When the earliest form of caste was created in ancient India, it had roots in religion. In the 21st century, it lives on as a secular institution that cuts across race, gender, sexuality and class.

LIKE America’s twenty million Negroes, India’s sixty-five million ex-Untouchables are going through a time of significant change. The differences between the two groups are greater than the ...

India’s “untouchables” have attracted attention around the world. Assigned from birth to an inferior station in society, the untouchables are the victim of institutional discrimination. This situation ...

In India’s caste system, the Dalits are traditionally regarded as the lowest of the low. Seen as “unclean,” they are considered untouchable by the higher castes. The country’s 2011 census, the latest ...

KEEZHAIVANAGIRI, India — Muthu Vellaithevan, a farm laborer who is part of India’s untouchable caste, lost seven goats and a cow when massive waves lashed at his coastal village in the Dec. 26 ...

Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India. By Sujatha Gidla. Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 320 pages; $28. ONE in six Indians is a Dalit, which means “oppressed” in ...

Pakistan Christians pray for Asia Bibi, a Catholic mother of five who has been on death row since 2010 accused of blasphemy in Multan, Pakistan. Customs and habits cannot be partitioned. Neither can ...

SAN FRANCISCO — Prem Pariyar believed he had left caste oppression behind when he moved from Nepal to the United States. Here, he would no longer be targeted as an “untouchable.” But as a restaurant ...

"Ants Among Elephants" is the memoir of an Indian woman, born a so-called untouchable, who is a New York City subway conductor. NPR's Stacey Vanek Smith speaks with author Sujatha Gidla. In the caste ...

NOT long ago, just after midnight one Sunday in downtown Bombay, I came upon a silent crowd of several hundred poorly dressed people grouped around a statue of Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, the great leader ...