Are there any lesser humans?

Saartjie Bartman at University of Cape Town library

Is there a lesser community in this world? Are there any lesser humans? Ask these questions to any seasoned orator and his answer will be both yes and no according to the situation he is in and according to the power and money gain his answer gives him. But are there really lesser humans?

Yes. That was my answer when I first read of Saartjie Baartman, a woman from South Africa who died in 1816 at the age of 27. She belonged to a tribe called Khoisan in South Africa. She was taken to Britain, caged and exhibited naked around the ‘land where sun never sets’. All because she had a trait peculiar to their tribe- protruding buttocks (Steatopygia). After the Britishers got tired of her, she was sent to Paris for exhibition, where she died of cold. The men who taught civilization to the world did not stop with her death. She was dissected and used for medical research, a plaster cast was made out of her remaining body, painted and put on display in the Musée de l'Homme in Paris until she was cremated in 2002, 186 after her death. We may feel repulsed, but this is where issues of human dignity comes in. But she was not treated like a human, only like an animal, and animals don’t have dignity.

All these happened many years ago. And now after all these years, even if we don’t put human beings in cages for our ‘knowledge and entertainment,’ we still do not deserve to associate the word dignity with humans. In India, the ‘lesser’ humans are still being paraded with little clothes on them, punished publicly for small mistakes as violating untouchability, drinking from common cups … These practices are getting lesser and are condemned by the public at large. But there is still one more practice that is more heinous and more blatantly ignored in some States of our country. Manual scavenging has not got wide publicity and wide-spread public condemnation, not because it is not undignified, but because we don’t bother to oppose those practices which are useful for us. Manual scavengers, or carriers of night soil as they are called, clean the dry toilets with brooms, carry the human excreta in baskets on their heads and dump them almost every day of their lives. One of these ‘lesser’ humans says, “…when I return home I can hardly eat because of nausea. The men are lucky, they can drown it all in liquor.” They are exposed to the most virulent forms of viral, bacterial infections of eyes, skin, limbs, respiratory and gastrointestinal systems. The practice is still prevalent in Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and some other States, but has been fortunately banned in Karnataka in the 1970s itself. Unofficially, there are still nearly 10-12 lakh manual scavengers in India, even after public toilets were introduced. One of the major employers of these workers is the municipality, which is a government body. The Railways, however, is the biggest violator of human dignity with nearly 30,000 passenger coaches fitted with open-discharge toilets. The irony is that there are people who even support it. It seems there is no end to the shameful practice. We are again proving that there are still ‘lesser’ humans amongst us who do not deserve our fair treatment. It is not often the lack of resources that is the root cause. Often, it is the lack of concern, competence and even character.

To most people in India, such traditional works can be accepted without any remorse and carried on. It is no use to blame the government alone when people themselves seem satisfied with their conditions, though not in disgraceful practices like manual scavenging, atleast doing the works of their forefathers. Some years ago, I used to teach a few children in my grandparents’ house in a small village in Dakshina Kannada. They used to skip school and go to work around the village. But they did not dare to skip my classes because my mother would scold their parents. But after sometime, they stopped coming to me too. I went to their houses and asked the reason. Their parents said they had gone to collect firewood and that they will not come to classes again. When pressed for reason, they said it is enough if their children learnt to sign their names. They asked me what do they have got to do being educated? It is enough for the children of their community to study till 4^th and if the child is very intelligent, till 10^th. I tried vainly to convince them. Now, the boys are working as waiters in a Bangalore hotel. The one who studied till 10^th std. has ‘fortunately’ gone to Mumbai and become a technician there. I know of three more such children whose parents stopped their studies not because they did not have the money, but because it is enough for the likes of them. Their parents are happy if their sons earn and send money back to them, it does not matter what they do to earn it. Many such people in India do not think that even heinous practices such as manual scavenging is bad and should be stopped. For them, it suffices that this is their duty as it is the work of their caste.

Now, the United Nations has chosen ‘Dignity and Justice for all’ as the theme for its 60^th celebration of World Human Rights Day this year. But in our country even terrorists are entitled to dignity and human rights, but not the ‘lesser’ humans. These well-intentioned themes are ignored even by many of the United Nations’ member-countries. Japan still has a community called ‘Burakumin’ who are treated as untouchables. Dignity and Justice for all will remain on paper for a long time to come.