No Haircut For Dalits

Despite being illegal, despite the years of independence and progress India has made the practice of untouchability continues to plague the country's Dalit citizens

- Shweta Desai

SANTOSH Nagoji takes a deep breath and walks toward the hole-in-the-wall men's salon on a Thursday evening. He needs a haircut but dares not enter the 10 x 10 sq feet parlour, painted with pink walls, and take up the empty seat next to two customers. He knows what the barber's response will be. Standing at a distance from the salon's threshold, he still curtly asks, “Kesa kapnar ka (will you give me a haircut)?"

The hairdresser is about to nod when a customer getting a facial stops him. Taking one look at Nagoji he coldly says, "Dalit aahe toh (he is a Dalit)."

In most places, barber shops serve as a space for grooming, hygiene, occasional gossip, and social interaction. For Nagoji a well-built 33-year-old from the Mahar caste, who works on contract as a delivery driver in Mumbai, it is an everyday place of exploitation, discrimination, and humiliation. A place to avoid, a no-go zone.

"No haircut for Dalits," a strictly enforced caste-based prohibition, is a custom, zealously practised in the village of Nagansur, Tondlur, Navindagi and others in Solapur's Akkalkot taluka on the Maharashtra-Karnataka border. The dominant caste of Lingayats-a politically strong community-maintains an upper hand over the scheduled castes of Mahars, Matangs, Dhor and Chambhar living in these villages. In Nagansur of the 8500-odd population, Lingayats constitute the majority and only 1500 are scheduled castes and tribes. They treat members of Other Backward Castes (OBCs) and Muslims as relatively equal citizens. Dalits, however, are ostracised; haircuts in barber shops being one of the examples.