Video: Nepal’s Dalits face caste discrimination (Al Jazeera, 2015)
Despite caste based discrimination being illegal in Nepal, it continues to affect the country's 'untouchables'.
Despite caste based discrimination being illegal in Nepal, it continues to affect the country's 'untouchables'.
In a grim reminder of the infamous Badaun incident, a teenage Dalit girl was raped and her body was later found hanging from a tree in Nighasan area of the district, police said on Thursday.
From being forced to eat mid-day meals in marked out plates to being asked to sit in the back rows of their classrooms, Dalit schoolchildren across rural Madhya Pradesh face dozens of grim abuses, a new study backed by rights group ActionAid has revealed.
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One hundred and fifty workers from five spinning mills were interviewed for the report, which reveals that girls as young as 15 are being recruited from marginalised Dalit communities in impoverished rural areas in India. They are lured with promises of decent jobs, good wages and a lump-sum payment. But the reality is a 68-hour working week, poverty wages, no contracts or payslips, and being locked inside factory and dormitory compounds during working and non-working hours.
Human Rights Watch South Asia Director, Meenakshi Ganguly,says caste discrimination is partly to blame for child labour in India, as discrimination pushes many Dalit children to drop out of education.
Harvard child labour expert, Siddharth Kara, comments that caste is a key factor underlying child labour in India. He says that, “Every single child labourer that I have documented comes from a highly impoverished family unit and belongs to a low-caste or minority community.”
A brutal attack by a Hindu priest on an eight-year-old "untouchable" boy highlights casual caste violence in India. By Dean Nelson
The angry priest bashed the little boy’s head repeatedly against a pillar in the temple, causing him to bleed.The boy was targeted because he was a Dalit. “He was a poor boy and hungry,” Bhaskar told Deccan Chronicle. Not surprisingly, police at Nelamangala town police station on Monday morning refused to register a complaint.
"Children from the SC/ST categories are routinely segregated from other children, made to sit and eat separately; food cooked by SC/ST cooks is often refused by many children or their parents. There are also cases where Dalit students are served from a distance, and several students bring their own plates for fear of utensils being touched by Dalit classmates. Instances of gender discrimination as well with only girls being made to serve meals in some schools, reports have revealed."