16. Social status.
The Chamār ranks at the very bottom of the social scale, and contact with his person is considered to be a defilement to high-caste Hindus. He cannot draw water from the common well and usually lives in a hamlet somewhat removed from the main village. But in several localities the rule is not so strict, and in Saugor a Chamār may go into all parts of the house except the cooking and eating rooms. This is almost necessary when he is so commonly employed as a farmservant. Here the village barber will shave Chamārs and the washerman will wash their clothes. And the Chamār himself will not touch the corpse of a horse, a dog or any animal whose feet are uncloven; and he will not kill a cow though he eats its flesh. It is stated indeed that a Chamār who once killed a calf accidentally had to go to the Ganges to purify himself. The crime of cattle-poisoning is thus rare in Saugor and the other northern Districts, but in the east of the Provinces it is a common practice of the Chamārs. As is usual with the low castes, many Chamārs are in some repute as Gunias or sorcerers, and in this capacity they are frequently invited to enter the houses of Hindus to heal persons possessed of evil spirits. When children fall ill one of them is called in and he waves a branch of the nim[27] tree over the child and taking ashes in his hand blows them at it; he is also consulted for hysterical women. When a Chamār has had something stolen and wishes to detect the thief, he takes the wooden-handled needle used for stitching leather and sticks the spike into the sole of a shoe. Then two persons standing in the relation of maternal uncle and nephew hold the needle and shoe up by placing their forefingers under the wooden handle. The names of all suspected persons are pronounced, and he at whose name the shoe turns on the needle is taken to be the thief.
The caste do not employ Brāhmans for their ceremonies, but consult them for the selection of auspicious days, as this business can be performed by the Brāhman at home and he need not enter the Chamār’s house. But poor and despised as the Chamārs are they have a pride of their own. When the Dohar and Marātha Chamārs sell shoes to a Mahār they will only allow him to try on one of them and not both, and this, too, he must do in a sitting posture, as an indication of humility. The Harale or Marātha Chamārs of Berār[28] do not eat beef nor work with untanned leather, and they will not work for the lowest castes, as Mahārs, Māngs, Basors and Kolis. If one of these buys a pair of shoes from the Chamār the seller asks no indiscreet questions; but he will not mend the pair as he would for a man of higher caste. The Satnāmis of Chhattīsgarh have openly revolted against the degraded position to which they are relegated by Hinduism and are at permanent feud with the Hindus; some of them have even adopted the sacred thread. But this interesting movement is separately discussed in the article on Satnāmi.