It’s dusk. The sun is slipping away and illuminating the red dirt road below me, lending the scant palm trees and buildings a phosphorescent-orangey glow. There’s about a half dozen low-rise concrete houses lining the road, some faded blue and others a vibrant lime green or flamboyant pink. Toddlers cluster around doorways and squeal with laughter as they chase one another; older kids holler commands while playing cricket with a rubber ball in the road. Mangy dogs with spindly legs and missing patches of fur lie like inanimate objects strewn over small pyramids of dirt, made comatose by the heat. A man on a motorcycle flies by with a child not more than two years old balanced on the seat in front of his lap, tiny hands curled while resting on the handlebars. He blows his horn as a warning to kids and cows; a cloud of dust gathers in his wake. A young boy, naked except for a lungi and white cotton Brahmin cord draped across his left shoulder, stands defiantly in his doorway pretending the metal pipe he holds in his hands is a rifle, holding it up to his eye and pursing his lips as he blasts at an unknowable sight.

Although it may not be immediately visible, this is a neighbourhood where caste matters. The thin white rope proudly worn across that  little boy’s chest is a powerful symbol of the prominent role caste plays in everyday life in a traditional city such as Berhampur. In many rural areas of India Dalits (who hold the lowest rank on Hinduism’s 3,000 year-old caste system) are still viewed as social pariahs and face multitudes of abuses.  A 2003 National Geographic News article lists a series of newspaper headlines to illustrate some of the caste-based crimes Dalits suffer: “Dalit boy beaten to death for plucking flowers”; “Dalit tortured by cops for three days”; “Dalit ‘witch’ paraded naked in Bihar”; “Dalit killed in lock-up at Kurnool”; “7 Dalits burnt alive in caste clash”; “5 Dalits lynched in Haryana”; “Dalit woman gang-raped, paraded naked”; “Police egged on mob to lynch Dalits”.  In 1989 the Indian parliament even passed legislation, The Prevention of Atrocities Act, protecting Dalits from common hate crimes. The act made it illegal to parade individuals naked in public, force them to eat feces, take their land, pollute their water sources, sabotage their right to vote and set fire to their homes.

For centuries in India the caste system has dictated the fate of many and although untouchability has been officially banned by the government, it’s hardly an anachronism. While some Dalits have managed to rise to power, most notably India’s tenth president,  K.R. Narayanan, it’s not uncommon to see rural communities (where the majority of the population resides) still reserving the occupations of doctors and lawyers for Brahmins and allocating extremely menial duties (such as disposing of human waste) to Dalits.

In daily life here, caste creeps into conversations: While driving, one of my partner’s colleagues talks about his Brahmin Sacred Thread Ceremony, when we met our landlord he wore little but a lungi and Brahmin cord, and when we asked where to dispose of our garbage his wife gestured to the pasture beside the house where the “rubbish pickers” (a task traditionally performed by Dalits) worked; a teenage neighbour followed his introduction of himself with an announcement of his caste, Khandayat, or warrior caste.

Although Dalits have been organizing and demanding their rights be recognized, the Indian government has still been sluggish to respond. As the world’s largest democracy expands, will the sanctioned discrimination of the caste system remain protected?