The untouchables

Published on Friday 17 October 2008 11:31

THE young woman sank to her knees on the sidewalk, wailing uncontrollably over the body of her dead son while her husband stood helpless at her side. The five-year-old boy had survived the initial impact of the car, but despite their best efforts, his parents had been unable to save him. It was a pitiful sight, but for most people passing by that day, one that barely warranted a second glance.

The family are members of India's poorest class, known as untouchables, or Dalits – social outcasts who are historically the lowest of the low. They had been unable to save their son because no one would transport him to hospital.

Nine years on, 58-year-old former Edinburgh nurse Gillie Davidson is still haunted by her memories of the dead child she saw unceremoniously dumped on the side of the street that day. "We all felt traumatised by that," she says. "There were many tears, and we had to do a lot of talking to come to terms with what we were seeing. Every night, emotions would bubble to the surface because of the suffering we witnessed each day. It made us question what is really important in life."

Davidson is one of the founding trustees of Scottish Love in Action (SLA), an Edinburgh-based charity that runs a home-come-school in the town of Tuni, in the south-east Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, for hundreds of untouchable children. Many of the youngsters have lost parents in the cyclones that strike each year while others have been orphaned by the spread of Aids.

But it is the indignities that untouchables suffer on a daily basis, including lack of access to adequate healthcare, that Davidson remembers most from her first visit to the country. "When word got around that we had some simple medicines, people began to turn up with the most hideous infected scabies and leg ulcers. I was a staff nurse for 17 years at St Columba's in Edinburgh, so fortunately I was able to help some of them.

"We'd taken small packs of sterile equipment to distribute to pregnant women, including fine string, soap and a razor blade to cut and tie the umbilical cord. We had to impress upon them not to open the packages before the baby came. They looked at you like you'd given them the crown jewels. It made me want to weep. So much misery can be avoided by something so simple. It's hard enough to accept that such poverty and deprivation is the lot of children in the Third World when they are anonymous, but it's impossible when you get to know them, when they have been given hope of a better life. Every day is a challenge, but we can't fail. The price would be too high."

Davidson first became interested in the idea of working with children in India in the 1990s, while running a youth group at Greenbank Church, in Edinburgh's Morningside area. As part of her work, she was involved in devising challenging projects, including overseas visits, for the young people of the parish. Already drawn to the issue of 'untouchability', she learned about the work of Dr Christopher Premdas, a remarkable man who at the time was feeding and clothing a group of 120 abandoned children single-handedly. She says, "I had heard about the millions of untouchables in India, but had no idea how awful their situation was. Premdas was rescuing tiny children from rubbish dumps, slavery and prostitution. I felt there couldn't be a more desperate situation anywhere, and I hoped it was one we could respond to.

"I wrote to find out if there was anything we could do. He replied and asked if we could build a home and a school for the children. He was already looking after a large group of them, and they were sleeping on the floor of his office, or wherever they found a space."

Premdas, a Dalit himself, was determined not to turn his back on his community after he had finished his education, and spent many months travelling around the remote villages of rural Andhra Pradesh trying to raise awareness among Dalits of their human rights. "The main thing he stressed, and it remains at the very heart of our work, was that education was vital," says Davidson. "Most of these children were orphaned Dalits, and were considered vulgar and unclean. Education was the only thing that could offer them a route out of a lifetime of poverty."

There are 250 million Dalits in India, some four times the entire population of the UK, and roughly equal to that of the US. Most face horrendous prejudice and are denied healthcare, education and other basic human rights.

Historically, they have done all the worst jobs, like toilet-cleaning and animal slaughter, and are still discriminated against and shunned by the caste system – even though this has been illegal since 1950. Recourse to the law is largely denied them, as police regularly turn their backs when Dalits are beaten and even lynched.

By the time Davidson travelled to India for the first time, in 1999, with Dr Brian Barron, a dean at Edinburgh University, and 23 youth volunteers from a church group in Edinburgh, she had already committed to a project to build a home-come-school – called Light of Love – for the 120 abandoned 'untouchable' children that Premdas had been looking after.

