for the higher castes; they cannot
enter restaurants and tea-shops, but have to sit outside and eat or drink
from plates and cups especially reserved for Dalits; at the grocer’s shop
they have to keep a distance while the goods are delivered to them; they
cannot enter the homes of upper castes nor settle nearby the upper castes’
hamlets. In many ways these restrictions imply that Dalits live on the
margins of the Nepalese society.
The Doti
district
We
are in the Doti district in the far western part of Nepal. It is a
beautiful mountainous area covered with pine trees and small terraces cut
into the steep mountain sides. The white, impressive Himalayas follow the
northern horizon and to the South one gets a picturesque view down the
valleys. The turquoise blue Seti river winds through the deep gorges from
the mountains to the low lands. At this time of the year the fields in the
valleys are covered with young, green wheat sprout. On the hill sides the
fields are still barren and grey. Only a few kitchen gardens light up the
landscape. Most of these gardens belong to upper caste people, as do most
of the fields surrounding the villages. Only a few households from the
lower castes own a piece of land or a kitchen garden.
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Dalit hamlet in the Doti district
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The Dalits in the Doti district belong to three separate low caste
groups – the Kami, the Sarki, and the Damai. Traditionally each group is
linked to a specific occupation. The Kami caste works as blacksmiths, the
Sarki as shoemakers, and the Damai as tailors – occupations which in Nepal
all are considered “dirty” and therefore only should be carried out by
Dalits. The three groups are further divided into different subgroups,
each with a separate occupation, such as Sunar (goldsmiths), Bhul (leather
workers), Lohar (metal workers), Parki (bamboo handicraft workers), and
Tamata (copper workers). The upper castes in Doti consist of Brahmins and
Chhetris. Traditionally the Brahmins are priests or scholars. The Chhetris
are the warrior caste. Today Brahmins still carry out their traditional
occupation, but most Chhetris make a living as farmers, landowners, or
businessmen.
The Dalits in the Doti district all live in separate hamlets apart
from the higher castes. Most Dalit hamlets are densely built-up areas of
small houses with mud walls. Some hamlets are placed on hill tops and one
wonders when the next strong wind will pull them off the ridge. Round
haystacks are kept on wooden pillars in the yards. In the glaring winter
sun the hay shines with a warm yellow colour. A few households have
livestock such as buffaloes and goats. They keep them in small stables
next to the house.
From a few Damai households the sound of an old iron Laxmi sewing
machine crystallises in the air. One or two Kamis spend the winter
repairing ploughs and other farming tools. But today most Dalits in the
Doti district do not practice their traditional caste occupation. In lack
of skills and modern technologies their products cannot any longer compete
with high quality products made in the cities. Instead the majority of
Dalits make a living as day labourers on the higher castes’ land or by
taking on different manual work such as cutting stones, selling firewood
from the mountain sides, or working on road construction. The higher
castes rarely pay in cash for the different kinds of work the Dalits
perform for them. Instead they pay with lentils and rice grains around
harvest time – a system known as Bali Ghare Pratha. The younger generation
is not particularly interested in continuing their parents’ professions as
these jobs are considered “dirty” and are looked down upon from the rest
of the society.
Winter time is low season for day labour
work. Men, therefore, hang around, waiting for spring to come where the
seasonal agricultural work begins. Women are, on the other hand, always
busy with the daily house work, such as cooking rice (dhal), lentils (bhat), and flat, barley bread
(chapati), fetching firewood and water,
feeding the buffalo or goats, etc.
Winter time is, however, a good
time for weddings according to the Nepalese calendar. If a couple is
married in January or February their life together will be endowed with
prosperity and fortune. One morning a Kami visits the local Brahmin
astrologer. He wants the astrologer to find the most suitable date for his
daughter’s wedding. The Kami brings a steel plate with uncooked rice, an
orange flower, and a five rupees-note as payment for the astrologer’s
prediction. While the astrologer figure out the time for the marriage to
take place, the Kami has to sit outside in the courtyard and wait for the
answer. If he here by mistake touches the earth - since he is a Dalit - it
has to be ritually purified with cow dunk. “It is our custom and we have
to protect out culture”, the astrologer explains, while the Kami is
leaving with the most suitable date for his daughter’s marriage: the 30th
of January at 5.00 am. “This is how we have done it for generations. And
how can we, the higher castes, change caste behaviour when the Dalits also
differentiate among themselves? A Kami thinks that he is superior to a
Damai and treats him accordingly. Also, if I meet a Dalit person on the
path he will automatically step aside in order not to touch me. So he is
just as well keeping up the tradition, isn’t he?”.
