I grew up with children from 2 Indian immigrant families and they absolutely hated each other (always getting into fights at school or extracurricular events) and the one who was my friend (the popular one, played on our school's baseball team) always called the other Indian kids "Dalits" (this word alone would cause fights). >mfw the kids got into a fight about Ghandi one time
One of our teachers, in an attempt to end the animosity, made us watch the video on the Untouchables. The video portrayed most people in India outright denying that Dalits exist. What is the truth behind Dalits? Do they exist and is there really a social/political/religious system that keeps them down or is it one of (((their))) inventions?
Bump. I lived in India for a few months, and I want to hear more about this, too.
Jeremiah Watson
bump for curiosity
Juan Russell
Might as well post. I'm a top 10% in both India and the USA and don't really associate with Indian identity politics. After countless donations and efforts by my family and myself I simply have given up on India.
The truth about the untouchables is that they are the poorest of the poor. They live in cities and rural areas and slums segregated even from parts of the slum itself. And they are relegated to doing to most disgusting tasks imaginable. Sewer work without equipment. Moving and collecting garbage. Cleaning up SHIT and transporting diseases animals. Indians deny they exist because they are deeply ashamed of themselves for the treatment they put on the untouchables.
Honestly I don't really give a fuck about race because with enough education, sanitation, and time it is possible to change a demographic.theoretically at least. Indians show the worst of themselves into abusing their own countrymen and act like its culture or nothing wrong. But realistically nothing can be done about it because the caste system and the culture are so ass-backwards that the country is beyond repair.
India is totally and completely fucked.
Andrew Evans
So Dalits exist? I understand putting a number on it might be hard but could you still give some clue (based on personal experience) as to whether Dalits exist in great numbers (as the video I saw portrays) or is it much less than that?
Furthermore, what are your thoughts on Hindutva?
Brandon Cooper
I had a feeling like this was what I was going to hear. There was an open garbage field down the hotel, where I lived. People sorted the garbage in that field. I never knew who they were, but this was the feeling I was getting. Also, there were women, who I saw hunched over, sweeping some streets with very short branches. For a very sexist society, the Indian city I lived in used mature women to do physically uncomfortable maintenance work. Lots of things like this did not add up.
Michael Martin
When are you going home? The problem with India is in your blood, too.
Levi Gomez
Could somebody also explain why Dalits seem to hate Ghandi so much?
Connor Taylor
Let's talk about the caste system for a bit. Hinduism at its purest does not mention the caste system and instead refers to the spiritualism of one's self. Over centuries it has become perverted by greed and ignorance and priests now scare the uneducated masses into idol worship and elaborate ceremonies for no reason whatsoever but to continue a corrupt system of power. The priests should be considered as the highest caste as Brahmin and their original role in society is to educate and advise the course of society and people living in it. Here is an example breakdown:
- Brahmins - Rulers/Warriors - Merchants/Traders/Artisans - Laborers/Farmers
Now in a perfect society the strata is supposed to work like Sparta - everyone does their fucking jobs and the country flourishes. But humans suck and so the lower class was pushed into poverty through socialist policies in early Indian independence and lack of education and basic items like shelter, sustainable farms and others really fucked up the poor. Now the poor make up over 60% of India's demographics.
In other words, 600 MILLION PEOPLE in India are bumfuck $10 a day or less farmers, slum dwellers or generally useless fucking monkeys.
Obviously, the caste system evolved over time and became more gatekeeping and convoluted and now has dozens of strata or systems. It's pure bullshit, and shouldn't be taken seriously. On par with fucking astrology (which is also huge in India). At least 10% of India are 'backwards castes or other oppressed minorities' according to the government. Look up Indian census stats for that. It's also official government policy to have quotas for these castes in terms of education or hiring.
Cameron Perry
Yeah Indians are sexist because the culture there is taboo for sexual health or education. Women are like objects there and men are too dumb to understand what to do with one if they see one. So mothers/older women do all the work while younger women exist for physical reprieve or companionship. This is why Indians are so fucking awkward or strange/creepy when talking to a female. They literally do not understand they are real and have feelings or desires (at the worst). Best case scenario, some educated people become westernized and obviously treat people like people.
Thanks buddy I hope you feel better about yourself soon.
