A 'Broken People' in Booming India

The Gujjars, like the Dalits and other backward classes, were fighting for a stake in India's economic boom, some experts said.

Experts also say that American-style materialism and even the hiring practices of American and multinational companies are actually hardening class, color and caste distinctions.

"International corporations running call centers and IT operations in this country don't realize India's complex caste system is really a form of racism," said S. Anand, who runs the independent Navayana Publishing house, which focuses on books about caste. "How will the big global companies deal with caste with so many Dalits not even able to go to school?"

Young, higher-caste urban professionals, who have better access to good schools than their lower-caste compatriots, are being hired by the IT and call center operations, say Indian caste analysts.

"Multinationals are not here to push social reform," Anand said in his Delhi home, amid shelves stacked with books by B.R. Ambedkar, a Buddhist and India's icon of the anti-caste movement. "They're here to make money."

The other problem is that India's elite do not fight oppression or push for working-class egalitarian ideas.

"There's not even the pretension to fight caste. It's not trendy or a Bollywood star's cause celebre to say you care about the working-man untouchable," Anand said. "In fact, people are still willing to kill themselves to retain their supremacy. The society has been so structured for so long. It's seen as the ultimate threat of their livelihoods and Indian identity."

A Life's Work Lost

Everyday vocabulary reinforces caste. In casual conversations, Indians frequently dismiss certain professions as "backward," and people inquire about the professions of one another's fathers. Dalits themselves protested the use of the term "untouchable," preferring Dalit, which means "broken people."

In Dalit villages, many like Chandrika, the mother who lost her two children, say that they are provided little dignity and that they're persecuted daily by other low castes seen as being just above them.

Last month, Bechan, a thin Dalit with long, wavy hair and bloodshot eyes, went fishing in a village pond, only to return to find his home destroyed.

His two huts were burned to the ground, turning his wheat, vegetables and entire savings for his daughter's wedding into a pile of smoldering ash. The pond allegedly belonged to the Patel caste, and Bechan had trespassed.

"They told me I couldn't take any big fish out of the water," he said, his voice quavering and his eyes beginning to water. "They surrounded me from all sides and beat me. When I hobbled home, my life's work was on fire. Even my daughter's dowry was burnt."

Bechan, 45, is now living under a tree, with oily shirts stretched out over the branches to shade him from the 120-degree heat. He filed police reports. His daughter's wedding was called off.

Convening a group of Patel women to tell their side of the events, Hirvavatt Devi, 45, shook her head and said the Dalits "burned down their own huts to get money from the government. You see they're not smart people. To be very frank, they're very dirty."

Some here hope that Kumari, the Dalit leader elected chief minister in Uttar Pradesh, will take up their cause and hundreds like it. Meanwhile, tempers are rising as fast as the gray smoke that still fumes here.

"They abuse us as they always do," cried out Rajender, a 40-year-old Dalit trash collector, tossing up his hands. "We hear India is booming. But India is becoming powerful with our blood and our labor. And we still cannot fish here or touch this land or that. We still live half lives."