After Dalits immersed themselves in human waste in Savanur two weeks, Karnataka chief minister B.S. Yediyurappa responds in knid, at a rally in Davanagere, quoted by Mail Today:
To Dalits: “I know you are here to create trouble. You are not genuine people. You are useless people. All of you are Congress agents. Get lost. Go away from here in five minutes.”
To the media: “Get away from there. You should not be standing near them. All this is happening because of you (media).”
To the police: “Donkey-grazers.”
Cartoon: courtesy R. Prasad/ Mail Today
churumuri 
“Donkey-grazers!” just cannot capture the beauty and invective of “katthe Kayovaru” or “katthe kaayakke bandhidheera?”
OTOH cops detailed to protect any politician are in fact “Katthe Kaayo”-ing :D
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Rreee Churumuri, BSY may not know the art of winning friends and influencing people, but why you should twist & spin every time he opens his mouth. If our libel laws were strong Kalbag & his employers would have been sharing a piece of real estate with Amit Shah….
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Interesting how unfair the media is
“To Dalits”, it says.
To DSS activists, the report says
I say, if DSS is accepted as voice of Dalits, then why not any organization as voice of the whole group it claims to represent?
The DSS itself has a history of provoking outrage and then blaming the people who feel outraged.
The problem of night-soil is terrible and indeed inhuman. Yet it is not just 60 years old, it is more than 60 years old.
All the media’s rage against Hindu society will collapse if truth be told of how this practice came about and carried on by royal muslim harems and british raj laws that penalized ppl who would not come and clean human waste dumped indoors.
The post could have been a discussion on the issue of night soil but instead and in keeping with the calibre of customers it has been turned into an issue about Yeddi’s temper.
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Yedi actually said that? he ought to be prosecuted under the appropriate laws that protect human rights.
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Actually when I read the linked article it does not seem like Yeddi was actually mouthing an anti-Dalit insult. He called them congress agents and useless fellows after his gathering was stormed and interrupted. So maybe you can pull up Yeddi for not paying attention to the Dalits’ reasonable demands for a whole fortnight, but I really doubt if you can justify giving the kind of spin you have given.
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@Simran
>>All the media’s rage against Hindu society will collapse if truth be told of how this practice came about and carried on by royal muslim harems and british raj laws that penalized ppl who would not come and clean human waste dumped indoors.
That’s an interesting claim. I checked for more information on this matter and found a couple of links that push back the date to ancient times.
One of the links is from Sulabh International who should know a thing or two about these matters:)
http://www.sulabhinternational.org/pages/training/nai_disha_traning.php
The other one is an article from Frontline in which the author traces the origin of such practice atleast to the era of Narada Samhita and Vajasaneyi Samhita.
http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl2303/stories/20060224000808000.htm
I am confused. Where did you get the information on this practice having come about during the Mughal times and then on to British times?
I would think urbanisation, setting up of towns and cities in the hinterland away from rivers or any other water bodies would have led to the increase in this practice. And there you may very well have a point. Because it is possible that urbanisation picked up during Mughal times and continued thro’ British era. However saying that this practice was non-existent in ancient India and came in with Mughals would be quite a thing. Can you please share your sources on this?
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>era of Narada Samhita and Vajasaneyi Samhita.
Lol, this agenda driven board is going to stink, scoot before the smell hits you…..
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Anshuman Patel – Please read this – http://www.behind-the-open-door.com/_pdf/sulabh.pdf/Present_Dalit_…pdf Page 2 in particular.
For the rest, can you provide me links or sources for Narada and Vajasaneyi Samhitas with the relevant references? I would be much obliged.
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Anshuman Patel/Simran:
It is a myth that the practice of Night-Soil is unique to India/Hinduism. It was universal!
Logic suggests that the practice of clearing human waste from indoor must’ve been a very old one. I can’t think how in the olden day royalty and rich households would have their women go out in the open to relieve themselves. Not only in India, but all over the world.
So, the servants of all countries would’ve had the duty of cleaning up on human excreta for centuries.
The difference is, In India, the people who did this job were termed untouchables.
**
Night soil practice in China : http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/55/422.html
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I wish churumuri had come out with the actual statements in Kannada, so we could get a clearer perspective on what was actually said. Often, literal translations do not capture the essence of what was being conveyed.
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@faldo
while what you say might actually hold true for a statement by itself, it won’t help improving the quality of message transmission in our media. The catch is that wen people speak the entire conversation has a context and one needs to understand the context to understand the statement. In our media, like chrumuri here, people are quoted quite accurately in the verbatim sense i suppose. However, the problem is that only one statement out of a hundred statements gets quoted, so the description of the context of the statement is left to the reporter who can twist it to fit any personal agendas, as in this case, the 3 statements without any previous or following statements are potrayed as yeddi’s outcry against “dalits”.
On the other hand, Indian media does deserve kudos on the consistent persistent ass licking of dalit and or “reservation/quota” groups. Even our politicians who are experts at vote bank politics don’t show this amount of consistency in the act of dalit ass licking! mayawati could probably learn a thing or two from our media!
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Nonsense, false report.