They really shouldn't. Gandhi did a lot of work helping the poor and despite his personal flaws and shortcomings in politics he attempted to make life better for all Indians despite their caste.
Dylan Bailey
>bumfuck $10 a day or less When I was in India, I was told that the extreme for some of the most poor people was that they earned about Rs. 100 per day (less than USD 2). I don't know if that was true, but from what I saw and experienced, I felt it could be true.
Isaiah Reed
Gandhi's politics were pretty good senpai. Freedom at MIdnight pg. 304-307. Ill link you if you don't have a copy. Imho these strata don't work. Division of labour is fine but Indians as a society are too judgemental and the divisions always create heirarchies. People at the bottom will always resent the top. Same happens in all societies. At worst, many lower caste people with low social status will convert to Islam/Christianity, which can be bad for social cohesion as well. The cost of living in India is so much less. My parents lived on the equiv. of ~$100 a month as college graduates in India. My rent alone is >10x that, 40 years later.
Michael James
yes but how do people rocongize you as untouchable, cant you just travel to another part of india
Chase Nelson
>This is why Indians are so fucking awkward or strange/creepy when talking to a female. I saw some form of this.
I think the nation of India has so much potential. I saw so much promise. My experience in India was a little bit like a qualified version of the Wizard of Oz : some of it wasn't very nice, but a lot of it was beautiful with potential. I was too shy to connect with people, when I lived there. Plus, I have a very sensitive digestive system, so I was often sick to my stomach (more so than normal). But I felt like I could have been a force for good had I the resources and more time. But that's true of almost anywhere you go, almost. But in India, I saw real potential.
William Gray
Most people all over the world, not just India, will die w/in 15 miles of where they were born. You stay w/in the same community cradle to grave. Community and collectivism is more important in the east than in the west.
Elijah Smith
hmm, not here. most peoples grandparents didnt live here. parents moved here for work, there kids will leave for school and never come back
i consider myself to live close to where i was born and its 100km
travelling 20km easily to go anywhere
Ethan Hill
90% of untouchables are slum-tier. They are born, live, and die in a slum. These people do not have a worldview, and do not have access to sanitation or education. They do not have any opinion on anything other than survival and will do anything for money. They can't go anywhere or do anything other than menial jobs like ironing clothes or begging on the street. They can't leave or do anything other than live in a place like pic related.
Yes it had potential, and the time for the 50's and 60's was when it was there. However, the socialist policies and mismanagement and corruption that took root within the governments both local, state-wide and national squelched any sort of self-reliance.
Although none take full blame, there are many factors responsible for India's current situation:
- Dumbfuck socialist policies which kept the economy, production, agriculture, and manufacturing of this country below an artificial ceiling. - British occupation. Yes, the effects were real and yes, they are under stated. HUGE effects from drought, to famine, towards genocide to taking massive amounts of resources and wealth away. However, this does not excuse the behavior of current day and age Indian politicians and rulers. - Culture: Indian culture is so fucking ass backwards. I don't know when this ignorance started but they are so behind in terms of society, personal responsibility, and worldview. Everything must be acquired NOW, and at any cost. Selfish desires overtake long-term goals. Greed and arrogance is HUGE. You think Western politician are corrupt? Indian politicians build entire fucking NATIONAL PARKS filled with statues of themselves.
Isaiah Mitchell
Dumping a small collection of said parks. Imagine if Chris Christie spent over a billion dollars making sautes of himself in a national mall type setting.
Colton Roberts
From what I've read the lower caste (even those above Dalits) earn $1.25/day
>They really shouldn't. Gandhi did a lot of work helping the poor and despite his personal flaws and shortcomings in politics he attempted to make life better for all Indians despite their caste. The "Dalits" I went to school with said otherwise. They acknowledge that Ghandi did some good but they hold some other Indian (don't remember his name) in much higher regards. They said that Ghandi only supported the Dalits as much as he had to in order to accomplish his goals. The Indians I was friends with (the non-Dalits) just didn't seem to care about Ghandi honestly and only really brought him up to offend the other Indian kids (the Dalits).
>It's also official government policy to have quotas for these castes in terms of education or hiring. So affirmative action for Dalits?
