That title’s not going to rock the Top Blogs list any time soon, I know, but it’s the only title I can think to give this.
As you may or may not know, WordPress’s administration pages (the “backstage” of our blogs) feature many nifty ways to connect with other WordPress bloggers, my favorite being the Most Recently Updated list. You can see who posted it, and what the post is called, and if they have an avatar you can see that too, enabling me to avoid those who use CareBears or Angelina Jolie in her self-cutting phase. I click on these blogs quite a few fair times per day, being as I am both curious and competitive, and they have brought you delights such as our friend Samaha and the bicephalic brunet beauty of Michael J. Fox and George Stephanopoulos earlier today. Sigh. Where was I?
Right.
So tonight I clicked on one of the most recently updated blogs. The words “Social Boycott in Karnataka” don’t mean much to me; I know what a boycott is, but I didn’t know what a social boycott is…perhaps you all party while not-buying the thing you’re not-buying together? Sounded jolly to me.
And I had no idea where Karnataka is, except that it sounds like somewhere Carnacki the Magician would have been from, and we are highly way fond of Carnacki here at the ol’ raincoaster blog.
Well, let me just show you the introductory paragraph and let you connect the dots, if you can, between your doorstep and these ones.
Kadkol is a village in Basavannabagewadi Taluka in Bijapur District.
Basavannabagewadi is the birth place of famous saint Basavanna, who fought against the evil caste system in the medieval period.
It is a centre of pilgrimage for Lingayat caste. In the village of Kadkol, 400 families of Lingayats, 10 Muslim families, 50 Baijentries, 1 family of Dhangars, 3 families of Kauravis, 93 families of Holayas and 50 families of Madigas live. This is the caste configuration of the village Kadkol. In the entire Taluk of Basavannabagewadi, the untouchability is severely practiced in all its forms and colours. Many years the Scheduled caste people have been denied access to all the public places. However in the schools the untouchability is not practiced. Out of 93 families of Holayas, who belong to Scheduled Caste, 8 families have land holding and that is marginal (less than 2 acres). The land is rain fed. Out of this population of scheduled castes, there are 3 graduates. One of them is working as a Police Inspector and another one is working as a Bus conductor. The remaining graduate person is living in the village itself. The rest of the people belonging to the Scheduled Caste are agricultural landless laborers and 15 of them are bonded laborers. Out of these 15 bonded laborers, 7 are child labourers.
That’s right, people have leased out their children and in some cases they’ve grown to adulthood still under the yoke of these indentures.
Social boycott, it turns out, is nothing more than a brutal and potentially fatal ostracization of the so-called Untouchables, of the type which was outlawed in India in 1950.
The well these people had used has been lowered by drought to a level where it is unsafe to drink, so they began taking water from the public (goverment-installed) well. Other castes immediately began treating the public water as unclean, washing their livestock in it, using it for ahem, personal cleansing, etc. The Untouchables appealed to the authorities, and in return received a stern reminder of their proper place:
The scheduled caste villagers brought everything in the notice of District administration of Bijapur and also of sitting MLA, Shivaputra Desai of BJP. They could not stop the caste Hindus from committing these atrocities. The caste used to threatened the scheduled castes villagers by reminding them of a incidence of violence that occurred in 1946 in a village called “Sasanur”. In this village Sasanur, 50 scheduled castes belonging to Holayas were burnt alive. Even today there is no single Holaya in Sasanur village. Notably, Sasanur is just 20 kms away from Kadkol.
As seems usual in these cases, the law proceeds apace, the government proclaims, various lawyers and advocates on either side assert their assertions, and in the meantime nothing changes in the village. There’s a showdown of sorts scheduled for the 13th of November; I may check back then. But I’d be very optimistic to do so, I think, and lo, I am never very optimistic.
Prove me wrong, India.
raincoaster 
What a coincidence, I’ve been thinking a lot about India recently. I am even re-reading Rohinton Mistry’s ‘A Fine Balance’.
An interesting note for your post, apparently dalits (untouchables) in India have been converting to Buddhism at a record pace, as it’s the only way they can feel like equal human beings. Buddhism is growing in the nation among the lowest castes. Here’s a great article from the Guardian. linky
Untouchables embrace Buddha to escape oppression
· Lowest caste Hindus in mass conversions
· UK and US monks attend ceremonies in India
Randeep Ramesh in Hyderabad
Saturday October 14, 2006
The Guardian
In the small one-room house on the edge of the rice bowl of India, Narasimha Cherlaguda explains why he is preparing to be reborn again as a Buddhist.
As an untouchable, the 25-year-old is at the bottom of Hinduism’s hereditary hierarchy. “The [local] priest tells me if I was a good dalit in this life, then in my next life I can be born into a better part of society. [I say] why wait?”
Thanks for that. Religious movements always move the fastest and the strongest among the lower classes, because they’re the ones who have the strongest desire for change and hope. People who already have what they need and want don’t look outside themselves with the same fervor.
Theoretically, I’d know it was still going on, but when you skip from one blog to another just like that it brings home the fact that I’m blogging trivia from here and they’re blogging this from there (somehow; how can there be internet there?)
Re. Religion: D’you suppose that explains the spread of God, Guns ‘n’ Gays Evangelical Christianism through the predominantly poorer US south? Or is that just an excuse to feel good about voting for Duhbya?
There’s amazing connectivity from India, for a place that’s so technologically sharp yet sometimes so damned beknighted.
A related article:
From Business Week via Greenstar, who are found at http://www.greenstar.org.
PBS: http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/india/kids.html
I know India’s very wired, but this area sounds so remote and backwards it’s hard to imagine it could continue in this kind of state if the citizens had access to knowledge of other pathways, which gets back to the point about lots of people converting to Buddhism.
I read an interesting remark in last month’s issue of Vanity Fair that suggested quite a lot of the churchgoers in the United States (approaching 50%) are not actually believers, but don’t wish to be seen as nonbelievers. It’s a bit like the Church of England in that sense.