Caste and Regional Influences on the Practice of ‘Untouchability’ in India

Abstract

ABSTRACTMillions of people in India are born with scars that will last a lifetime. These are scars of social rather than physical blemish and they reduce the capacity of such persons to function in life, free of prejudice and untainted by stigma. The source of these wounds is the practice of ‘untouchability’, meaning that any physical contact with them is avoided because they are considered ‘unclean’. This article studies the nature of households in India that admit to ‘practising untouchability’ — in the sense of avoiding contact with persons they regard as unclean — and contrasts such households with those that claim to be not ‘practising untouchability’. Such a contrast is possible because the data used, which are from the Indian Human Development Survey, associate with each household a wealth of economic, social and demographic data. Consequently, it is possible to estimate the likelihood of a household practising untouchability, conditional upon the values pertaining to it of a number of relevant factors. These include its social group, its main source of income, the highest educational level of its members, its urban or rural location and its region of residence. The central finding of the analysis is that the practice of untouchability is determined more by the region in which a household is located than by the caste to which it belongs.