PROPERTY AND THE SCHEDULED CASTES AND TRIBES IN INDIA

 

PROPERTY AND THE SCHEDULED CASTES AND TRIBES IN INDIA

 Bhagwan Das,  July 20,1985.

Property gives security, power and prestige. Desire to own property has become one of the most powerful motivating urges of human-kind. So long as man remains master of 'property' it does not prove to be harmful; it is when property becomes the master of man that the problems begin to arise. Buddha the greatest teacher of man was not in favour of accumulating property and yet like most saints of medieval India he did not glorify property. He advocated the middle path and because of his teachings in the countries which follow Buddhism, the disparity between rich and poor is not as wide as it is in countries where theistic religions are followed.

Concentration of property in few hands leads to or results in exploitation and impoverishment of a large number of people. To perpetuate their hold, the propertied classes use all means at their command especially religion, education, and laws. Disparities in all spheres of life give birth to conflicts culminating in violent upheavals. This is inevitable because changes cannot be brought about through peaceful means. Although political revolutions eat up their own children yet there is a kind of romance attached to the word revolution.

India is one of the poorest countries of the world where fifty to sixty percent people live below poverty line and a large majority of the people own no property. Yet in India we have a small number of people who own most of the property in the form of land, industry and real estate.

Most modern economists and historians attribute this to colonial rule which lasted barely 150 to 200 years but poverty of India goes back to thousands of years. According to ancient Brahminic laws, framed in the name of God or gods, a large number of people  who created wealth were not allowed to own property. They had to be kept perpetually in want and dependent in the name of religion. They were not allowed any leisure so that they may have no time and energy to think. They were not allowed to bear arms so that they may not revolt. Inspite of modern laws, independence of the country situation has not changed very much in the 568, 000 of villages where nearly 80 percent of people live.

Property in the form of land is owned by the upper land- holding castes. During the British regime India was divided into two groups, namely British India and princely states.

Princely states followed different land and property laws according to the laws of the rulers and the tradition of different states. British in the territories directly under their control introduced land reforms and property laws keeping in view their needs and interests. While originally it was collection of revenue in subsequent decades it was the desire to protect the interest of classes which provided the soldiers.

Scheduled Tribes people in certain areas rebelled against the new system introduced by the British and enforced through the members of exploiting classes. A compromise was reached and laws banning transfer of property to non-tribals were enacted. But enactment of law is one thing and its implementation is quite different. Tribals continue to be exploited by the 'plains people' whom they contemptuously call 'Dikko!

Scheduled Castes people in many states, provinces in India were not allowed to own property, land etc. In Punjab (Punjab, Delhi, Haryana included) their duties and responsibilities as 'menials’ were recorded. They could not purchase land so long as they remained within the Hindu-fold, by embracing Islam, Christianity or Sikhism they could get rid of this stigma. After the advent of independence these restrictions were removed but Scheduled Castes people did not even then have any right on the land on which they had built their huts while legal restrictions have been removed, majority of the Scheduled Castes still own no property.

When Constitution was being drafted Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar was against inclusion of 'Right to Property' in the Constitution. But Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel and Mr. K.M.Munshi were vehemently opposed to this suggestion. They belong to the propertied class. Majority of the members in the Constituent Assembly belonged to this class and no class can be expected to commit harakiri jeopardising its own interests, or sources of power and prestige.

Land reforms and introduction of new taxes and enhancement of taxes have been introduced as measures to control the fast-growing power of propertied classes but like all good laws these have not been properly implemented. Taking advantages of loop holes deliberately left by the law makers, the purpose of land-reform laws has been defeated.

To defeat the Laws landlords in some states have divorced their wives while they still continue to live with them. Some have got the land mutated in the names of fictitious persons or even in the names of dogs and cats owned by them.  In Punjab one can find names like 'Potato’ son of 'Tomato’ recorded in land revenue papers.