Nolan Cox
This lady is the equivalent of a governor of a state. She is a dalit and represents the untouchable class. All of her policies were geared towards (((helping))) the poor of her state but instead just funneled BILLIONS of dollars towards her party and personal estates. Fucking cunt
Josiah Roberts
>yes but how do people rocongize you as untouchable As I understood it, Dalits have dark skin (as opposed to Brahmins, who have lighter skin).
Asher Allen
They're uneducated. It's like saying MLK didn't like blacks and only used them to front his Christian beliefs. It only takes a moderate amount of research to disprove any assertations that Gandhi did not help untouchables and poor, which obviously is false. Not even shilling just stating facts.
And yes, its beyond affirmative action. Its pure weighted quota system and they don't even bother trying to hide it behind 'oppression' or 'opportunity'.
Asher Cox
Being a Dalit is a permanent situation or there's the concept of social mobility in Indian society? I mean, if a dalit wins the lottery people still sees him/her as a dalit or being rich changes your status in the society?
Ethan Young
I would be protesting her ass if I was in India now. This shit makes my blood boil. I was warned not to stay in India, bc my politics would get me into trouble. I don't know if the danger was real or not, but I would not have quietly accepted corruption like this lady's. Thieving on this scale in the face of hunger, poverty, lack of infrastructure, lack of housing, is outrageous.
Jordan Butler
Gandhi ... was wholly opposed to those who argued India’s future lay in imitating the industrial and technological society of the West. India’s salvation, he argued, lay ‘in unlearn- ing what she has learnt in the past 50 years’. He challenged almost all the Western ideals that had taken root in India. Science should not order human values, he argued; technology should nbt order society; and civilization was not the indefinite multi- plication of human wants but their deliberate limitation, so that essentials could be equitably shared by all.
The industrialization of the West admired by so many of his followers had concentrated power in the hands of the few at the expense of the many. It was a doubtful blessing to the poor in the West and a menace to the non-white races of the underdeveloped world.
Gandhi’s India would be built on her 600,000 villages, those multitudinous facets of the India he knew and loved, an India unstained by technology, a haunted India marking the passage of her years with the cycle of her religious feasts, her decades with the memory of her failed crops, her centuries with the spectre of her terrible famines.
He wanted each of those villages to become self-sufficient units, able to produce its own food, cloth, milk, fruit and vegetables, to educate its young and nurse its ill. Proclaiming ‘many a violent war in Asia could have been prevented by an extra bowl of rice’, he had constantly sought the perfect food to nourish India’s hungry peasants, experimenting with soya, peanuts, mango kernels. He attacked machine-polished rice because it removed the hard husk rich in vitamin B."
Andrew Smith
He wanted to close down India’s textile mills and replace them with his spinning-wheel as part of a programme to give work to the village under-employed, to provide activities that would hold the population in those villages.
His economic manifesto was ‘the traditional old imple- ments, the plough and the spinning-wheel, have been our wisdom and welfare. We must return to the old simplicity.’ When man invented a tractor that could produce milk, ghee and dung, he said, he would recommend it as a replacement for the cow to India’s peasants.
His nightmare was a machine-dominated industrial society which would suck India’s villagers from the countryside into her blighted urban slums, sever their contact with the social unit."
Logan Lopez
Not entirely true. Indian demographics are split into 2 major ethno-groups. Persian/Caucasoid ethnicity are present in higher percentages in the north. Dravidans are darker and more towards the south.
Laborers and farmers and untouchables are generally malnourished, and come in dark/brown coloration. Rather than the skin color, if they're short, hunched, really skinny and gaunt, and dumb-looking, chances are they're lower caste.
But realistically, laborers and farmers also look like that and unless you're keen on the variations of ethnic/religoius backgrounds of names/accents/dialects you can't really tell as an outsider.
Kind like differentiating between a Tennessee Redneck and a Texan redneck if you're from Somalia. The characteristics are present but its the fine details that are not understood if you're not from around there.
Hunter Roberts
See Even if you're the minister of a state people will abhor you. And considering she didn't do anything of value and just took advantage of the poor and middle class, it just cemented the hate that others have for lower castes and poor people.
Its permanent, and unless you take an extreme intervention for each and every person involved, nothing will change. It's like asking a Nazi to stop hating Jews.
