untouchable artist ?

Art can abolish any kind of disparities prevailing in the society, but what about those traditional artists, whom people considered as untouchables!. This is a strange reality in Gujarat. “ We are traditionally nats (performer) and our profession is to entertain the society as well. But people, mostly upper castes, consider us as untouchables and so, they keep distance from us even in public places. We are not allowed to get water from village’s well. Temples are closed for us. It is because, we are dalit’s nats. historically dalits has been untouchable in the hindu caste hierarchy. So, for upper castes, any one who works with dalit are untouchables.,” says sankarbhai solanki, an artist living in tokarala village near surendranagar district.
Originally, nats had come from rajas than some years ago. they had faced severe drought in rajasthan, so, they migrated towards Gujarat for ROJIROTI and letter, they started living with dalits as their NATS.
Ironically, nats are listed as an OBC community in the state. However, Experts in this field says that technically, untouchable castes should fall in schedule caste category but nats has not been included in schedule caste’s list. That’s not fair to the traditional community.
Sources in the state says that few years ago experts have recommended this community to be included as schedule caste. But it could not worked out. Caste politics has played a major role in this factor. Sankarbhai of nat community said, “ Our community is waiting to be listed in the schedule castes category and hope it will work out soon.”