On the other hand, where land has been allotted with great pomp and show to the members of the Scheduled Castes what was given was 'patta! and useless sheet of paper and no the actual land. Himachal made an announcement that land shall be granted to all Untouchables but what was given was barren land where nothing could be grown.

Dr. Ambedkar in his famous book 'States and minorities had dealt with this problem. He had criticised Pundit Jawahar Nehru for in the resolution moved by him in 1946 there was mention of 'Socialism'. After his bitter experience in 1937 when mere mention of the word socialism had angered many of the Congressmen, Pundit Nehru did not want to antagonize his colleagues while he wanted time to consolidate his position after freedom of India.

Dr. Ambedkar’s remedy was 'nationalization of land' and allotment to landless people. He was not in favour of creating peasant proprietors with small patches of land which did not solve any problem at all. On the contrary fragmentation of land into small non-viable parcels created more problems and led to pauperisation of the farmers. He was in favour of allotment to 'collectives'. After the failure of collectives in Soviet Russia many people appear to be afraid of repeating the mistake but Dr. Ambedkar thought in the Indian circumstances this was the best solution. Besides this he desired creation of separate villages of Untouchables so that they may live in peace and security. Migration to the cities is the other alternative.

Untouchables were not allowed to own property. Now they have the right to own property but do not have the means to own property. Since India is now a socialist state the right way to make it socialist is not to encourage the growth of private property but to distribute it equitably and enforce laws which were framed to reduce the disparities. Peaceful and constitutional means have not produced the desired results. Socialism it appears cannot be brought about through peaceful and constitutional means. The classes which have no property and have no hope of security or end of exploitation cannot but think of violent means which is the only way through which socialism has been brought in countries where it is being practiced. By strengthening the propertied classes and weakening the landless and property-less people socialism can never be brought about in any country.

Who Cleans, Who Dies, Who Celebrates? Caste Politics Behind ‘Clean India’

 

Who Cleans, Who Dies, Who Celebrates? Caste Politics Behind ‘Clean India’

While Rs 1200 crore was spent on Swachh Bharat advertisements, Dalit workers continue to clean human waste with bare hands — and often die doing so. Manual scavenging remains a caste-imposed, deadly occupation masked by state neglect and public apathy. This is not development — it's a democracy burying its most dehumanised citizens beneath the promise of cleanliness

Noor Mahvish July 19, 2025

 

They go down into the sewers, but never come back the same. Some don’t come back at all.

This is not a line from a tragic novel. It is a brutal reality for thousands of Dalit workers across India who die, suffer, or disappear in the dark trenches of our gutters, septic tanks, and drains — all in the name of keeping our cities clean. Despite being legally banned, manual scavenging continues to kill, maim, and marginalize a community that has been historically dehumanized.

The Reality Beneath Our Feet

According to the National Commission for Safai Karamcharis (NCSK), over 400 deaths due to manual scavenging were recorded between 2018 and 2023. Activists and ground-level workers, however, insist the actual number is much higher, as many deaths go unreported, misreported, or simply ignored by local authorities. These are not accidents. These are institutional killings rooted in caste, class, and indifference.

Manual scavenging involves cleaning human waste from dry latrines, open drains, and septic tanks without protective gear. The Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and Their Rehabilitation Act, 2013, outlaws the practice, but enforcement is feeble and convictions are rare.

In 1993, India first banned manual scavenging. In 2013, the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and Their Rehabilitation Act expanded the ban and introduced rehabilitation measures. Yet, nothing changed on the ground. The sewers remained full, the machines missing, and the same community kept dying.

According to official figures, over 400 sanitation workers have died cleaning sewers in just the last five years, but some social organisations claim this is a gross undercount, as many deaths go unreported, misclassified, or settled quietly. The fact that even today humans are sent into toxic, oxygen-deprived chambers to clean feces with bare hands is not just a policy failure — it is a moral crisis. A democracy that promises dignity to all still allows one caste to die for the cleanliness of others.

