Arts & Culture
The Ethnography of Caste and Untouchability in Contemporary South Asia
Quick fact
In contemporary rural India, over half of Dalit households still experience untouchability in some form, including being barred from using the same wells, temples, or even plates.
Why this is interesting
You might think caste is a relic of ancient India, but in modern cities, you can see it in who gets hired, who gets served first, and who is still called 'untouchable'.
Read the full explanation
Understanding The Ethnography of Caste and Untouchability in Contemporary South Asia
In South Asia, caste is a hereditary social hierarchy. Traditionally, society is divided into four 'varna' (broad classes), but the real, operating unit is the 'jati' - a local, endogamous group linked to particular occupations. Historically, those outside the varna system were deemed 'untouchable' because they performed tasks considered polluting, like cleaning toilets or tanning leather. Ethnography - the research method of immersive observation and interview - reveals that caste is not just about belief but about practice: it determines who you can marry, what job you do, whether you are allowed to draw water from a shared well, and how you are addressed. In villages, caste often maps onto residential segregation, with Dalits (the former 'untouchables') living on the periphery. This is not a static system; it changes with economics, politics, and law, but ethnography shows how it adapts, transforming into new forms of exclusion and discrimination even in urban contexts.
A deeper explanation
The mechanism that sustains untouchability is the belief in ritual purity and pollution. This belief is enforced through everyday interactions and social sanctions: touching, sharing food, or entering the same spaces can 'pollute' a higher-caste person. In practice, this means Dalits are excluded from wells, temples, kitchens, and sometimes even public spaces. The system is maintained by social and economic dependence: lower-caste individuals, often landless or owning only poor land, rely on higher-caste landowners for work and credit, making it hard to defy norms. Ethnographic research (e.g., by Douglas R. Holmes, but more importantly by South Asian anthropologists like M.N. Srinivas and the extensive work by scholars like Dipankar Gupta) shows how this mechanism operates: it is not just that people believe in purity, but that they enforce it through gossip, avoidance, or outright violence. Ethnographers also document how Dalits resist: through conversion, education, political movements, and claiming public spaces. The persistence of untouchability is thus not a simple survival of tradition but a dynamic, contested process of social reproduction and change.