Explaining caste systems

More than 260 million people worldwide continue to  suffer under what is often a hidden apartheid of segregation, exclusion, modern day slavery and other extreme forms of discrimination, exploitation and violence.

The International Dalit Solidarity Network is concerned with the issue of descent-based discrimination throughout the world, although the term dalit is used specifically in the context of South Asia notably in caste- (or tribe-) based distinctions.

These distinctions, determined by birth, result in serious violations across the full spectrum of civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights. Likewise, the nature of a person’s work or occupation is often the reason for, or a result of, discrimination against the person.

People who perform the least desirable jobs in a society are often victims of double discrimination, suffering first from the nature of the work they must perform and suffering again by the denial of their rights because they perform work that is unacceptable. In most cases, a person’s descent determines or is intimately connected with the type of work they are afforded in the society. Victims of discrimination based on descent are singled out, not because of a difference in physical appearance or race, but rather by their membership in an endogamous social group that has been isolated socially and occupationally from other groups in the society.

Among the communities severely affected are the  dalits or the "untouchables" of South Asia, in Nepal, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan, an estimated three million Burakumin in Japan,  'caste people' in West Africa and various communities in other African countries. Caste discrimination can be also be found among the widespread Indian diaspora.

All these communities, diverse in geographical and historical origin, share some key characteristics. Among these are:

• The concept of ‘purity-pollution’, with certain social groups being regarded as ‘dirty’, and contact with them as being ritually or actually polluting.
   

• An inherited occupational role, typically the most menial and hazardous roles within the society.
   

• Inabilty or restricted ability to alter inherited status;
   

• Socially enforced restrictions on inter-marriage.
   

• Segregation in location of living areas, and in access to and use of public places
   

• Subjection to debt bondage
   

• Generalised lack of respect for their human dignity and equality