"NSS IITD" in collaboration with "Pravah" organised the screening of "India Untouched" on August 29, Saturday facilitated by SMILE volunteers. The highlight was the discussion part after the screening. Beyond all expectations, audience found the relevance of the issue and almost everyone present there was an intimate part of the discussion. The issue of the movie was well known to all, but the way it was put there in the movie and later the points discussed seemed to enlighten everyone and put a lot of unknown facts forward. The way the audience discussed their personal examples related to the issue, showed it was very near to their hearts.
Some of the major points that came out of the discussion and movie were:

· The awareness of the fact that it was still so prevalent both in practices at the grass root level and psychologically in the so called educated elite, the point to think about is, does it exist in IIT too? (as highlighted by the JNU student case).

· The fact that people who are victims of untouchability further perpetuate the practice (subdivisions in Dalit castes and how some Dalitsub-castes subjected other Dalit sub-castes to various atrocities that they themselves were victims of).

· Someone pointed out that the Manusmriti isn’t an integral part of the Vedas and that in the Bhagvad Gita Lord Krishna offers help to everyone irrespective of their caste.

· The caste discrimination subconsciously still exists in our hearts even if we don’t explicitly practice it in reference to the lady who denied any caste beliefs but still wanted to strictly marry within her caste.

· State machinery uses castes to divide us for their own political gains.

· It was new to some to that caste distinctions occur in almost all religions and even states like Kerala which is a communist state and boasts of the highest literacy rate in India has such a rampant growth of caste based practices.

· There was a heated discussion on the issue of reservations and whether they should be community based or community, on the creamy layer issue, the positives of the system of reservations which drew some interesting and thought provoking arguments from either side.

· Finally some were perplexed at the reasons for this sort of discrimination and longed for the prevalence of humanity in all.

This brought us to the question of taking initiatives and not waiting for the society to change but to start changing ourselves. The effort to start the process of thinking and self-questioning thus got underway. The very hope to change and not to accept things as they are seemed to flame in everyone. It was very encouraging for us to see your enthusiasm and to hear out your point of views.

SMILE Pravah would like to continue its association with IIT Delhi and we eagerly await any comments on the movie or related issues. We would also like to further conduct such screenings and discussions if feasible. Please feel free to write out your views of the event and also to contact us for any sort of information or comments.

Anurag anurag0999@gmail.com