Claudia Venturelli: Bahuan e Puja the dalits of Caminho das Indias

A genealogy of the dalits –Part 1-

What can we find if we research deeply the castes system?
My interest today is to introduce us into the position of dalits inside India.

Originally untouchables, today the word dalit is used since the 70’s decade when the Dalit Panthers popularized this concept as a way of denunciate the oppressive situation they live in India.

The soap opera shows us the dalits as people who are what they are because of their own practices. They are dalits because they murdered, stole, rape.

But if we go deeply and research the genealogy of their appearance in India we can find that Manu’s law put them outside the castes system, they were outcaste (in English). Manu’s law was the origin of the castes system and determinate his permanently impure situation. They have no possibility to move into the social pyramid and they don’t have the opportunity of purification.

The last census (2001) indicates that the 16 % of the Indian population is dalit, at least more or less 167 million people.

Could we think , with Michel Foucault, that the castes system is a social device ?