ABSTRACT
Manupur, one of the thousand villages scattered over the Gangetic plain in the north state of Uttar Pradesh (UP): a Chamar (leatherworker, ‘untouchable’ caste) girl tries to fetch water from a water pump but she is told off by members of a local agricultural caste – explicitly reacting against her ‘polluting’ presence. Prior to the girl being chased away, her father had watched a dog licking off water from the same pump. The dog had encountered no resistance. The girl’s father, who narrates the episode to me many years after its occurrence, remarks ‘Is my daughter less than a dog?’ 1
