(speech drowned out by cabin noise)
- [Aircraft Cabin Crew] Thank you.
- [Phillip] After an 18 hour flight from Boston
to Hyderabad, we're minutes away from landing
in Nanded in the state of Maharashtra.
Before touching down, let me take a moment
to explain what it is that the guy next to me,
Suraj Yengde is returning to.
It's a system called caste.
- [Suraj] They begin with Brahmins,
then there is Kshatriyas, the warriors,
Banias, or they call it Vaishya, the merchant class,
the fourth is Shudras, the lower working-class peasants.
The fifth category, and that is the untouchable caste group.
And this untouchable outcaste groups are 180 million
who do not get recognized.
- [Phillip] Suraj Yengde is an untouchable.
(street chatter and animal noises)
Yengde's family and friends greet him
with bouquets of flowers and effusive smiles,
fitting for a Dalit in their view
who has accomplished what many here call the near-impossible
for a so-called untouchable.
Not merely leaving Nanded,
which very few do,
but leaving to become a lawyer, a Ph.D.,
and a fellow at Harvard University no less.
- [Suraj] This was our house for a good 20 years!
We had a bed here.
When it'd rain, I saw my mom trying to put three buckets
in different locations so the water drops don't fall on us.
My entire life, I slept like this
without realizing that Mom and Dad were dancing
the whole night so that the waters don't fall on us
and we might get distracted from our sleep
for in order to go to school next day.
- [Phillip] But not just to any school,
Yengde's parents enrolled him in a Christian school
in Nanded, where caste mattered,
but mattered far less than in government institutions.
His grades served as the gateway
to higher education in Mumbai,
and from there to going abroad.
- [Suraj] Now if you don't go, what happens?
Once the student graduates from his 12th grade, look around
when the guys who I grew up with
they knew I was here they all came up to talk to me,
and I could say they are doing
exactly like what my father was doing,
and they have very limited future options.
I was asking them, "What do you wanna do?"
They are just silent.
It's almost like they are living-dead people.
- [Phillip] Many liken casteism to American segregation
in the South. But it's so much older
by about 3000 years,
so much more entrenched
and it is enshrined in religion.
Dalits in many towns and villages in India and Nepal
are expected to drink from separate water fountains,
to eat at separate lunch and dinner counters
away from upper-caste Indians.
They're buried in separate graves,
for fear they'll pollute the air,
and they live in segregated neighborhoods like this one.
That's drinking water?
- [Suraj] Yeah, that's drinking water pipe.
- [Man] (speaking in Marathi)
- [Phillip] Drinking water mixed with sewage water?
- [Suraj] This is, this is a tap-water
that the municipality provides.
And underneath you can see that there is a sewage.
- [Phillip] Walking through the neighborhood,
Yengde points to white plastic tubing
that supplies drinking water for 20,000 or so
fellow outcastes squeezed into a slum
the size of Fenway Park.
The tubing runs parallel on the surface
of a foul-smelling sewer clogged with human waste,
paper and discarded bits of everything.
- [Suraj] (chuckling) You can see all kinds of stuff
been dumped here, because people
don't have any other place to dump,
so plastics, food waste, all goes into this.
These are the people who clean it.
- [Namdeo] (speaking in Marathi)
- [Phillip] It's expected, says this man Namdeo Pawar,
who I'm told is on the lowest rungs of untouchables.
- [Suraj] Caste is primarily an occupation-based system,
you are given a position in the job hierarchy
of what kind of job you have to do,
and so the filthiest jobs
were given to the untouchable population
and their ancestors, and their ancestors,
and on and on have been doing the same job!
Cleaning the human filth with their bare hands.
- [Phillip] And Dalits are pushing back.
(protestors chant in Marathi)
Here and across India, former untouchables are protesting
the deaths of hundreds of workers
who have perished while cleaning sewers,
breathing in methane, and slipping and falling in the dark.
They also have demonstrated against sexual violence
against Dalit women by upper-caste men
and an uptick in lynchings in recent years.
A recent New York Times article described an incident
in which a Dalit man who balked at illegal,
but still widely-practiced caste discrimination
was literally scalped.
Yengde says that could have been him.
Even a guy with a Harvard pedigree
is still on the lowest rung.
- [Suraj] It crushes the heart but even today
I am still an untouchable.
Be it Harvard, or be it Kennedy School, or you know,
be it anywhere in the world,
my primary identity for some reason is not going away.
- [Phillip] Back at Yengde's house, his Ph.D.,
law and master's diplomas hang on the damp wall
alongside photos of his now-deceased father
and of Doctor B. R. Ambedkar.
Amedkar is a Dalit hero,
who like Yengde studied in the UK and the US.
He also wrote vast sections of India's constitution,
and as part of that process
he created the world's oldest affirmative action program
which today sets aside 25% of government jobs
and university placements
for Dalits and low-caste Indians.
Yengde says if not for this institutional support,
he would not be where he is today,
because of discrimination.
But the Reservation Policy as it's called
has become a flashpoint for upper-caste resentment
of people like Suraj Yengde.
- [Suraj] (Suraj addressing audience in Marathi)
(audience applauding)
It's a full house at the university here in Nanded.
Several hundred people have turned out
to hear Yengde advise students
on how to get to school in the US.
He tells them to improve their English,
make exemplary grades and take advantage
of India's flawed but hard fought for
affirmative action program.
He also tells folks in the audience,
invoking the name of Ambedkar,
to take pride in their ancestry
and in their Dalit names.
Names explain everything in Indian society,
and denotes one's caste.
But one student here admits that his family
has tried to mask their identity.
- [Man] My father changed our surname
because of class discrimination in India.
Because people can identity your surname
and that's why my father changed my surname.
- [Phillip] But he still faces discrimination, he says.
Another student raises his hand.
- [Suraj] (Suraj addressing audience member in Marathi)
- [Phillip] And asks him a question
that Yengde seems well-prepared to answer.
If he makes it to America, he asks,
will his caste follow?
"Yes", says Yengde.
"Like a shadow."
Phillip Martin,
(sitar scale) WGBH Boston's local NPR.