In Sambhal, Balmikis, a community of manual scavengers left Hinduism and embraced Buddhism because of their continuous isolation. The tragedy is that even the barbers were not cutting their hair. The fact is that Barbers are one of the most humiliated communities in India and at many places their job is not just cutting hair but in our traditional village system of Manu, they wash feets of the baratis and do all kind of work which none would advise in modern democratic society but such is the ‘power’ of varnashram dharma that even a humiliated Barber enjoy humiliating those who he feels are ‘lower’ than him. Long ago Baba Saheb Ambedkar called it graded inequality, ascending order of reverence and descending order of contempt.
Vidya Bhushan Rawat, 'Why Is Saharanpur Burning?', Countercurrets