We don’t have the privilege to forget our caste, says Bezawada Wilson

Magsaysay Awardee Bezawada Wilson has made it his life’s mission to eradicate manual scavenging from India. The leader of the Safai Karamchari Andolan has managed to bring down the number of manual scavengers from lakhs to a few thousands through his unrelenting efforts since launching the campaign over two decades ago. “I did nothing. The Award truly belongs to those people who kept manual scavenging quietly for generations,” remarks the 50-year-old who has infused a new hope in the lives of manual scavengers by motivating them to find alternative work, whether working as house-helps to setting up small shops.
Born to a family of manual scavengers who worked in Kolar Gold Fields, Karnataka, Wilson knows first hand the discrimination his community faces. “It started with comments like ‘thoti’ and ‘bangi’ which were hurled at me in high school. My mother would tell me to ignore them, but when I found out my parents’ true profession, I couldn’t come to terms with it. I have not accepted it till now,” shares Wilson, who began his fight to end manual scavenging in 1986.
“Initially I thought it was because of illiteracy and poverty that people took to manual scavenging. But when I was introduced to the ideas of B R Ambedkar, I realised that only people from untouchable communities had been forced to do it for thousands of years. Even if you become a collector, you will be recognised as a Dalit collector or a thoti collector. We don’t have the privilege to forget our caste,” he says.
The biggest road block for Wilson is the government, “which is always in denial of the fact that manual scavenging still exists in India.” Narrating a recent incident, Wilson says, “When the Supreme Court asked all the district magistrates of the country to give data for manual scavenging in their respective districts, the district magistrate of Ambala decreed: ‘We have listed down 46 women cleaning human excreta in 84 toiletries. But none of them carry human excreta on their heads, so there is no manual scavenging in Ambala’.”
“Where is it written that to become a manual scavenger you have to carry excreta on your head? I have never seen such unity in our country when every district magistrate of this country denied the existence of manual scavenging,” he fumes. Even 23 years after the Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act in 1993, was passed by the Parliament, manual scavenging continues in India. The 2011 Census recorded 794,000 cases of manual scavenging across the country. But proving the existence of manual scavenging in a court of law is a huge challenge in itself. “There’s always a gap of almost two years in between two hearings. So every time the Supreme Court used to discard the evidence stating it is two years old,” explains Wilson who finds himself collecting fresh data every one or two years to prove his claim in the courts.
But he is willing to fight it till the end. “I have to photograph the same women carrying human excreta every time. Every time I see a woman carrying human excreta, I die 20-30 times out of shame. But for the sake of the fight I started, I ask the women to pose with her bucket of human excreta 7 to 8 times,” shares Wilson adding, “Once, dry latrines in Uttarakhand were demolished overnight to remove the evidence of manual scavenging. With hopes of liberation, seven women scavengers came forward to justify my claims in Supreme Court. When I came out of the court, they were looking at me with eager inquisitiveness. I could not meet their eyes. ‘Bhaiya, kya hua?’ asked one of those seven women expectantly. I was quiet. I have no answer even today. The country has no answer, the society has no answer, the Supreme Court has no answer. But how long will we leave that question unanswered?”