Balancing The Apple Cart
By Search EzineArticles.com
About forty women squatted in small clusters on the floor in the room. They had assembled for a special meeting of the self-help groups that would be led by their supervisor. The poor women, whose husbands were marginal farmers, depended on the loans they could secure from the banks through their groups.
The meeting concluded as Mangala, the supervisor and project coordinator of Bhoruka Charities, thanked the participants. As Mahadeva Swamy, her assistant, rose to distribute tea and biscuits, a group of women excused themselves and left, without having any refreshments.
The women, who were either Vokkaligas, Lingayats, Kurubas or Gollas, considered themselves too "superior" to accept food or drinks offered by Swamy, who belonged to a Scheduled Caste.
The people of Madapura, a village in the T.Narsipur taluk near Mysore in the Karnataka State of India, are no different from their counterparts elsewhere in the country. People don’t wear the castes on their sleeves; yet it’s there on everybody’s mind all the time.
The departure of the upper class women set the stage rolling for some lively discussion on the discrimination of people based on caste.
"If we distribute the food packets, they will not accept. That’s why madam (Mangala) normally asks somebody from the upper caste to distribute them," Kantamani laughed derisively, "then they accept and it does not occur to them that some of us might have prepared them."
Even the government schools in the villages did not practise equality. For the government-sponsored midday meals, only cooks belonging to the upper caste are employed. "My son has grown big. He now refuses to eat in school, since they seat the students in different rows based on their castes," complained Lakshmi.
Parvati said if she had to hand over something to those from the upper caste, she had to keep it on the ground. They had to stand at a safe distance while talking to them. If she collected water from the bore well first, the upper castes cleaned the 'defiled' place with cow dung, before proceeding to draw water. "The water comes from the same earth. How does it matter?" she queried defiantly. Mangala consoled, "They are the ignorant class. Not you."
"If we ever asked water, they won’t give it in a glass. We will be asked to cup our hands and they will pour water into it," Lakshmi said.
"When we travel in buses, they may be forced to sit next to us. Sometimes they remain standing to avoid sitting near us. If they unknowingly sit close to us, some of them go home and take a bath," Puttalakshmi