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The Brahmin astrologer looking for the most suitable date for
the Kami's daughters wedding.
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The Nepalese caste system
Nepal is the only Hindu kingdom in the world. The caste system is
closely related to Hinduism. The Vedas - the 2500 years old sacred
Sanskrit texts which Hinduism is based upon - separate the population into
four groups: Brahman, Kshetriya, Vaishya, and Sudra. The four groups are
hierarchically ordered with the Brahmins in the top and the Sudras in the
bottom. According to the Veda’s creation myth, God created Brahman from
his mouth, Kshetriya from his arm, Vaishya from his thigh, and Sudra from
his feet. The Dalits or untouchables belong to the Sudra, those created
from the feet and thereby the lowest of these categories. 20 % of Nepal’s
population (22.6 millions in 1997 figures) are Dalits. More than 4 million
people in Nepal are therefore considered untouchable.
In 1990
the practice of caste based discrimination and untouchability was declared
illegal and punishable by law in Nepal. A person who is found guilty in
caste discrimination can now be sentenced up to one year in prison or be
fined to pay 3000 rupees (1 US $ is 74 Nepalese rupees). The law is,
however, seldom taken into practice and numerous cases of discrimination
against the Dalits are still taking place. As such the caste system still
forms an essential part of the cultural landscape in
Nepal.
Many Dalits explain their low status and
untouchability as determined by the Gods. As Mohan Baral Kami, a Dalit
goldsmith says, “God created the caste system and we have to accept our
low caste status if not to make the Gods angry with us”. However, many
high caste people also consider the Dalits to be impure because “they are
dirty”, “they don’t keep their houses clean”, “they eat animals dead from
accident or disease” – an explanation to the “impurity” which also are
heard among Dalit themselves.
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Doti landscape and the blue Seti river in the winter time
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From a socio-economic perspective poverty is an important
marker of the untouchables. Dalits are not only culturally inferior but
also economically deprived. Since most Dalits in the hill regions own no
land and only receive a small amount of grain as payment for their work,
they are forced to take loans from higher caste people to buy food and
other daily necessities. They hereby become a kind of “bounded labourers”,
as they are obliged to work on the upper castes’ land to pay off the
interest without much chance of ever being able to repay the loan. Most
adult Dalits in the hills are illiterate, especially the women. Today some
Dalits attend school, but rarely beyond second class for the girls and
forth or fifth grade for the boys; quite a large number of Dalit girls do
not attend school at all.
Migration and new
strategies
Today almost every Dalit household have one or two male family
members who work in India, either seasonally or for a longer period such
as 5-10 years at a time. In India they find jobs as watchmen in hotels,
dish washers, drivers, and other kind of casual work. Hill-Dalits have
also begun to migrate to the Terai, the low land in the southernmost part
of Nepal. In the Terai they hope to buy a piece of land or find new kinds
of job opportunities.
The migration to the Terai also provide
the Dalit families with new strategies to improve their social status. It
is quite common among hill-Dalits to change their surname or leave out the
caste indicator in the name – e.g. Kami, Damai, and Sarki – when they move
to the low lands. By doing this they hope to get different and better
possibilities within the caste system which they hope especially will be
profitable for their children. Recently it has become popular among Dalits
to convert to Christianity as a way of avoiding the caste system. Up till
now about 10 % of the Dalits have taken on this new religious
belief.
The caste system and its many manifestations has a
strong impact on the every day life of Dalits in Nepal. But the caste
system seen as a social system also opens up for individual strategies or
multiple ways of choosing to navigate in this cultural landscape. As the
local Chhetri healer, the Dhami Jhankri, in Doti tells: “Up here in my
village I will never accept food from a Dalit’s hand. But if I travel to
the capital Kathmandu I will eat food from everywhere, since in Kathmandu
I don’t know the people so how am I to know who have cooked
it?”.
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