The touchable Hindu castes that dominated Chelana in the feudal time were Rajput, Baniya and Brahmin. Also the Charan caste was strong. In the 1970s there were about twentyfive touchable castes in the village and twenty untouchable ones from the pont of view of the highcaste people. The total number of untouchables in the Chelana area was about one fifth of the total population.Bhambi was the biggest untouchable caste at Chelana with about forty families. The Bhangi caste of about ten families was a small part of the village population. Many untouchable castes were even smaller with only one or a few families.
Bhangis at Chelana and elsewhere in Rajasthan were also called Harijans by other villagers and in recent years many Bhangis have started to call themselves Valmiki. There are Bhangi families who have stopped doing any kind of sweeper work, having entered a middle class professional life. They are few compared to those Bhangis, who still rely on sweeper work for their livelihood, but they are bound to become more in the future.
Only Bhangis have sweeping as a traditional caste profession in western Rajasthan. Some persons living far from the reality of the sweepers maintain that sweepers have no caste at all. Nevertheless, it is a caste with a well established gotra system, as will be shown later on in this book.
In these narrations I will use the name Bhangi, which is the ageold name of this caste. It is nothing wrong with that name. The fault is at those who treat Bhangis as untouchables, and have contempt for those who help others in the society by cleaning their streets and toilets and carrying out many other useful tasks.