Dalits

Sundari and Mata: Two damai girls seeking change in the village

“When you people first came to our village we didn’t like you to film us”, Sundari Damai tells us one day while we are sitting in the shadow of a tree. “We didn’t like other people to see us in our dirty, worn out clothes".

By Berit Madsen

15. januar 2004

Mata - an other damai woman arrives. She is on her way to work in a neighbouring chhetri upper caste village. Two chhetri families build new houses and for two months Mata and other women from Pachnali village carry stones for the house owners.

“Some time ago, when foreigners like you came to our village, we would ran away and hide”, Mata says. “We even didn’t want to talk to strangers. But nowadays so many people pass by our village, and we are getting used to answer all sorts of questions. But sometimes we wonder why people ask us”.

Sundari and Mata both belong to the damai caste. The damai caste traditionally work as tailors and drummers in marriage ceremonies and other religious rituals. Sundari and Mata are both about thirty years old. Both their husbands work in India. Sundari’s husband has lived in India for the last ten years together with their two eldest children and Sundari’s mother-in-law. Sundari went with her husband to India, but she didn’t like living there and decided to return to the village with their youngest son, Bhim Damai. Mata’s husband went to India recently. He is a singer of the traditional West Nepali music and hope that he will get a chance to record some of his songs in Bombay. If he doesn’t succeed, he will try to find another job and thereby manage to pay back the money that he borrowed from other villagers to pay for the ticket.

We all have the same kind of blood

“When the foreigners come to our village they tell us that we should give up the caste system and the discrimination”, Sundari says. “And in my heart I hope that one day we all will be equal. We all have the same kind of blood, we are all human beings - and for that reason there should be no difference between us. But even though I tell you this, there is still a voice inside me saying “don’t touch the kamis, don’t take food from the sarkis”.

Sundari and Mata formed a women’s group some month ago. In the group they take up caste issues and discuss the problems of the village in general. Some time ago they succeeded in persuading the villagers to accept a collective ban on drinking alcohol in the village. Too many men were beating their wife after drinking too much raski (Nepalese whisky). “To make equality among all people in our society, there is a long way to go”, Sundari says. “The damai think that they are superior to the kamis, the kamis that they are superior to the sarkis, and the sarkis that they are further up in the caste hierarchy than us damai. Everybody think that they are superior. If we don’t quit this kind of thinking among ourselves, then how can we make the upper caste people treat us as their equals?”.

New opportunities

“The women in our group have chosen me as their spokes women”, Sundari tells. “They ask me to go around in the village and talk to our neighbours. I try to tell all the women and men that they must send their children to school. If the children are not educated, they won’t understand why we have to change the way we live with the caste system. But the parents tell me: “well, who will then collect firewood or leaves for the buffaloes? You don’t have a family to take care of as your husband live in India”.

For Sundari it is hard to accept those kinds of answers. She thinks that too many villagers only refer to tradition and their problems and don’t look for new opportunities. “It is difficult to live in our village, we are poor people, we haven’t got money for buying good clothes or soap for washing the clothes. But no matter what, we should all send our children to school, we should try not to be dirty, we should all keep our houses clean. Then maybe one day other people will stop calling us dalits”.

Why are we dalits?

For Sundari and Mata the word “dalit” is very new. Until recently they only referred to themselves as damai. In the same way the other lower castes only called themselves kami, sarki, sunar, bhul etc. “I actually don’t know why we are called dalits”, Mata says. “Maybe it is some word that the government or some foreigners have introduced. But the word makes me sad - why do they need to call us dalits? I sometimes think that it is only to keep us down”.

The word dalit originally comes from India where it for a long time has been used as a common denominator for all the untouchable lower caste groups. Today the concept is getting widespread in Nepal as well - especially among well-educated Nepalese and among foreign development workers. For the villagers in Pachnali it is hard to see why there should be a need for another concept to mark out their lower caste status. From generation to generation they have been used to live with their caste title and make a living as damai, kami, sarki, bhul etc. But they don’t know how to transform this new label into practice - or use it as a new identity. As such they only see it as a kind of stigma.

Mata’s husband’s song

Mata’s husband, Nar Bahadur Damai, didn’t succeed in getting his songs recorded in Bombay. He returns home empty handed as he didn’t get a job as well. But he has written a song about the Pachnali village life, which he asks us to record on video and use in our documentary film about the village. We put up the camera and record the song. It tells about the daily life of the villagers and ends with his wish for the Pachnali people: “We dalits, lets move forward, what is the weakness inside us? We are also allowed to speak up in our country”.