Caste and the Curse of Birth

At the heart of this injustice lies India’s caste system. Nearly all manual scavengers belong to Dalit communities, particularly sub-castes like Valmiki, Balmiki, or Hela, historically labelled “untouchables.” This is not just a coincidence. It is caste-based occupational segregation — society telling people: “You were born to clean our filth.”

Manual scavenging is not just a dangerous occupation; it is the modern face of an ancient injustice. Rooted in the oppressive caste system, it emerged from a deeply entrenched social order that designated Dalits, particularly Valmikis and Helas, as “filth handlers,” condemned by birth to clean human excreta. British colonial policies institutionalized it further by integrating manual scavenging into municipal governance, and post-Independence India failed to dismantle the system. Instead, it continued — often invisibly — with the state as both employer and silent enabler.

A 2019 report by Safai Karmachari Andolan (SKA) found that over 98% of manual scavengers are Dalits. Despite affirmative action and constitutional guarantees, their daily lives remain entrapped in discrimination, humiliation, and danger.

They are not just cleaning gutters; they are trapped in centuries of systemic exclusion.

Life on the Edge: Poverty, Disease, and No Way Out

Those who survive the job still carry the scars. They suffer from chronic respiratory illness, skin diseases, and mental health trauma. Their life expectancy is far lower than the national average. Children drop out of school early, often forced to take up the same work. Women in this community clean dry latrines with bare hands, earning a pittance and bearing layers of social ostracism.

Housing conditions remain deplorable, access to clean water and healthcare is minimal, and social mobility is virtually non-existent.

State Machinery: Where is the Machine?

Despite the promises of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan and speeches about a “New India,” the government has failed to mechanize sewage cleaning at scale. A 2021 Parliamentary Standing Committee Report noted that only 27% of urban local bodies had sewer cleaning machines. In most places, the equipment lies unused or is unavailable due to poor planning, corruption, or lack of political will.

Meanwhile, workers continue to be sent down toxic sewers without harnesses, masks, or gloves — inhaling methane and hydrogen sulphide gases that suffocate them within minutes.

What kind of development kills the poor so the rich can live hygienically?

Laws Without Teeth, Rehabilitation Without Meaning

The 2013 Act mandates not only prohibition but rehabilitation of manual scavengers with provisions like skill training, housing, and alternate employment. Yet, the implementation has been negligible. According to the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, less than 50,000 manual scavengers have been officially identified — a number that doesn’t reflect the scale of the problem.

Even those “rehabilitated” often receive inadequate training or temporary contracts and are pushed back into unsafe jobs. Some are given tricycles to collect garbage — a mere cosmetic shift, not dignity.

Swachh Bharat but for Whom?

India celebrates cleanliness with celebrity endorsements and colorful ads. But who gets the credit, and who pays the price? Swachh Bharat Abhiyan claims success in building toilets but rarely addresses who cleans them, at what cost, and under what conditions.

The Swachh Bharat Abhiyan has become one of the most advertised government missions in Indian history, with over Rs 1200 crore spent solely on publicity and advertisements between 2014 and 2019, according to official government responses in Parliament. Billboards, television jingles, celebrity endorsements, and glossy social media campaigns have promoted the idea of a “clean India” far and wide.

But beneath this clean image lies a filthy truth: the same government that finds hundreds of crores to spend on ads cannot find the political will or budget to provide basic safety gear, mechanized equipment, or dignified rehabilitation for sanitation workers.

Imagine what Rs 1200 crore could do:

· It could equip every sanitation worker in India with proper PPE kits, gas detectors, and mechanized tools.
· It could fund thousands of safe machines to replace dangerous manual cleaning of sewers and septic tanks.
· It could provide livelihood training and educational scholarships to the children of safai karamcharis — breaking the chain of caste-based occupation.

Instead, the face of the campaign is a celebrity holding a broom, while the reality is a Dalit man suffocating to death inside a sewer.

Swachh Bharat was meant to be a mission for dignity. But for the sanitation workers — mostly Dalits — it has only meant more work, more danger, and the same silence. They are the ones who make the vision of a clean India possible, but they remain invisible in policy, ignored in budgets, and discarded in death.

