NEW DELHI, India; if it had happened in another time, or perhaps another place, few in India would have taken notice of the day they burned Dhanraj to death in the tiny village of Sato Dharmapur.
Except for the national political implications, few would have known that Dhanraj, a 26 year old Hindu untouchable preferred to die rather than give up his bride to a feudal lord who had built a sort of modem day harem while ruling over the likes of Dhanraj and his family.
Dhanraj and the 22 year old woman he took as his wife last January are “Harijans,” Hindu outcastes who, despite laws that forbid discrimination, continue to be the most downtrodden and repressed of India’s 820 million people. They are so low on the social scale that, as the word “untouchable” suggests high caste Hindus will not come within arm’s length of them.
Article extracted from this publication >> June 15, 1990