Austin Hall
Yes he/she is still a dalit no matter what
Aaron Roberts
> to give work to the village under-employed, to provide activities that would hold the population in those villages. I saw people do jobs in low-tech ways, like the mature women using branches to sweep the streets. I figured it was done deliberately, in order to create low-paying work for the very poor. I kind of saw this, but I was not sure whether this was exactly what I was seeing.
Juan Diaz
Do you have some sources on Mayawati's corruption?
And do you have any idea what the other guy who championed Dalits was? By the time the Dalit kids got to mentioning him they were shouting in Indian and getting ready to fight.
>MLK didn't like blacks and only used them to front his Christian beliefs. There were many blacks who didn't like MLKJr. because they believed him to be a centrist figure or that his dream was already achieved (American blacks are still poor today, we still don't get along with them, they're still agitating for more gibs, and MLK knew damn well that this is what it would look like). Is it possible that they don't like Ghandi because he didn't support them enough?
Alexander Collins
nice image
Adrian Morris
irk, Jason (2011). India and the World Bank: The Politics of Aid and Influence. Anthem South Asian Studies. London; New York: Anthem Press. p. 89.
>The World Bank loaned India funds for development, and Mayawati was to manage projects with >this money in UP. The projects were preplanned and on schedule, but the Mayawati government >made changes which put the projects behind schedule, including rapidly transferring high-caste >managers in and out of rural posts
>Mayawati initially responded by saying the letter was a fake and later said there had been a >misunderstanding. She then decreased the number of transfers, stopped creating new posts, and >temporarily reduced the level of government spending on furniture and vehicles in response to the >allegations. The World Bank continued to criticise the level of corruption even after these >measures had been implemented.
>investigations opening up again now that she is no longer in power
BJP (party) leader Swami Prasad Maurya says >the BSP supremo was “goddess of corruption” who auctioned tickets for elections
Jordan Perry
thanks watching the Indian kids roll up on each other was great. If they saw each other they would fight. >Dalit kids come up talking shit to the non-Dalits >speaking Indian so we don't understand what they are saying >our non-Dalit friends would say "ignore these Dalit motherfuckers" >IIIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTSSSSSSS TTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMEEEEEE!!! >Dalit kids would normally lose because they were seen as the lame kids and the non-Dalits were on all the sports teams so they knew all the cool kids. >one fight ends up involving the starting line-up for our school's starting line-up for football, baseball, tennis and baseball teams hospitalizing one of the Dalit kids on a school fieldtrip >fastfoward 1 week >school board hearing >58 students (including myself) facing expulsion >the parents of both sets of Indian kids start fighting mid-hearing >parents arrested >hearing rescheduled to 2 days after our graduation >2 days after graduation, at the hearing, none of the school board officials show up >case is dropped. it was some crazy shit and I didn't understand a bit of why they were fighting
So would you say that the British/Dutch/French did any good for the Dalits? Did they bring power to the system to keep Dalits down? What affect did the Europeans have on this system?
Gabriel Robinson
Thank you for sticking with the thread and answering questions. I appreciate it user
Ryan Green
Yeah I always lurk but this time I have time/experience to contribute.
And to answer your question about colonialism, the Europeans didn't care for caste strata and regarded Indians as below them, as did any other imperial power during that time. Of course, no one in this day and age would condone it but yuropoors were there only for resources/labor/land.
Hudson Richardson
Cool, now I know a new slur to call dot heads
William Cruz
So how does a Dalit get enough money to immigrate to a different country let alone move to a different village?
Isaiah Flores
They'd have to be from India to understand it but have fun
see The poorest in India don't go anywhere. They're not like American poor with food stamps, EBT, or whatever. They're not even swamp tier poor.
They live under a 10x10ft tarp propped up by bricks and at most they own a coal/clay stove, a few sheets, and one set of clothes. Maybe some pots and pans if you're lucky. 99% of any money goes straight to food/water for survival.
Adrian Thompson
Do not use the term "Dalit" unless you are ready for a fight. >at work >drunk as piss >only guy at my table was an Indian >can't go on break until he leave so I deal cards to him for 3 hours >he leaves >doesn't even tip >say "dalit motherfucker" loud enough for him to hear but not loud enough for my pit boss to hear >dude turns around and instantly starts swinging >he's reaching across the table to swing at me so he doesn't get me >before I can react, security grabs me and him and they escort him back to the interrogation room >security cameras don't have audio so I'm in the clear
