In 1950, the Constitution outlawed untouchability under Article 17, a move often mistaken as a death certificate for caste discrimination. The law may have condemned it, but caste refused to fade into history.
Seventy-five years on, in the desert state of Rajasthan, caste ghosts still walk beside many Dalit families daily. In village after village, they are denied access to common water sources, handed tea in separate cups and made to sit on the ground. Nothing is said out loud or even spoken, an invisible but rigid social boundary sets them apart. Untouchability in Rajasthan’s villages is not hidden or implicit, but it is an open, lived system of segregation maintained through taboos, silent social threats and unspoken consent. By foregrounding local experiences, we will seek to understand why even after decades of legal prohibitions caste continues to divide rural life so starkly.
Hindu notions of ritual degradation of lower castes often enforced through village priests, local customs and community elders continue to justify everyday exclusions and marginalization of fellow human beings. In rural western Rajasthan, where I come from, caste hierarchies are not just cultural artefacts but operate as systems of control over land, labour and human dignity.
Christophe Jaffrelot (2003) shows in India’s Silent Revolution how caste has persisted through culture and remains deeply embedded in social customs and ritual practices that have proved resistant to modern legislation. Deeply embedded Hindu beliefs around purity, karma and inherited pollution continue to give moral weight to social exclusion in Rajasthan’s rural communities.
In tea stalls and at every household, it’s common to find what people call the “two-tumbler system”. Dalit customers, workers or helpers are quietly handed separate cups or old steel tumblers which no one else ever touches. At village temples, many Dalit families often pause at the door, having been conditioned to do so over generations. Priests and elders often recite ritual codes that warn about “pollution” caused by Dalits entering temples.
Even death does not end caste. The body might be dead, but the old fear of “pollution” stays alive and remains immortal. Even after cremation, there is this invisible line that must not be crossed. Each caste sets aside a patch of land for cremation of their dead to make sure Dalitbahujan ashes don’t drift into the sacred soil of the so-called upper castes. A 2014 survey by Jaipur-based Centre for Dalit Rights confirmed that more than 60 per cent of villages followed this unwritten rule.
‘Untouchable’ singers
In Rajasthan, Dholi is a hereditary caste that traditionally performs as singers and drummers for dominant castes at weddings, births, festivals, death rites and other festivals and rituals. They have been designated “untouchable”. During festivals or family ceremonies, Dholis still go to the homes of dominant-caste families not as guests, but as performers expected to serve. They beat their drums, sing family praises, recite genealogies and carry the weight of folk songs passed down through generations.
In return for the music that breathes life into village weddings and other festivals, they are often given sacks of old grain, used clothes or leftover food. Cash is rare and sometimes even seen as disrespectful to the ritual idea of service. Even though their music is woven into the community’s pride and identity, it is hardly ever seen as skilled work that deserves remuneration. The work is wrapped up in the language of izzat and dharma, as if playing music is some holy offering and not a job – not something you do to earn a living, but something you owe out of devotion and traditional duty. This shows how the Dholi community remains subject to cultural domination in the name of tradition.
If they demand money or fair payment, they risk nyaat bahar (social boycott) and loss of patron families or face threats. This never-ending fear continues the cycle of exploitation and social ostracism.
Similarly, minority OBC Muslim communities like Manganiyars, Langas and Bhats offer a striking example of how the stigma of caste and religion come in the way of a livelihood. The Manganiyars and Langas have travelled far beyond their desert villages, taking Rajasthan’s folk music heritage with them. But the heritage does not belong to them, but to Rajputs. They are only means to an object, which is to preserve cultural and feudal pride or to extract profitable value in the cultural marketplace. Singers like Mame Khan, Swaroop Khan, Kheta Khan, Sakar Khan Langa and Sawai Bhatt have performed for Bollywood films and in international festivals, their voices celebrated as symbols of “Incredible India”. Yet this applause fades at the boundaries of their own villages.
Musicians not welcome inside homes
The lives of most Bhats and Langa families are still tied to the same semi-feudal structures in their villages, where respect for their music doesn’t always mean dignity in everyday life. Their traditional patrons, dominant land-owning castes, such as Rajputs, Brahmins, Jats, Gurjars and Bishnois, summon them to perform at weddings, childbirth or other family ceremonies. But their art is not treated as a profession with fair wages – it is a ritual service which is paid for with “grace” leftover or whatever the patron deems appropriate. Consequently, many Langas today live in poverty.
