Caste wars simmer as defiant barbers refuse to wash the feet of 'upper castes'
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In Puri district of Orissa, the 'lower caste' Bariks (barbers) will no longer wash the feet of upper-caste families at social events. They will no longer perform other caste-driven occupations. The ' upper caste' farmer Khandayats refuse to accept this defiance of the social order and have retaliated with a social and economic boycott. Manipadma Jena travelled to the villages where the caste war has been simmering since 2001
It takes us a little less than an hour to travel the 18 km to Balabhadrapatana from the town of Puri, as we negotiate narrow dirt roads, a precarious log bridge, and squabble with the driver of a bullock cart that blocks the road.
In Puri district, the tradition-bound home of Orissa’s patron deity, Jagannath, a caste war has been simmering since 2001 between the lower caste Bariks (barbers), deemed ‘sewaks’ or ‘sons’, and the farmer Khandayats, originally the landlord or zamindar caste, looked up to as the ‘fathers’.
The matter took a serious turn when, in March 2003, Panchanan Barik of Handiali village in Brahmagiri block filed a police complaint. Since then, 38 complaints from 28 villages have been lodged at the Puri Sadar and Brahmagiri police stations. Of these, the police has registered only six cases.
Appealing to the Orissa Human Rights Commission on May 18, 2004, the Bariks claim that 81 Barik families, consisting of 600 individuals, are locked in bonded service and face social and economic boycott by the upper caste feudal majority community. They refer to sections 11, 12 and 13 of the Bonded Labour (Abolition) Act 1976 and assert that they (the barbers) were being forced to work by virtue of being born into a particular caste.
The Puri district magistrate, however, has not accepted their complaints as cases of bonded labour.
The Bariks allege that despite three years of struggle nothing has changed at the ground level. This, they say, is “because the sympathies of the district administration and the police lie with the higher caste perpetrators of injustice.”
The bone of contention is an age-old practice of ritual feet-washing of guests at various social functions by the Bariks, who perform other roles too in community activities. During funerals and marriages, barber sewaks help with the cooking. After the invitees have eaten, they pick up the plantain leaves with leftovers and clean the cooking vessels. They shave heads and cut nails during the death rituals, and visit villages inviting guests to the 12th day ceremony with turmeric and betel nut. And, of course, they cut hair throughout the year.
When a village meeting is called, it’s the barber who beats the drum and goes from door to door informing every family. During village festivals, he collects money and rice and deposits it with the village leader.
Belonging to this particular caste, the barber and his family are forced to carry out all these activities. In an age-old oral agreement, a Khandayat family pays its sewak approximately 15 kg of paddy in advance as annual wages, around the festival of Holi.
Referring to this caste-based customary service as forced bonded labour, the barbers, many of whom are now educated, are refusing to wash feet, clear away leftover food and leaves and beat the announcement drum. They say the work undermines their dignity.
This sudden human rights stand owes much to the activism of the Ambedkar Lohia Bicharmanch, an Orissa-based social action group.
Meanwhile, the upper castes refer to this as “breaking the social order”. Being the majority community, they have ordered the social and economic boycott of all “rebelling” barber families, refusing them access to drinking water from the public tubewell and the only grocery shop in the village. The victimised Bariks allege they are not even allowed access to the Public Distribution System, and their children do not receive anganwadi food. They are denied free passage on the village road and prohibited from cutting the crop that they raised as sharecroppers.
In Balabhadrapatana village, one of the villages we visited, Sanatan Barik and his family (who face a three-year boycott) were stopped from re-thatching their roof mid-way. Sanatan had to live with a gaping hole in his roof that left his house open to the elements.
Ananda Pradhan, who allegedly stopped the thatching, says he is 80 and infirm. A little shaken at the arrival of city people in a car to enquire about Sanatan’s recent FIR against him, he, however, sticks to his guns. “If Sanatan today despises doing what his forefathers have done for generations (washing our feet), we too have no duty towards him. Why should I give him his customary 15 kg of paddy? The village order will crumble if such indiscipline creeps in,” he says, summing up the collective upper caste feudal mindset.
The Bariks complain, in their FIRs, that when they defy the boycott they are intimidated, assaulted, forcibly confined to their homes and their property looted by the Khandayats. “After snatching away 30 bags of paddy which I cultivated from an acre of sharecropping land, they laid thorns on my doorstep and stood with sticks in their hands to beat us if we stepped out,” says Panchanan Barik, 49, from Handiali village which falls under the Brahmagiri police station. “This is what we get after having stayed in this village for four generations,” he laments.
Panchanan’s wife, Rani Barik (40), who filed a police case on April 23, 2004, is sitting on an indefinite dharna at the gates of the Puri district collector’s house for the second time. Her sons, Suresh (22) who has passed the 10 standard and is a mechanic in Puri, and Lalit (17) who failed the final year at school wants to become a TV repairman, have both given up their family profession and wish to leave the village.
Ghanasyam Barik, 37, from Pakhipala village left his home last year to set up a hair-dressing saloon in Puri town. His elder brother, Mahavir Barik, was victimised because he refused to wash feet. Likewise, Karunakar Barik, 60, from Kahalapada village was asked to cough up Rs 50,000 as penalty for not doing the customary feet-washing. He alleges that Babuli Baral and Laxman Jena, both upper caste men, set cattle onto his land to eat his ripening paddy. “That was 30 bags of paddy gone, right in front of my own eyes. I left my village and have begun working as a daily-wage labourer,” he says, his voice breaking.
The government’s stance is that it has tried to settle disputes in an amicable way, as the situation could have led to social and communal unrest. In February 2001, the officer in charge of the Brahmagiri police station called in leaders from the two caste associations, who hammered out a written agreement. Later, however, the Bariks questioned the validity of the agreement. The Khandayats, for their part, went back to their villages and continued their old ways. When the barbers proved un-cooperative, they simply paid barbers from neighbouring villages to come in and do their work. This was a blow to the local barbers.
Allegedly unable to elicit any positive intervention from the district administration, Panchanan and a group of Bariks went on their first dharna in front of the Puri district collector’s house, on May 5, 2003. A fortnight later, the collector called a co-ordination meeting of leaders of both castes, the police and human rights activists. The administration has since held three such co-ordination meetings.
At the meetings it was decided that the Bariks should not be forced to do jobs they did not want to do. The Khandayats were allowed to bring in barbers from outside. Significantly, a 10-member peace committee was formed, comprising two Bariks, three Khandayats, the tehsildar, the police and human rights activists. The committee agreed it would meet once a month. “One year has passed but the peace committee has not met even once. It was only an eye-wash,” says Baghambara Patnaik, a human rights activist. He adds firmly: “We will not rest until we get justice.”
(Manipadma Jena is an independent journalist based in Orissa)
InfoChange News & Features, June 2004