How can a nation claim cleanliness when its most essential workers are forced to die in human waste? A broom in the Prime Minister’s hand is not cleanliness.

Justice is. Mechanisation is. Dignity is. Safety is.

Until the government spends more on saving the lives of its workers than selling slogans to its voters, Swachh Bharat will remain nothing but a lie written in bold and soaked in blood.

The Moral Collapse of a Nation

The Constitution of India guarantees equality and dignity. Yet, we have normalized a system where one caste cleans the waste of another — under threat of death, without any support or respect. This isn’t just social injustice. It is the moral collapse of a modern democracy that prides itself on equality while allowing a community to die in silence.

India’s Sewer is Not Just Underground — It’s in Our Society

The stench of injustice is not just in the gutters. It’s in our silence, our privilege, and our politics. We’ve allowed an entire community to be buried in the name of “cleanliness,” and turned our eyes away while they choke, suffocate, and die.

How long will we stay silent? How long will we walk on clean city roads while pretending not to see the bodies buried beneath them — the ones that suffocate and die in darkness just to keep our surroundings clean?

When a sanitation worker enters a sewer, they’re not just cleaning waste. They are carrying the weight of India’s caste system, apathy, and hypocrisy on their shoulders. Every time a Dalit worker is sent into a toxic drain without safety gear and dies there, it is not an accident. It is a murder. A murder sanctioned by society, overlooked by the state, and ignored by us.

The government spends hundreds of crores on Swachh Bharat advertisements, but it cannot provide a simple oxygen mask, a machine, or even the dignity of a safe job to those who actually clean our filth.

What does that say about our priorities? Are we only moved by their deaths? Or are we ready to be ashamed of the way they are forced to live?

Those we call “safai karamcharis” are not just cleaners. They are carriers of our collective guilt. Their hands do not just hold brooms — they hold the truth we refuse to face. A truth soaked in sewage, caste, and silence.

Until the day no human has to clean another human’s waste with their bare hands, we are not a clean country. We are just pretending to be one.

Courtesy: News Room India

Bhagwan Das (1927–2010): Ambedkarite, Buddhist, and Fighter for Dalit Rights

 

Bhagwan Das (1927–2010): Ambedkarite, Buddhist, and Fighter for Dalit Rights

By Maren Bellwinkel-Schempp

Translated from German to English

                                             

Bhagwan Das was born in 1927 in Shimla. He belonged to the Chuhra or Lal Beghi community, as the street sweepers and latrine cleaners of Punjab are called, named after the rebellious prophet of the Bhangis. The term "Bhangi" itself is derogatory, literally meaning those who consume bhang (cannabis) as an intoxicant.

During colonial times, some of them were closely associated with the British-Indian military. Lal Beghis were employed as servants, cleaners, and also as waiters and cooks in the military. These roles allowed them to bypass some of the discrimination inherent in the traditional caste system. Bhagwan Das grew up in a garrison where his father worked at the telegraph office. The family could afford to send their children to good private schools with English as the medium of instruction. This quality education enabled him to join the Royal Indian Air Force at the age of 16 after completing his matriculation (10th grade) in 1943. At that time, British India was embroiled in World War II, with the Imperial Japanese Army, supported by the Indian National Army, attempting to advance into the Indian heartland from the eastern front. Bhagwan Das was trained and deployed for the newly developed radar surveillance. His excellent command of English allowed him to get along well with British comrades and officers, earning their respect. He would have liked to stay in the Royal Air Force after the war, but his family could not afford the 5,000 rupees required for an officer’s commission.

