India's Untouchables Analysis

The feature, entitled ‘India’s Untouchables’ is written for the Current Affairs Magazine and offers a unique perspective on the ethnic discrimination in India. By providing stories and experiences of the victims of ethnic discrimination, the article effectively gives the reader an insight into the sufferings the discriminated have to endure.

The tone is objective, with clear examples of the sufferings victims undergo like “Moorthy forced Poochiammal to work for extremely long hours, often in adverse conditions.” to let the readers understand the plight of the victims and invoke sympathy in the readers and let them realise the effects of discrimination. A narrative style employed by the article such as, “After Poochiammal was rescued from
Poochiamal described that, “Even after 20 months since the incident happened, judicial process is yet to begin and no one has been charge sheeted yet,” The judicial system have been proven ineffective to try to stop these acts of discrimination. This ineffectiveness is worsened when the police are discriminating against the Dalits themselves. The police cooperate with the abusers, this aggravates the situation and causes more trouble. State convenor P Sampath said that the police as have destroyed evidence of crimes of Dalit discrimination and purposely showing a lack of eye-witnesses.

Caste Discrimination of Dalits does not only occurs to adults, the society’s discrimination of the minority ethnic group spreads to Dalit children and their disadvantage in education. Even in schools, teachers and students discriminate students belonging to the Dalit ethnic group. They were also forced to do the least desired and look down upon work, such as clearing faeces. These work are often considered menial and hazardous. Indians of higher caste rank often look down on work like these and consider it as impure and
While the government have made efforts to eliminate caste discrimination, the measures will be ineffective if the Indian populace remains to stick to their traditional roots and practice superiority when in a caste of high rank. For caste discrimination to stop in the future, the younger generations need to learn to respect people from lower castes. Furthermore, in order for the justice system facilitate the elimination of caste discrimination and abuse, the police officers have to stop discriminating to the minority ethnic groups first. Only then, the justice system will not collapse and this will help spread the message that caste discrimination is