Dalit

[sumithar]

Moderator,
If this belongs in Tuesday Trivia feel free to move it- but that forum seemed to be full of discussions about not getting the questions and such like, hence my decision to post this here.

I have to take exception to the wording of this question and answer
"What popular TV show shared its title with the English name for the "Dalits" of India? The 160 million Dalits are "The Untouchables."

The English name for Dalits is not Untouchables. The word dalit means "Crushed" or "Downtrodden". It is a word that that the communities of people who were identified as Harijans (by Mahatma Gandhi) chose for themselves as being more representative of their status in society.
Dalits belong to castes that were traditionally untouchable (sweepers, cobblers and so on) but to say that they are "untouchables" is a misuse of the term.

I am not getting into a debate about whether untouchability is practised in India and readers of this forum might conclude that it is a question of semantics. But your question also was semantic in nature and hence demands a precise answer. Perhaps if you had worded it as
"The term dalit refers to people who were treated like the characters on this English TV Show" or something along those lines...

An equivalent analogy would be to ask
"The Hindi word Kallu means this pejorative term"
Answer: N****r

But it would be wrong- even though Kallu is a term used by S. Asians to refer to members of the African American community, it is most certainly not the N-word. It just means black person in colloquial Hindi and goes along with desis (natives, ie S Asians themselves) and goras (ie palefaces)

[Sequin]

In English the Dalits are known as "The Untouchables" - this may not be a true translation of the Indian original (is it Hindi, Urdu or some other language?), but this is the name by which they are commonly referred to in English, so the question is valid as asked.

The characters in the TV program were not treated like the Dalits in any way, so your rewriting of the question is invalid

[rockgolf]

Thankfully, there's no cash involved, so this is not Dalit for Dollars.

[Ken Jennings]

Hello Dalit!

As Sequin says, the question never says or implies that Dalit means "untouchable." Translations don't have to be literal ones. I specified the "English name," and "untouchables" is, in English, certainly still the commonly used word for "Dalit." I have no idea if your n-word analogy is correct in South Asia, but it's not even close to true in the West. "Untouchables" is still commonly used in reference works, academia, etc. to refer to that caste.

[sumithar]

Hello Dalit!

As Sequin says, the question never says or implies that Dalit means "untouchable." Translations don't have to be literal ones. I specified the "English name," and "untouchables" is, in English, certainly still the commonly used word for "Dalit." I have no idea if your n-word analogy is correct in South Asia, but it's not even close to true in the West. "Untouchables" is still commonly used in reference works, academia, etc. to refer to that caste.

OK- I know I am not going to make any of you change your opinion but the question boils down to " What is the English name for the "Dalits" of India?"

And the answer again, most certainly, is not the untouchables.
Good old Wikipedia has this to say
"Dalit is the term used in Western countries for the former (emphasis mine) "Untouchables" of India. Within India, the National Commission for Scheduled Castes has held that the term Scheduled Caste is the proper constitutional usage for those identified as Dalits in contemporary Western literature"

I don't know what works of reference you are alluding to but if they imply that "Dalit" is the English equivalent for Untouchable (in the present tense) then they are wrong.

Dalit is the term used by members of what were the untouchable classes, to refer to themselves now. If you need an English equivalent, use "Scheduled Caste"- not untouchables.

[AndySaunders]

OK- I know I am not going to make any of you change your opinion but the question boils down to " What is the English name for the "Dalits" of India?"

No, it doesn't. The question boils down to "which English translation of the word 'Dalits' matches the name of a famous American television program?"

If it boiled down to what you said, we'd have to accept each and every possible meaning. However, because it doesn't, we didn't.

I would suggest reading Paul Paquet's primer on writing good trivia questions: http://www.triviahalloffame.com/writeq.htm -- namely "3) Doubling up your questions for greater accuracy and more fun".

[Ken Jennings]

I don't know what works of reference you are alluding to but if they imply that "Dalit" is the English equivalent for Untouchable (in the present tense) then they are wrong.

Where do you get "present tense"? The question is quite explicitly in the past tense. Since The Untouchables was a 1950s-era TV show, the time implication--if there is one--is that a pre-1950s time frame is being referenced.

If you're interested in what English reference works aren't toeing the "National Commission for Scheduled Castes" party line, there's that pesky Britannica, for one. "Most impure are the untouchables, referred to as scheduled castes in the constitution of modern India and popularly called Harijans." Note the assumption that the word "untouchables," while perhaps on the way out in India, is still the familiar, preferred name for the concept among Westerners. Whether that should be true anymore or not is another question, one that's really outside the purview of a single trivia question.