In Eastern Nepal, dalit and woman made temple’s priests

KATHMANDU: When the Nepali society is plagued with the superstition that it is inauspicious when one sees Dalit and widowed woman while going somewhere, there is one village where they are made priests in the temple.

Badaharamal VDC- 1 was such a village a few years ago, where 80 households of nationalities and Bahuns and Chhetris lived and Dalits would not be allowed to be close while filling water.

But in the same village now, a local Dalit and a woman have been made the priests of the Shiva Mandir (temple).

Local Dalits say that caste discrimination was removed after the Dalits boycotted the marriage and party of a non-dalit neighbor even by accepting it in a symbolic protest of the dishonor on the Dalits.

Dalit woman Harimaya Biswokarma has been made the priest in the Shiva temple constructed in April in one kattha of land worth Rs. 600,000 given by a local Gopi Bohara Karki.

The responsibility of the priest is also given to a single woman Gopi Karki along with Harimaya. Villagers said the move was to change the outlook that the discrimination on Dalit and woman is an illusion. RSS