More than 50 years after caste discrimination was outlawed in India, millions of "untouchable" low-caste Hindus remain subject to daily petty humiliations, police violence, rape and even murder, a major new report claimed yesterday.

Despite India's massive economic advances of the last decade, it is estimated that a crime is still committed against a Dalit every 20 minutes in India.

The report, by New York-based Human Rights Watch, paints a sorry picture of life for 165 million low caste Hindus in the world's most populous democracy. They continue to experience discrimination at home, at school, in the workplace - even in refugee camps after the 2004 tsunami.

Research published last year from surveys in 565 Indian villages showed that in 80 per cent of them old practices of untouchability endure and are "profoundly affecting" the psyches of Dalit residents.

It said that Dalit children were forced to sit in segregated sections in village schools while their parents were denied a range of basic rights, including access to water, the right to stage marriage processions and entry to polling booths.

The age-old practice of devadasi or temple prostitution - where a pre-pubescent Dalit girl is married to a deity for the "use" of upper caste villagers - also remains widespread. Indian government efforts to abolish the practice had been "largely unsuccessful", the report added.

advertisementIn the most serious cases the day-to-day discrimination can take the form of extreme violence, with Dalits being attacked, raped and murdered for protesting against upper caste excesses.

In September last year a Dalit family in Maharastra State was murdered by a mob for refusing to allow upper-caste families to take their land. The women of the family were stripped, beaten and paraded naked through the village of Kherlanji.

Most damagingly for India's reputation as a country now emerging onto the world stage is the report's contention that all arms of the Indian state - government officers, police and judiciary - collude in perpetuating old caste prejudices.

The Indian government's own figures show that Dalits are routinely brushed off by police and the courts when they try to seek justice. Between 1999 and 2001 some 89 per cent of trials for offences against Dalits resulted in acquittals.

In December the India's prime minister Dr Manmohan Singh conceded that the scourge of caste, which he described as a "blot on humanity", remains a fact of life for millions of India's poorest citizens.

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Very disturbing and all in the name of their religion. It's just unspeakable what these people go through. I do hope this will stop and people will wake up a good bit.

Murder and rape seems to go hand in hand with religion for extremist.

Why/How are people so blinded by beliefs that they actually lower themselves to this? Go temple prostitution! I can see how making a young girl sell her body is helpful is to society...

Yes no religion is perfect. It goes for Islam, Judaism and Christianity etc etc. That is why it is important to pick and choose what feels right from religion and not follow any religion completely word for word. Do not give your mind away whether it be to the bible or to discriminating laws in the vedas.

Interestingly enough the Vedas didn't call for a rigid caste system or mistreatment of the lower classes, these were all later additions it appears, in fact in the Rigveda a mention of ones caste seems to indicate it has little to do with ones family.

I had a lot of respect for Ghandi, even when he criticized organized christianity. He made a good point when he said that he did not see the same teachings of Jesus being lived in christianity today. Yet this business has gone on in India for a long long time. The caste sytem is accepted. If a child is born with a repairable birth defect then that is just the way it goes because it was meant to be. Parents are often chastized or worse for bringing children to medical missionaries like "Doctors without borders" or "operation smile". This why I never bought into Hinduism when studyiong world religion, it is a cruel religion for children to be born into especially if they are impoverished or worse.

Thats sad .. there were a couple Indians that I had chatted with and I asked them about this type of thing, in their culture and religion. They spoke down about it, like it was no big deal or that such actions didn't even exist - hear no evil, see no evil ...

The term Dalit is PC and meant to be non-pejorative, but as long as these people are referred to by a term distinguishing them from the rest of society there will always be bigotry, in the same way we in the UK have 'chavs'. Get rid of the separatist terms and it will be a step in the right direction.

that's messed up... and since they (dalits) are prevented from voting, the system there will always be against them... how did this unjust caste system ever get started, what did the dalits do to deserve this bad treatment?

Simple its basic societal stratification, those who were privilieged didn't want to share, so they said that it was part of the religion that people were born into certain groups and were lower than they were, it had nothing to do with the actual scriptures, just a way of keeping ones power. It also helps when a large portion of the country is illiterate or barely literate.