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What Yeddi said was not in general but to those present there. He never made a general statement for the entire community. Also he said it to the people and not on their cast or profession
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@ Alok
Good one
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@Simran:
>>For the rest, can you provide me links or sources for Narada and Vajasaneyi Samhitas with the relevant references? I would be much obliged.
Did you miss? I have referred to the article in Frontline. The author refers to these samhitas in that piece. Let me admit that I neither have the capacity nor felicity to read up the samhitas in their original version and understand. So I have to rely on the second-hand version – either yours or that article’s or some other credible source.
Thanks for the other link you provided. I shall check that up.
@Harkol,
>>It is a myth that the practice of Night-Soil is unique to India/Hinduism. It was universal!
There is no argument on that. I don’t subscribe to neither schools of thought – All evil practices emanated from the soil of India OR Only good practices emanated from India. Many nice things came out of India and then some not so nice things too:)
Wiki and other sources are full of details on night-soil and yes you are right – this practice is universal and as old as community living in possibly any part of the world.
My surprise was only limited to the info that suggested – this practice entered India via Muslim invaders, which implies it was non-existent here earlier.
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Not only Yeddi, whole BJP is anti-dalit and anti-minorities. it was not at all surprise.
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@prajwal -I agree with you. Even if the reporter concerned does not have any agenda, a verbaitim translation could make the statements sound totally twisted and cause a lot of damage.
The actual statements in question were:
‘Jaaga Khali madi’ and ‘yen Katthe Kaatiddeera neevu?’
which are nothing like what the report makes it sound like.
However, my gripe was more because I was missing the adrenalin in my coffee and was hoping to make it up by reading the actual (supposedly) loaded statements :)
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Anshuman:
>which implies it was non-existent here earlier.
That’s impossible. I can’t really imagine how the queens or even gentry in ancient India would’ve built large palaces & forts, but would go far away from it for daily functions like bath/toilets etc.
Assuming they would’ve done this in some privacy, then it is only logical that someone had to clean up on the mess…
Class/caste system was universal. In Britain, a person of lower class couldn’t have married in to royalty even till 20th century (even if he/she was rich). It was frowned upon.
The difference is that, India is perhaps a couple of hundred years late in getting rid of some of these social evils.
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Anshuman Patel, no. I did not miss your references but I did not find in them proper attributions apart from what someone might call, inferences.
the point was about “slaves” and then Chandalas as “slaves”.
i think if we limited our discussion to slaves, then we may safely and reasonably assume that some slaves were indeed given this work also.
in the later link that i have provided, you will find that certain kind of toilet practices required human waste to be moved. these later practices were popularised by muslim harems. it was then on that the class of people who worked on such works got “locked in”. also penurial conditions decided they were left with little choice.
u will also note that groups of human waste collectors developed an interest in “market segments” or “areas of work”. that way they kept unncessary competetion at bay.
society, due to notions of pollution, not purity, would not allow for these people or offspring to be absorbed back into society.
bindeshwari pathak observes that these workers came from all jatis and all classes. it strongly looks like conditions of poverty or crime forced these groups to take up any works that they might be able to have.
the practice of human waste collection need not be universal at all. we forget that only in cases of dry latrines is this required. not in cases where soil absorbs the waste or soil is used to cover it or even pits that are dug and then covered up.
this is also the reason why this practice is not prevalent in all places where there are no proper latrine facilities. because also ppl tend to use fields and pits.
it was only the pravalence of poverty that continued this practice. and once ppl got down to “doing this” they got locked out within their particular communities. meaning they lost alternative opportunities unless they moved town.
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@Harkol – Your last point brings to memory something I remember reading. Unfortunately I cannot find references to that article.
There is a school of thought that says that our caste differences got institutionalized during the last several hundred years after successive invasions from external powers. This is not to say that casteism did not exist earlier but it was not rampant and by and large, people were not too conscious about it.
Invading forces, maybe for strategic reasons highlighted caste differences to keep people under check and these differences got multiplied as they carried through generations.
The industrial revolution and advances in science in Europe were a great leveller and allowed the so called lower classes to break class barriers. However, in India the full import of scientific and technological advancement has yet to hit us and hopefully we can expect such practices to reduce significantly.
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Those who have the job relating to human feces, should get organized and have unions. Because they are doing a job that others do not want to do, they should be paid very high salaries. Their unions must demand the high salaries. Imagine what would happen if they went on strike. I am afraid the goons will be incited to perpetrate violent crimes against the night-soil workers. That is what will happen in a barbaric third world country like India. I hope social workers will help them organize the unions.
Many who have posted here seem to be downplaying the role of Hinduism in assigning menial work to shudras. The varnashrama jathis are heavily emphasized in Hinduism. In Bhagwat Gita 4:13, Krishna himself says he created the varnashrama jathis.
Chatur varnyam maya shrishtam
Many Hindu scriptures say that the menial jobs have to be assigned to shudras. They also say the Brahmin (a light-skinned person) should be at the top and the shudras (a dark-skinned person) should be at the bottom. This is racism. Apartheid is being practiced in India today. The only way out for the downtrodden Hindus is to convert to another religion.
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