Ambedkarite and Buddhist

Bhagwan Das had heard of Babasaheb Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, the great statesman and leader of the Untouchables, during his school years. In 1943, he had the opportunity to meet Ambedkar in Shimla for the first time. This encounter led to an enduring connection, culminating in Das serving as Ambedkar’s private secretary in 1955–56. Bhagwan Das offered to assist Ambedkar with compiling his writings, speeches, and lectures, working a few hours a day without compensation. This work, interrupted by Ambedkar’s death in 1956, later resulted in a four-volume publication, Thus Spoke Ambedkar, published by Das between 1963 and 1980 in Jalandhar through Bhimpatrika Press, run by Lahori Ram Balley. This publication is significant as one of the first collections of Ambedkar’s works, long before the Maharashtra government published Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar’s Writings and Speeches.

As a young man, Bhagwan Das was strongly influenced by Christian missionaries. He openly shared how he would visit a Methodist missionary every morning to pray before going to work. Remarkably, he noted that the missionary never pressured him to convert to Christianity.

In the months following Bhagwan Das’s death on November 18, 2010, at the age of 83, numerous obituaries have highlighted his significant contributions to the Dalit movement in India. He was undoubtedly one of the most important figures in the Dalit movement in North India, playing a key role in spreading Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar’s ideas. His great achievement was making the movement accessible to those at the very bottom of the “Untouchable” castes: latrine cleaners and street sweepers. Additionally, he successfully internationalized the issue of “Untouchability,” notably by advocating for the Burakumin in Japan, a group similarly discriminated against as India’s street sweepers and latrine cleaners.

Several years before Dr. Ambedkar’s famous conversion to Buddhism in October 1956, Bhagwan Das had already embraced Buddhism, influenced initially by Bodhanand Mahastavir (1874–1952) in Lucknow and a group of Buddhists in Delhi, originally inspired by the Arya Samaj in Punjab. This group held regular weekly prayer and sermon sessions at the Ambedkar Bhawan and in private homes.

Bhagwan Das recounted how, in Lucknow, a group of Buddhists, led by Pragyanand, arranged his marriage to a well-educated woman from the Dhanuk caste—“for my own good,” as he emphasized. This was likely one of the first Buddhist weddings among Dalits and was notable for being a cross-caste marriage. The Dhanuk are a smaller Untouchable caste, often working as pig herders or vegetable farmers. Bhagwan Das’s wife was a primary school teacher, supporting the family while he pursued law studies and later became a lawyer. They had two daughters and a son. Their eldest daughter, Zoya Hadke, is a senior civil servant in the Indian Administrative Service; their son, Rahul Das, is a doctor; and their younger daughter, Shura Darapuri, is a professor at the BBAU University of Lucknow, dedicated to publishing her father’s works in 23 volumes.

Thirst for Knowledge and Struggle

Like his father, Bhagwan Das was driven by a thirst for knowledge. Following the example of his mentor, Babasaheb Dr. Ambedkar, he bought many books and read extensively, including entire encyclopedia articles in libraries to deepen his understanding of specific topics. For Dalits, who were traditionally excluded from knowledge under the Brahmanical caste system and relegated to servitude, access to education was of immense importance. It was not just about understanding the world but about changing it and securing a rightful place for Dalits in the democratic and socialist independent India. For both Bhagwan Das and Ambedkar, this was a lifelong mission.

In his later years, Bhagwan Das lived with his wife (who passed away a few years earlier), his son Rahul, daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren in a small fourth-floor apartment in Munirka, a settlement developed by the Delhi Development Authorities near Jawaharlal Nehru University. Whenever I visited Delhi in recent years, I stopped by to see him. He was unpretentious, requiring only a phone call to arrange a visit. Guests were received in his living and working room, filled floor-to-ceiling with books, mostly legal texts. Conversations always went straight to the point, focusing on the situation of Dalits, the Buddhist movement, and human rights. He was an inspiration and source of knowledge for many academics and activists, including Walter Hahn, coordinator of the Dalit Solidarity Platform, social scientist Martin Fuchs, and Indologist Heinz Werner Wessler.