The warmth of the welcome extended by the children to the first 'white chickens' they had ever seen melted the hearts of the Scots visitors. Davidson is still moved when recalling those early moments, when she and her fellow travellers handed out gifts to the children. "They were so unaccustomed to being given anything that they looked at the present then tried to give it back. We were so touched that we gave them everything we could, including our watches."

Premdas sensed his advantage and wasn't slow to press it home. Once relationships with the children had developed and the construction work begun, he took Davidson aside and said, "These children are your responsibility now. You can't come here once, do this work and walk away. No one else is going to feed and clothe them once you've gone."

On the group's return to Scotland, they formed SLA with the aim of helping the children on a more long-term basis. Its modest aims – to house, feed, clothe, educate and maintain the health of children – have not altered. In the nine years since then, SLA has sent 63 volunteers from Scotland to Andhra Pradesh to help the children. They have stayed for periods ranging from a few weeks to several months, and it is no exaggeration to say that it has changed their lives as well as those of the children they have helped. Among those volunteers was Jonny Gibb, the former Lothian and Borders police officer who won the second television series of the now defunct Survivor, becoming one of the UK's first TV millionaires.

Gibb caused a furore when he joked onscreen that he would spend his winnings on 'women and cocaine'. In fact, he put his new-found riches to good use, by spending two months helping at the orphanage. The stopover was in the middle of an extended period of travel, most of it infinitely more comfortable, but Gibb has no hesitation in declaring it 'the highlight of the trip'. He says he will always remember the moment when he was saying his farewells, and one little girl, tears running down her face, gestured that she wanted to go with him.

This summer, 11 young Scots on a visit to the home were similarly impressed by the children they met. Jamie Chambers says, "Our arrival in Tuni was really something. I don't think I'll ever forget it. It really choked me up, how ready everybody was to welcome us without any inhibition. We'd been there a couple of days when this tiny wee girl, who had only just met me, climbed on me, curled up and went to sleep in my lap. That kind of trust and affection from these children is incredibly humbling. You can't help feeling angry that we have so much, too much, and they have nothing."

Chambers and the group he travelled with are part of Transgressive North (TN), a community of young Scottish artists aged between 15 and 25 that provides support to independent multimedia art projects with creative outreach work. The collective was set up to share something of the privileged world its members come from with disadvantaged children. In the past two years, it has carried out major projects at St Crispin's and St Nicholas's, special schools in Edinburgh.

Chambers and his friend and colleague Duncan Strachan were educated at St Mary's Music School, Edinburgh, and went on to study music at St Catherine's College, Oxford. Chambers has just enrolled on an MA course in filmmaking at the London Film School. Strachan says, "We've all had fairly privileged lives and education, and we want to do some good with that. There's a world out there with none of the advantages we've had, and we want to try to bring something to their lives that we prize for ourselves – the chance to find pride and confidence in creative self-expression."

TN's plans for the orphanage were creative and ambitious. A two-pronged idea soon emerged, dubbed Everything is New. A film would be made using the children to act out a dramatic fantastical account of two cultures meeting. Major cinemas in Edinburgh have already expressed an interest in screening the finished product next September. At the same time, a CD will be released, again featuring the children at Tuni, with songs being composed for the project by a number of high-profile figures – among them authors Irvine Welsh, who will also narrate the film, and Alexander McCall Smith, as well as Jarvis Cocker, former front man with the rock group Pulp.

Chambers says, "To be able to see how much pride and joy the children took in being the stars of a film and making their own CD was one of the most rewarding experiences I can remember. The project will not, however, be truly complete until we can return to Tuni once both film and CD are finished, in order to present all our wonderful wee collaborators with their remarkable achievements."

The children at Tuni have been taught to sing and role-play by previous visitors, but there was greater purpose to this year's fun. As a result, awareness of the children's existence will reach a wider audience. SLA workers hope this will help to develop interest in their work. Davidson says, "The scale of the operation we're now responsible for was not something we could plan for. I suppose the original trustees, who went on that first visit, wanted to keep the charity small, but as our responsibilities grew we had to develop to meet the challenge."

