O Jurist Dr. Gregory Stanton,

You talked of genocide in ten slow steps
I come from a land
Where we have been walking those steps
For six thousand years
Without shoes,
Without dignity,
Without respect,
Without names,
Without dignity,
Without identity,
Without human status,
On broken glass.

You talked of modern genocide,
Twentieth-century hells,
Train tracks to crematoria,
Files and forms and lists.
We bring you something older,
More patient,
Carved not on paper
But on my Untouchable skin.

Come, let me show you
How your ten stages
Were already fossils
In the strata of our Dalit pain.

Classification!

We were labelled before we were born.

In your first stage
They say the world is divided into "us" and "them."
In my world
The division is the first lullaby.

Before my mother, "Suguna Yadav"
says my name, the Hindu village, and
The Muslim village has already
Decided my Pariah status.
The horoscope of my birth
Is written
On the soles of my feet:
"Untouchable."
"Unseeable."
"Unshadowble."
"Unapproachable."
"Madiga."
"Candala."
"Achut."
"SC."
"Dalit."
"Scavenger."
"Inferior."
"Slave."
"Mooknayak."
"Impure."
"Other."

O Jurist,

You measure in decades,
We measure in scriptures,
In the Hindu Shastras,
In Satanic Verses,
In the ringing of temple doors,
And Islamic prayer halls,
Shutting us out.

Ambedkar once told you,
"Caste is a system
That classifies men
In an ascending scale of reverence
And a descending scale of contempt."
We live at the sharp, hot tip
Of that contempt
Where the value
Evaporates
In the kitchen smoke
We are not allowed to share.

Our birthdays are not celebrations,
They are entries
In an ancient ledger:
One more body
Assigned to the bottom
To hold up the sky.

Symbolization!

The marks we never chose

In your second stage
You speak of symbols,
Of badges sewn on sleeves.
Here, the badge is the name:
Untouchable that never leaves
Our tongue.

They call us by jati
Before they call us "brother,"
By caste
Before we are called "child."
Our surnames are handcuffs.
Our addresses
"SC colony," "Dalit basti," "cheri"
Are maps for Sanatan-Sharia butchers.

Once, my people had to wear bells
So air itself
Could flee from our approach;
Had to leave our sandals behind
So the earth might not be "polluted"
By the leather kissing our heels.

Now in 2026,
In the tea shop,
The separate cup
Whispers the same old verdict
Of the six thousand years.
One steel glass
For the gods,
One clay cup
For the children of a lesser birth.
In cities, we have United Nations dim lights,
Human rights flyovers, Justice malls,
But the Judge still sees
The village on our faces
And places upon the table
A different kind of glass.

Even the lanes are labelled:
Ambedkar Nagar,
Manda Krishna Madiga Nagar,
Madiga Gudem,
Means Dalits live here
Warning or address,
Depending on who reads the sign.

Symbols, you say,
Are tools.
Here, they are scars
That never close.