Cast away: No takers for these Dalit snake charmers

Suchandana Gupta,Times of India, July 29, 2007

HOSHANGABAD: While most other boys his age jump at the sight of a cat, six-year-old Khemchand Sapera helps his dad catch poisonous snakes. Too young and feeble to lift a python, Khemchand can, however, give a free demonstration of how to catch a live cobra. You would think he's a local hero, idolised by neighbourhood boys. On the contrary, Khemchand is shooed away by them as they cry out calling him an "untouchable".

If you thought untouchability has lost its grip, here's a reality check — it's being practised, and not by the upper castes only.

Just 20 metres from National Highway 12 and 170 km from Bhopal near Rani Pipariya village in Hoshangabad district resides a community of snake charmers. Considered one of the lowest among Dalits, even other sects of the Dalit community do not mix with them. "We cannot even reside in the main village and have to live at least 200 metres away from rest of the society," said Mallunath Sapera, an elderly member of the community.

"Although they might be pushed to one corner, other Dalit communities are permitted to at least live inside the villages. But no one will accept us. The Kathiars, Charmkars and Meras are also scheduled castes, but they don't touch us. At weddings, we sit to eat with animals. As for the upper castes, we go stand in front of their houses during Nag Panchmi festival and they throw us a rupee or two. We still cannot enter the temples, our children cannot go to school and politically we have no power since we are less in numbers," said Mallunath.

Hoshangabad district has only 1,200 members of the Sapera community, while Madhya Pradesh has less than 25,000 families. Every successive government in the state has formulated policies and spent thousands of crores for the uplift of the Dalit community, but nothing seems to have reached this group.

In January 2002, the then Digvijay Singh-led Congress government had announced its Dalit agenda and claimed to distribute thousands of acres of government land among Dalits — nothing reached the Saperas of Rani Pipariya.

The successive Uma Bharati government promised a new Dalit policy and the current Shivraj Singh Chauhan administration called a Dalit panchayat in the CM's official residence. But life has hardly changed for Khemchand and his brother Tulsiram (5), who still go with their father to catch snakes in the morning because other students refuse to study with them and there is nothing else they can do.

An average Sapera family in Rani Pipariya earns about Rs 35-50 a day. Though they have BPL cards, they don't have the Rs 120 required to fetch the rations. Snake charming, their only source of livelihood, is also under "threat". "The forest department takes away our snakes and puts us behind bars. They say catching snakes is a crime. But how do we live? We have no other means of livelihood. No one even stepped into our village till six years ago when our names were included for the first time in the electoral list," said Chandabai, mother of eight children.

Fearing the police and forest departments, Chandabai sends her children with the snakes to the villages. "The police don't lock-up children. So we depend mostly on our children to do the earning