Photo of the Day 4 December 2008


Steaming Laundry, India, 2003
Photograph by William Albert Allard
Untouchables work for a pittance washing clothes at dawn. The Hindu caste system forces 15 percent of India’s population to do jobs deemed “unclean”—anything that involves contact with bodily fluids, such as leatherwork and laundry or burying the dead. Untouchables suffer greatly from discrimination and violence.