Apastamba Dharma Shastra 2.1.2.8; Vishnu Shastra 71.58-59; Satapatha Brahmana 14:1:1:31; Parasara Shashra 6.22; Kurma Purana 11.34.80; Usana Samhita 9.89: "Speaking with an Untouchable, looking at him, stepping on his shadow, is prohibited and making Dvija impure." 

O Hindu,

But in Dalit memory,
They are one long night.

A night that starts
Whenever a non-Dalit
Picks up a weapon
Because someone
Of "his" caste
Was insulted
By the sight
Of a Mlechchha standing tall.

A night that continues
In the laughter
Of the acquitted men
Leaving court,
Garlanded,
Celebrated,
Hailed as defenders
Of "honor,"
And "order."

A night that seeps
Into the dreams,
Of those of us
Who were not there
But know,
We could be next
For sitting in front of them,
For crossing their street,
For wearing a white cloth,
For talking to their daughter,
For reading an Oxford book,
For loving their daughter,
For writing a scholarly work,
For a well,
For a slogan,
For a seat on a panchayat bench,
For a love marriage,
For a piece of land
We refuse to surrender.

In this long night,
We count our dead
With both hands
And still come up short.

We hold their names
Like fragile lamps:

Duddu Vandanam Madiga (35)
Wife: Subbulu Madiga
Mother: Alisamma Madiga
Father: Sujnanam Madiga
Son: Samuel Madiga (10)
Daughters: Jayalakshmi Madiga (10), Punnamma Madiga (7), Sunitha Madiga (4)

Duddu Ramesh Madiga (22)
Wife: Sulochana Madiga (18)
(Married just a year ago)
Mother: Sundaramma Madiga(dead)
Father: Yohan Madiga

Tella Yehoshua Madiga (55)
Wife: Chinnammi Madiga
Sons: Kotaiah Madiga (30), Adiah Madiga (24)
Daughters: Padma Madiga (27), Suhasini Madiga (22)

Tella Moshe Madiga (70)
Wife: Veeramma Madiga
Sons: Kripa Rao Madiga (35), Ravi Madiga (29)
Daughters: Ruthumma Madiga (37), Deenamma Madiga (32), Rattamma Madiga (25)

Tella Muthaiah Madiga (45)
Wife: Atchimma Madiga
Sons: Papaiah Madiga (25), Lakshmaiah Madiga (18), Prabhakar Rao Madiga (11), Kishore Madiga(9)
Daughters: Mariamma Madiga (16), Eeramma Madiga(4)

Duddu Abraham Madiga (40)
Wife: Ahalya Madiga
Mother: Atchamma Madiga
Father: Rattaiah Madiga
Sons: Srinivas Madiga (20), Venkateswarlu Madiga (10)
Daughters: Padma Madiga (7), Chittemma Madiga (4)

Raped Dalit women
And other atrocities in the Karamchedu massacre;

Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange family:
Surekha (40),
Priyanka (17),
Sudhir (19),
Roshan(21),
In the Khairlanji massacre;

Jalaadi Mattaiah,
Jalaadi Immanuel,
Jalaadi Issaku,
Mallela Subbarao,
Mandru Ramesh,
Devarapalli Jayaraj,
Sankuru Samsonu,
Angalakuduru Rajmohan Madiga,
Mandru Parishuddharao,
Kommerla Anil Kumar,
Guduru Leyamma,
In the Tsundur massacre;

The Dalit farmer burned in Tsundur,
The Dalit child drowned in a well,
The Dalit teacher shot in daylight,
The Dalit labourer hacked to death in a field
Each one an entire world
Flattened into a casualty figure.

They tried
To erase us in clusters,
Cleanse whole pockets
Of resistance,
Turn Dalit presence
Into Dalit absence
And then call it peace.

But even in the ash,
Something survives.

Dalit women from the Bathani Tola massacre
Testify in court,
Voice shaking
But unbroken.
Dalit men from the Tsundur massacre
Write their story down
So the next generation
Will know
These were not earthquakes
They were decisions.

Young Dalits,
Born after these slaughters
Carry them,
Like invisible tattoos,
Raise blue flags
In streets where
Smoke once hung,
Write slogans on walls
Built from the same bricks
That sheltered murderers.

Total Dehumanisation
Was the script:
To make our deaths
Ordinary,
Our extermination
A footnote,
Our grief
Too local
To matter.

We answer
By insisting
On the global scale
Of a single tear.
By calling each massacre
What it is:
Not tragedy,
But policy in practice;
Not spontaneous,
But structured;
Not many little events,
But a single,
Slow genocide
Spelt out over centuries
In different villages' names.

We gather our dead
Into one procession
In our minds.

They walk together
From Karamchedu's drenched fields,
From Laxmanpur's winter fog,
From Khairlanji's canal,
From every unmarked ditch
Where Dalit bones
Lie unmarked.

We march behind them
With our cracked feet,
Our cracked rage,
And our living vow:

Your attempt
To wipe us out
Will be remembered
As the proof
Of your own inhumanity.

You could burn
Our bodies,
Our houses,
Our crops,
But you could not
Burn the evidence
Etched into the conscience
Of this land.

Total Dehumanisation
Was your invention.

Total Humanisation
Is my dream.

The fact
That we can stand here:
Speaking,
Reading,
Sitting,
Wearing footwear,
Wearing white cloths,
Touching water,
Writing,
Organising,
Loving your daughter,
Naming each site
Of slaughter
With unshaking tongues
That do not shake:

That is your fall.
And our beginning.

From every carnage,
We lift one word,
A stone heavier
Than all your weapons:

Justice.

Not the thin kind
Measured in rupees
And token arrests,
But the thick,
Transforming kind,
That will one day
Make it impossible
For a village
To agree
To kill its Dalits
And still call itself human.

Until that day,
We keep count.
We refuse forgetting.
We braid our mourning
Into movement.

So that no Dalit child
Will ever again
Inherit a map
Where their own village
Is famous
Only for the day and night
They killed its people
And called it
Order.

You say,
"Don't talk about caste,
It divides us,"
As they drink from a glass
We are not allowed to touch.

We know them
Long before they know our names.

Non-Dalit is not just a word.
It is the hand that takes the front seat.
The body that walks through every door
We are stopped at,
The laughter that thickens
When we enter a room.

In school,
They are the boys
Who hold their noses
When we sit beside them,
The girls who wash their hands twice
After sharing a bench.
The teacher who says gently,
"Don't mind them,
Things are like this only,"
And then writes "EQUALITY"
On the blackboard.

At the water tap,
They turn our thirst
Into a distance.
"Stand back,"
"We will pour it for you."
A glass hovers in the air,
Swinging between kindness and contempt.

Even water
Is taught to know its place.