She shook her had slightly. "The Thevars have isolated themselves from their own humanity. That is easy to see. They can't see us Dalits as human beings, simply because we are poor. This is the reason why we are regarded as being of a lower class, just because we are poor, and they manage to keep us poor. Yes, this reflects poorly on the humanity of those people. For them, money rules everything. And so, they are ruled by it and have lost the most precious that a person can have, which is their humanity. They have thrown it all away for a fad that gives them nothing of value in return. The Thevars, the landowners, literally own our lives, because we are dependent on them, but they don't own themselves. It's been like that for a long time, Peter. It's a part of the colonial legacy, I think. To some degree we Dalits ourselves, may have helped them to cast the differentiation into stone. Some decades ago we have played the role of underlings so willingly, the role of the lowly slave-people, that the rift has became institutionalized and continues even while have laws now that would prohibit it. In earlier times things were not as bad as they became in the modern age. Many Dalit women had actually enjoyed being sexually and socially 'used' by the Thevar men for the benefits they would thereby receive in return that involved at least a little bit of respect. The low cast women weren't educated of course. They didn't know the world. Consequently they enjoyed their tiny bit of a better life that they lived when the Thevar men were using them as concubines. It gave then a bit of status. The more power the Thevar had, the more affection the Dalit women showed for them, and a bit of that affection actually came back to them. It all seemed normal that way. After all, the Thevar were the women's landlords. It may have been this silent acquiescence that gradually lowered the Dalits' status more and more, all the way to the point that they became shunned by society."

      She began to laugh. "They call us the untouchables now. What a joke that became! They call us that even while we are being raped routinely by the high cast people of society, and this often rather openly. The whole setup is so hypocritical that it would be funny if it weren't so sad. Strangely, nobody really cares about the hypocrisy. And why should they? It has become a normal way of life. In some of India's southern states many girls are still being forced into prostitution to the very day, often even before they are reaching the age of puberty. What used to be normal still lingers on to some degree. The Devadasis, they call them. As you might have guessed, the unfortunate 'chosen' girls for the Devadasis 'trade' are almost all from the Dalit community, from the untouchables. The hypocrisy would be laughable if it weren't so sad. Actually, it is more than sad, because once a girl is designated a Devadasis she becomes unable to marry for the rest of her life. She becomes a slave really, a bound prostitute, a living plaything for the upper-caste community. Eventually, when she lost her appeal, she'll be auctioned off to an urban brothel. In the early days, all of this was voluntary, so the historians say. Now, the acquiescence is mostly forced. It's part of the sex trade that never really been voluntary. However, we are fighting back. We Dalits have begun to wake up and have started to refuse to play those games. Of course, as you might suspect, this awakening has become extremely dangerous for us. People are being destroyed in this process of rebelling against their imposed status, especially those of us who object strongly. And here you come to us from America stepping into this quagmire, aiming to uplift our people, to bring some light into their life. Isn't that what you came for? You have come to India from the other side of the world and it really does take someone from the other side of the world to tell me amidst all that mess that we are nevertheless all human beings, with a universal human Soul. We have drifted away from this truth for far too long that the resulting poverty has become our truth. What you call the truth sounds strange to us. Still I know that you are right, because I can feel that what you represent it is the truth."

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Stories about War from novels by Rolf A. F. Witzsche