By Kate Wallace, 1/21/2015. I would like to take a second and reflect on what I have learned about the caste system in India. I came here thinking it was a thing of the past but it is still very present in todays society in a lot of ways. I have been told that money has become more important than caste, but have to wonder if your caste affects your ability to earn money, and thus change your status in society.
There is a huge wealth gap here. I have been fortunate because I have been given the opportunity to see the very poor people here and the very, very rich people here. The very rich people were a part of the Brahmin caste and had done very well in life. Their house was amazing. I asked if the caste system was still relevant today and the father said no, but in the villages it matters. If a girl marries below her caste she will be killed, hung from a tree. This was later co/Users/kwallace1994/Desktop/IndiaPhotos/Finals/India3.jpgnfirmed by someone else I spoke to who gave me the same story. He said if he had a daughter who married below her caste he would probably kill her too, although in this case I think he was speaking figuratively. He said “you’re father would be very mad if you married the gardener, wouldn’t he?” I nodded my head but then realized I don’t think he’d care as long as he was a good man.
The maid and servant thing was really interesting to see because you definitely don’t get that back in Canada. Maybe nannies or house cleaners, but their roles are very different in the house. I have seem servants giving head massages to their bosses and being bossed around quite rudely. At one point I was in a house where one of the servants was called into a room and given a list of things to do, and then right in front of him the man looked at me and said “this one is quite dim-witted.” In another instance two Canadian girls were telling me the boys they stayed with had servants, one of whom they called by a British name which was obviously not his birth name. The servant gave him toast and the boy said “This isn’t toasted enough! Take it away.” If I said something like that to my nanny growing up my mom would have grounded me for a month. It’s hard not to be judgemental because it really is just a cultural difference. But does that make it right or excusable? I think the problem is that this sort of attitude perpetuates a lot of problems here where people who are poorer and come from the “working caste” aren’t respected and are treated as less than human.
When I went to a village outside of Delhi I heard a story about where a woman’s caste affected her ability to get basic healthcare. Kristin from Sew New Futures mentioned this story in my interview but when I went to visit the centre she gave it in detail. Hospitals are very far from the village, but a woman had a sick baby girl and Kristin and the other program director convinced them to go to the hospital and took them there. They waited for over a day in the waiting room, the doctors weren’t seeing them. Kristin had to go to her other job, and when she came back they were still in the waiting room and the baby girl had died. She started yelling at the doctors and they said “sorry if we knew you were with a foreigner we would have seen you sooner.” The doctors were reluctant to help them because they were clearly from the Perna caste. This caste is marginalized and thus can’t receive access to basic human needs such as healthcare the way other Indians could. Kristin said the doctors and hospital staff were so rude to them, making fun of their clothes and the way they spoke. It’s interesting because so many people have said the caste system doesn’t matter, and yet again and again I have heard it come up as a relevant thing in Indian society today.