Vicki Watson was brought in to stop Davidson drowning under an ever-growing mound of paperwork, while Colin McRae left a very well paid job in engineering to become the SLA's development officer. But the charity has faced financial challenges too. It took two years of fundraising to accumulate the 28,000 cost of the original building project at Tuni. But in the nine years since, this burden has increased considerably. Five years ago, the numbers in the Light of Love home and school had grown to 250, and SLA needed to raise 18,000 a year to run it. Today, that figure has risen to 28,000. In a country of endless need, it is no surprise to learn that the home now holds 450 children, and Premdas regularly has to make the agonising decision to turn others away. The charity also took over a smaller orphanage in Hyderabad, home to another 57 children, after a car crash killed two members of a family of three who had previously cared for them.

Davidson admits the responsibility can be daunting. "It can be overwhelming," she says, "but the feeling of love and affection we've experienced in return is equally overwhelming. Without our support, these children would have to return to the rubbish tips they were foraging from when they were rescued, or be forced into bonded labour or prostitution. Sadly, some of them have already experienced those awful areas of life. They have all experienced profound loss, the deaths of parents and siblings."

The harsh reality is that in India, in some ways one of the world's most progressive nations, with a fast-growing economy, it is hard to see an end to the need for intervention on behalf of its poorest citizens. Prejudice against Dalits, although illegal, is so deeply ingrained that they barely put up a fight for their rights. They are so reviled in some quarters that even if the shadow of a Dalit falls on a non-Dalit's food, they will not eat it. Dalits cannot marry above their class as their non-Dalit spouse will be rejected by family and friends.

Evidence of extreme reactions to such a union in recent years exists at the Light of Love home. One resident was the product of such a marriage. Her father's family murdered their son's Dalit bride, and he killed himself through grief, leaving his daughter an orphan. Davidson says, "We have to tread arefully because we need to operate in India without being disrespectful to its culture. To us it is unacceptable that a Dalit child would be refused treatment in hospital or that a marriage should provoke murder, but we are not there to lecture anyone, simply to provide what help we can to victims of such injustice. We want the children we support to grow up being proud citizens of India. We want the children to be aware of their fantastic cultural heritage, but we also want them to escape their traditional role at the bottom of society's ladder.

"We now have five of our first children in further education. Next year we will have another 12, and in years to come many more. It's a sign of success, but it adds to the financial burden. A year's college education costs between 400 and 800. We cannot raise these children to the brink of adulthood and then abandon them. We have to support them until they are independent."

A 16-hour journey north of Madras, on the Bay of Bengal, a group of orphaned untouchable schoolchildren take lessons in the shade of a banyan tree. With soulful eyes and winning smiles, they are without doubt happy and appealing, but without the love and support from a distant corner of the globe, their fate would be unimaginable.

For further information, contact SLA (0131 558 7395, www.sla-india.org). The Spolkestra, Transgressive North's 15-piece music ensemble, has produced an EP called Open Arms, which is available on iTunes

The die is caste

The Indian caste system, although usually identified with Hinduism, also exists among Muslims and Christians. Though caste-based discrimination was outlawed by the 1950 Indian Constitution and inter-caste marriages are now relatively common, old traditions are still observed, particularly in rural areas.

Caste has become a major issue in Indian politics. When the government tried to implement recommendations of the Mandal Commission, established in 1979 to redress discrimination, there were mass protests.

According to the ancient Hindu scriptures, there are four 'varnas', which define people's social standing: Brahmins (teachers, scholars and priests); Kshatriyas (kings and warriors); Vaishyas (traders); Shudras (agriculturists, service providers and some artisan groups). The lowest Shudras are Parjanya or Antyaja – the Dalits, who are considered outside the caste system. It is thought caste was originally an occupation-based classification that became hereditary.