Cattle-Skinners in Bundelkhand Are Looking For an Out
In Bundelkhand, if you’re being called “chamaar”, rest assured assumptions have been made about you, your families’ professions, your lifestyles, your morals. The chamaars of Bargadh, Manka and Turgava villages in the Mau block of Chitrakoot, a district in Uttar Pradesh's Bundelkhand, better known for its shining appearances in the Ramayana, are those Dalit communities whose traditional occupations have been of cattle-skinners.
The trade and techniques have been passed on from generation to generation. As Ram Babu of the neighbouring Banda district says, “It’s been a generational profession, so we saw our grandfathers and fathers doing it, and we simply followed it… But now the younger generations don’t want to.”
Ram Babu is alluding to the dual discrimination inherent in the trade that has ensured a huge decrease in this profession – in Chitrakoot, if 70% of the community was in the trade, now it is only 5%. Close to 20% of the Dalit community who have been in the trade have moved to the more “respectable” (read: socially accepted) leather-based profession of cobbling. As Rakesh, a cobbler, says, “Earlier, the entire mohalla was involved in it. Now I think there are about five people left in my own village.”
Another Bargadh local, Umakant Ojha, says, “It’s mainly stopped in Bargadh now. There’s been a steady decrease over the past ten years.”
This dip is, in a way, inversely proportional to an important spike – according to National Crime Records Bureau 2014-2016 data, UP witnessed an increase of up to 29% in caste-based violence. And while crimes are still an accounted-for statistic, discrimination, which is largely in the social sphere, is almost always unrecorded, and simply a part of the socio-cultural fabric. Sonpal Varma, the local Bahujan Samaj Party neta, calls it a “special kind of viewing of these people, as those outside the mainstream, and best if avoided”.
Prabhavati, from Chitrakoot, speaks of how the community that had been traditionally involved in the trade shuns those who continue to work in it. “We haven’t told our relatives we do this work, of course not. Who will marry our girls and boys if we do? So, we continue to do this work in secret.”
Shakti Pratap Singh, the BJP representative for RK Patel, the MLA in Karwi, Chitrakoot, is in denial about any discrimination. “It probably used to happen years ago, But not anymore.”
Mahendra, meanwhile, who’s considering quitting the trade and even planning to leave the village altogether, tells us of what they face on a daily basis, “The Brahmins and the pandits all look at us as dirty, that is but natural. It is dirty work.”
He continues, “We keep thinking about leaving this profession, but the farmers keep calling us, ‘hamaara kaam kar do’, and we go. Because what can they do when their cattle dies? They simply throw the carcasses out in the outskirts of the villages and we go and collect them from there… There is some money, but money isn’t everything. How long can we live as shunned human beings?”
Watch Khabar Lahariya's video report here.
This Khabar Lahariya story first appeared on Firstpost.
This article went live on April eighteenth, two thousand eighteen, at zero minutes past six in the evening.The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.
