Photographer Małgorzata Wakuluk is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this documentary photography. From the ongoing project ‘RAJ KUMAR’. To see Małgorzata’s body of work, click on any image.

Touch Untouchables – Raj Kumar Ram

Untouchables – colloquial term for the lowest social caste in India. It also includes people from outside the caste. Even in the 21st century, they face discrimination and violence from members of higher castes, or traditional social classes, particularly in access to jobs, education, and marriage partners.

India’s Untouchables perform spiritually contaminating work that nobody else want to do, such as preparing bodies for funerals, tanning hides, and killing rats or other pests.

An Untouchable can not ascend to a higher caste within his lifetime. They must marry a fellow Untouchable and can not eat in the same room or drink from the same well as a caste member.

RAJ KUMAR RAM (Rajkumar) comes from a very small Haruijan community. This community deals with fallen cattle and animal skin products and is part of the lowest social caste in India, called the Dalits.. Rajkumar is 25 years old, a wife and two children. He was born with paralyzed legs. He earns money by begging in the streets of Varanasi to feed his family and school for his children. And despite of the fact that he can not walk and he must crawl in the streets among cars and passers-by, he is a very positive and smiling man. He tries to live with dignity and always cares about hygiene and wears clean clothes before going out to work. But when he is at home always trying to spend time with family and friends. He is very proud of his son who learning in school and hope for better life for his children.

We can respect a man because he is different from us

and we can understand him because he is equal to us.