What’s even more telling is how Dholis and Bhats are still made to perform from the village gate or the outer courtyard of the house, but never invited to sit inside the “sacred” space of the savarna home. Their cups and plates are kept separate. Thus, superstition makes space for this contradiction, where songs of Dholis and Bhats are seen as sacred but their presence pollutes others and their touch is treated as impure. This double standard is not random but built into the very foundation of caste-based exclusion and subjectification.
As the ethnographers Ann Grodzins Gold and Lindsey Harlan have shown in their work on Rajasthan, social exclusion in villages is not just economic or spatial, it is ritualized in everyday life. It’s true that Manganiyars and Langas have found fleeting moments of global limelight – YouTube clips, festival tours, and curious urban listeners. However, many of them still view their music as a birthright obligation rather than a skilled labour that merits respect and fair compensation. Tourists and wedding guests in cities like Jaisalmer, Udaipur, Jodhpur and Barmer may dance to the Langa and Manganiyar’s “kamaicha” (a traditional stringed instrument similar to a violin) but when the show concludes, the singer returns to their segregated existence of the village defined by caste stigma and rituals. Even other Muslims discriminate against Langas and Manganiyars.
Dholis and Bhats face similar forms of social exclusion because their work is seen as “polluting” when they sing door-to-door in expectation of monetary gifts. All this is part of the Jajmani system, a patron-client network of caste-based services. It is a reflection of how economic dependence and social stigma survive together – ritual obligations and religious superstitions serving upper-caste landlords’ interests and keeping the lower castes in their place, generation after generation. For that matter, other service castes also rely on dominant caste patronage for survival.
Narendra Dabholkar who was murdered for fighting against this blind faith in his native Maharashtra saw superstition as a weapon to keep people backward and divided. Dabholkar writes, “Caste is an institution found only in our country. It is full of superstitious beliefs and practices. The idea that one human being is so pious that the water used to wash his feet becomes holy, while another is so defiled that even his shadow causes pollution is nothing but superstition. But the caste system is an institution with far more serious effects on society. It is a vicious system of exploitation.” [The Case for Reason: Understanding the Anti-Superstition Movement (trans. Suman Oak), Context, Chennai, 2018]
The Dholis and Bhats wait in the courtyard, outside the doorway, singing in Marwari with dhol-thaali (drummer and steel plate), praising the house owners, their ancestors and caste and praying for a glorious future for their offspring. They have to memorize names of local and familial deities of the upper castes and of folk heroes like Pabuji, Tejaji and Gogaji while they sing ballads about their heroism (vir ras).
It is common for these musicians to perform outside an upper-caste home and then go away empty-handed. The upper castes can choose not to observe the rituals they themselves have instituted. But it is the duty of the Dholis to perform in praise of their andaata (god who provides food) irrespective of whether or not they get food. The belief in the fear of offending gods and ancestors and offending earthly lords (upper castes) is what sustains the ritual.
In his critique of the caste system, Dr Ambedkar had clearly mentioned that caste is more than just a system for dividing work, that it is fundamentally a way to divide people themselves – a “division of labourers” fixed in a rigid, hierarchical order. Exploitation is relayed from the top varnas to the castes below, increasing in degree as it passes from one level to another. This artificial arrangement has been made in the name of religion. The Puranas and the brahminical commentaries that are heard in every village through the priests, not only justify but codify the idea of pollution and exclusion, transforming fear into social law. Fear of touch, of mingling, of stepping over an invisible line – these social anxieties are further reinforced by the Vedas, which present these hierarchies as reflections of cosmic balance and divine order.
Ambedkar writes, “The effect of caste on the ethics of the Hindus is simply deplorable. Caste has killed public spirit. Caste has destroyed the sense of public charity. Caste has made public opinion impossible. A Hindu’s public is his caste. His responsibility is only to his caste. His loyalty is restricted only to his caste. Virtue has become caste-ridden, and morality has become caste-bound. There is no sympathy for the deserving. There is no appreciation of the meritorious. There is no charity to the needy. Suffering as such calls for no response. There is charity, but it begins with the caste and ends with the caste. There is sympathy, but not for men of other castes.” [Annihilation of Caste)
This plight of the “labouring musicians” and others will end only when they come together, erasing the “divisions” forever from their memories and empathetically recognizing each other as equals, make their overwhelming numbers count and deny the power of the texts that claim and sustain these divisions.
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