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Untouchability in India through the Missionary's Eye

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2010

Dick Kooiman
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Extract

About one-seventh of the world population lives in South Asia and about one-seventh of this concentrated human mass belongs to the so-called harijans or untouchables. Economically exploited and socially despised, this minority — which actually contains well over 85 million people — has been relegated to the lower fringes of Hindu society. With occupations like sweeping, tanning, midwifery etc. permanently assigned to them, their degradation is further reinforced by the stigma of ritual pollution, which renders them unfit for social contact: untouchable.

Type
Articles
Information
Itinerario , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , March 1983 , pp. 115 - 124
Copyright
Copyright © Research Institute for History, Leiden University 1983

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References

Notes

1. Mateer, S., “The Pariah Caste in Tranvancore”, no date (± 1880) p. 7, LMS Archives, India Odds, Box 15.Google Scholar

2. Kurup, K. K. N., “Significance of the studies based on the Archival Collections in the Mission House in Basel with special reference to Kerala”, Journal of Kerala Studies, V (1978), p. 457–461.Google Scholar

3. Forrester, Duncan B., “The Depressed Classes and Conversion to Christianity, 1860–1960”, in Oddie, G. A. (Ed.), Religion in South Asia: Religious Conversion and Revival Movements in South Asia in Medieval and Modern Times, (New Delhi 1977), p. 45.Google Scholar