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 NEW DELHI (AP) - Indians at the bottom of India's Hindu caste system are attacked, raped and killed daily due to their status, even though the rigid social hierarchy has been outlawed for decades, an international human rights group said Tuesday.
India has a strikingly uneven record of battling discrimination against its 165 million dalits, or untouchables. A former president and the current chief justice are dalits, but another 1.3 million earn a pittance clearing human excrement off train tracks.
Five decades after the caste system was outlawed, the vast majority of dalits remain relegated "to a lifetime of discrimination, exploitation and violence, including severe forms of torture," Human Rights Watch said in a report written with the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University's law school.
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