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On our last day, in New Delhi, we met with some remarkable people working among the 500 million members of "Other Backward Castes." Sunil Sardar, who has lived in the U.S. and is married to an American woman, spearheads this effort with an organization known as Truthseekers. He provides a home and center for various leaders of castes from all faiths. We shared lunch with the leader of the Shepherds' Caste, leader of 60 million, as well as the head of the two-million-strong Farmers' Union, a renowned author, and other leaders in the struggle. One scholar told us, "You Americans are celebrating the election of a black man only 250 years after slavery. We are still waiting for liberation after 4,000 years of living under caste."

You hear about "the new India," and indeed, India has changed much in the two decades since I last visited. But in India, nothing goes away; the layers simply accumulate. Electric wires crisscross the major cities, and monkeys now use them as highways. Exotic cars now crowd the highways, but they too have to share them with animals, including an occasional elephant or camel. Every conqueror has left a mark: The Aryans brought the Hindu caste system; the Moghuls brought Islam (India has the second-largest Muslim population in the world, next to Indonesia); and the Syrians, Portuguese, and then the British introduced Christianity. There are also millions of Buddhists, Sikhs, and Jains (who cover their mouths with cloths to avoid inadvertently killing any living thing, even insects).

The statistics in India boggle the mind. There are 160 million Dalits, at the bottom of the caste ladder. Though nominally Hindu, they are not even allowed in Hindu temples, and in recent years have increasingly turned to Islam, Buddhism, and Christianity. Just above them are the Other Backward Castes, which comprise more than half of India's population: 500 million people. Some of the activists coming out of these castes see Hinduism as an oppressive social structure, designed to keep them "in their place." And, of course, any sign of agitation prompts an outburst from fundamentalist Hindus who want to keep things as they are. That partly explains the recent outbreak of violence in Orissa in the northeast of India, where in August alone, 50,000 Christians were chased out of their homes and dozens were killed.

Everyone talks of "the new India," and, of course, when you call for help with your computer or software, many times you end up talking to a whiz kid in Bangalore or Hyderabad. Leave the cities, though, and the old India surges back. Women walking along the road with piles of straw, water buckets, or pots and pans balanced precariously on their heads. Water buffalo pulling hand-hewn plows to till the ground. Irrigation systems run by men who stand all day dipping water from one channel to another. Bent-over old women sweeping the streets with handmade brooms of straw with no handles. More Indians have a mobile phone, we are told, than have access to clean water.In the center of the city, as one Indian told me, "There's no room even to die."

In Hyderabad, we spent a day touring some of the work being done by our hosts here, OM Books. In addition to publishing, they run many social action programs, including 80 schools targeting the Dalits, formerly known as Untouchables. These kids are the first generation of Dalits in 4,000 years to get an education; moreover, they are getting it in English, assuring them of decent employment. They return to their homes with pride, elevating the spirit of the whole community.

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December (Web-only) 2008, Vol. 53