Internationalization

Bhagwan Das’s major contribution was internationalizing the Dalit issue. As a Buddhist, he was a founding member of the World Conference of Religions for Peace (WCRP), established in Kyoto in 1969 and meeting every four years. Ambedkar had sought to place the Dalit issue in a global context, comparing Dalits to slaves in the Roman Empire or Black communities in American ghettos, though these analogies were imprecise. Bhagwan Das, however, made a significant impact in 1979 at a WCRP conference in Princeton by comparing the plight of Dalits in India to that of the Burakumin in Japan. The Burakumin, traditionally confined to segregated neighborhoods, were assigned “dirty” jobs like waste disposal and carcass processing, excluded from education, and considered impure—paralleling the situation of Dalits.

In August 1983, supported by several Dalit organizations, Bhagwan Das testified before the United Nations Subcommission on Human Rights in Geneva about the ongoing discrimination against Dalits, challenging India’s official stance that such discrimination, prohibited by the Constitution and laws, was an internal matter. He also played a leading role in the International Dalit Conference in Kuala Lumpur in 1998, a precursor to the World Conference Against Racism in Durban (South Africa, August 31–September 7, 2001).

Bhagwan Das was closely linked to the beginnings of the German Dalit Solidarity movement. In 1993, under the aegis of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation in Bonn, a conference was held on the situation of former “Untouchables” in India, attended by Dalit representatives from Christian, Muslim, Sikh, and Buddhist communities. Bhagwan Das represented the Buddhists, and during this event, the Dalit Solidarity People was founded, marking the first Indian coalition with international support. This set the model for subsequent networks, culminating in the establishment of the International Dalit Solidarity Network (IDSN) in 2000.

In 2001, three years after the formation of India’s National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR), the German Dalit Solidarity Platform was established, initially hosted by the Protestant aid organization Bread for the World, and now a permanent institution. Key figures like Ruth Manorama, S.K. Thorat, and Martin Macwan carried forward Bhagwan Das’s legacy.

His most significant book, Main Bhangi Hoon (I Am a Bhangi), written in Hindi, is a fictional social history of street sweepers. It vividly describes how Bhangis were oppressed, displaced from their land, and rendered homeless through wars and devastation over millennia. Despite being marginalized, Bhagwan Das shows, they retained their pride and ethos. This was undermined by the Arya Samaj’s shuddhi (purification) campaigns, which sought to assimilate them into a conformist Hinduism, renaming them “Valmikis” to tie them to a Brahmanical tradition. Bhagwan Das vehemently opposed this, advocating for an emancipatory Buddhism inspired by Ambedkar.

In 2005, Walter Hahn, the longtime coordinator of the Dalit Solidarity Platform, invited Bhagwan Das to the annual conference in Bonn, followed by a lecture at Bonn’s Indology Department. This was a moving experience for Das, as Babasaheb Dr. Ambedkar had enrolled at the University of Bonn in 1921 to study economics and hoped to learn Sanskrit under the renowned Indologist Hermann Jacobi—a pursuit denied to him in India as a Dalit. Though Ambedkar’s plans were thwarted by lack of time and funds, Bhagwan Das was impressed by documents from Ambedkar’s time in Bonn, including a handwritten letter in German. He marveled at the Sanskrit collection in the university library. A visit to Bonn’s Haus der Geschichte sparked discussions on the culture of remembrance, noting the scarcity of museums or memorials dedicated to Dalit oppression and the Dalit emancipation movement in South Asia.

Even in 2005, it was evident that the strength of this lifelong fighter for Dalit human rights was waning. Yet, he remained lean and active, rising early to work and rejecting retirement. Full of plans for further publications, he regularly attended events at the Panchasheela Institute, which he co-founded in Munirka, and welcomed friends, journalists, and scholars in his modest study. Some projects, including a planned sequel to his fictional history of the Bhangis, remained unfinished. However, he lived to see the publication of his memoirs, In Pursuit of Ambedkar. A few months later, on November 18, 2010, Bhagwan Das—one of the last to have personally known and been directly inspired by Babasaheb Dr. Ambedkar—passed away.