Parnasa was a small village with about a hundred
families in all. The majority belonged to an oppressed caste called golla
(cattleherd) who nevertheless cling to a rung above the untouchables in the
caste ladder. There were also some kammas, brahmins, and, living in the
malapalli outside the village, malas.
Near Parnasa there was what was called a tank--a reservoir the size of a large pond--from which the villagers took water for drinking and washing. Around the tank certain points were designated as special places for people to get at the water, called rayvus. A rayvu might have stones laid as steps into the water and a tree for shade or for hanging wash on. As in other villages, each rayvu around the tank in Parnasa was for the use of a particular caste. The uppercastes would not drink from a lower caste rayvu and the lower-castes were not allowed to touch water from an uppercaste rayvu.
Of the four castes in Parnasa, only two had their own rayvus. The brahmins didn’t need one because they had their own separate source of water far away from the contamination of all the other castes. The kammas had their rayvu and the gollas had theirs, but there was none set aside for the untouchables to use. The only way they could get water was to beg a golla to get it for them. If the golla was in a charitable mood, they would get it; if not, they had to go without.
In the 1920s and 30s untouchables all over India struggled for the right to have their own rayvus. They did not even ask to be allowed to use any rayvu they wanted, but simply to have a segregated rayvu of their own. They were fighting to take a step up to Jim Crow. Even this pathetic demand provoked bloody opposition from the caste Hindus. In the Telugu country, the leaders of the water struggle were missionary-educated mala schoolteachers. In the 1970s when my uncle visited a village in Prakasam district, he met an old man known affectionately as Premayya Master who had no hands. When my uncle asked what had happened to him, it was explained that the kammas had chopped off his hands for leading the water struggle in that village.
Today in Parnasa the malas have their own rayvu--separate, unequal, but existent.
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