Untouchability was not so much a sin as a calculated crime. But it is easier for everyone, even some victims, to treat it as a sin, for acceptance of moral culpability costs nothing. The recent walkabout (padayatre) of Basavananda Maadara Channaiah Swamiji, head of a Dalit matha (gurupeetha) in Chitradurga, in a predominantly Brahmin-inhabited agrahara in Mysore, and the cordial, indeed reverential, welcome he received highlight the changing formal perceptions about...

A charred piece of earth and some bits of bones are the only signs of a dastardly killing in the name of honour. No other evidence remains of the spine-chilling crime to mar the rustic charm of Maalaipatti village, perched among the green mountains of the Western Ghats in Dindigul district. On July 28, 2008, a few days after being chained in a bathroom and treated like a rabid dog...

Acting swiftly against a glaring instance of untouchability in western Tamil Nadu, revenue and police officials on Wednesday directed caste Hindus of N Kumarapalayam village, near Dharapuram in Tirupur district, to remove two fences they had erected to prevent Dalits from using public roads. About 150 families of caste Hindus erected barbed wire "untouchability fences" on Friday to prevent over 50 dalit families living in the Aandikattu Thottam village from...

Many in India have embraced Christianity to escape the age-old caste oppression of the Hindu social order, but Christianity itself in some places is finding it difficult to shrug off the worst of caste discrimination. In the town of Trichy, situated in the heart of the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, a wall built across the Catholic cemetery clearly illustrates how caste-based prejudice persists. Those who converted to Christianity from the...

Chezi K. Ganesan looks every inch the high-tech entrepreneur, dressed in the Silicon Valley uniform of denim shirt and khaki trousers, slick smartphone close at hand. He splits his time between San Jose and this booming coastal metropolis, running his $6 million a year computer chip-making company. His family has come a long way. His grandfather was not allowed to enter Hindu temples, or even to stand too close to upper-caste...