An op-ed exploring caste discrimination, citizenship barriers, and economic exploitation among Sadaa Dalit communities in Nepal’s Saptari district.
Barefoot, he runs, wearing nothing but a pair of worn-out shorts. He finds his sister, and together, they sit on a flat rock that oddly resembles an iPad. Their ribs almost poke out against their skin, and their hands hold a black cell phone. Around them are huts made from mud, and family members equally malnourished. The Sadaa Dalit children are amongst the most marginalised in Nepal.
This summer, I visited Tirhut municipality in Saptari. Beyond acres and acres of green farmland, beautiful temples, and mango orchards, this Nepalese district remains submerged in systemic discrimination and negligence. Discrimination based on descent, and therefore caste, is particularly prominent in the district, with the Dalit community suffering disproportionately.
The Dalit community is composed of resilient, hardworking artisans and agricultural labourers who have long sustained Nepal. The so-called Hindu hierarchy, however, strips them of this identity, disgracing the community as “untouchables”. The self-proclaimed higher castes have historically deemed the community contaminated— often refusing to touch the objects they touched; denying them entry to their homes; and in some cases, even avoiding their shadow.
This belittlement is not limited to mannerism and demonstrated inequity however, for it is baked into language as well. In Sanskrit, the word ‘Dalit’ translates to downtrodden, broken or oppressed. While it is true that the community was forced into oppression, they were never contaminated—no human is. Today however, the word ‘Dalit’ is an identity of resilience, strength and incomparable compassion and craftsmanship.
History has its ironies. Nepalese societies historically depended almost entirely on the agricultural labor of the sidelined Dalits. The leather shoes and intricate outfits that protected the “higher-caste” from the contamination they feared, whilst providing them the prestige they sought most, would cease to exist without the craftsmanship of this community. So, how I see it, the only contamination that actually perpetuated during these generations of untouchability existed in the practices of prejudice, hate, division and the diminishment of a human’s dignity.
Today, constitutional protections and international covenants render “untouchability” illegal. Yet discrimination against the Dalit community manifests in staggering numbers. In its 2024 report, Amnesty International concluded that legal reforms alone have failed to eliminate this pervasive bias. Furthermore, while Article 39 and Article 10 of The Constitution of Nepal guarantee the Right to Birth Registration and the Right to Citizenship, respectively, these rights are often blatantly denied in practice.
According to Nepal Youth Foundation (NYF) representative, Mr Lalit Gahatraj, currently leading the Caste Equality Project (CEP) in Saptari, many Dalits continue to be denied birth-registration, land-ownership and citizenship, with deniers citing that there is no evidence that “those” people are Nepalese. Founded by the late Marin attorney, Olga Davis Murray, NYF is a San Francisco-based NGO focusing on youth empowerment, with its most recent project being the CEP in Saptari.
As an observer, student and teenager who recently obtained Nepalese citizenship, Saptari showed me discrimination that goes even beyond what I could’ve anticipated. Where a meal struggles to reach the body, cell phones reach almost every hand.
Discrimination underpins this ironic reality.
When denied birth registration, the Dalit children are denied an education. Denied an education, they are denied the opportunity to seek formal employment. According to Mr Gahatraj, middlemen frequently prey on this disparity, enticing impressionable youths and their desperate families with financial benefits. Mr Gahatraj further explains that the youth journey only some fifty kilometres, carried by middlemen in trucks meant for produce and poultry to cross the Nepal-India border. This is particularly convenient in Saptari as the district borders India. In India, the youth are exploited as low-wage labourers, often returning with dire physical injuries that prevent any foreseeable employment.
However, their time in India is not without one perceived luxury. For many, it is the first income they have ever earned. While this income is nominal, it provides just enough to purchase a second-hand cell phone and set up a WiFi system in their village homes, ensuring that even when marooned across a border, they are still able to contact their loved ones.
Yet, the cost of this connection fails to nourish the body with a hot meal. When inequity forces you to choose between nourishment and connection, what choice remains?
Discrimination underpins this reality, yet again.
So when a painfully malnourished child sits on a rock the size of an iPad with a cell phone in hand, do I still call it ironic?
