Or maybe in this instance she does. Untouchables “who are literally “outcastes,” without a varna, and were regarded as “untouchable” because they are ritually polluting for caste Hindus”.
Untouchables have their own traditional professions and their own subcastes. Those professions (unless they can be evaded in the greater social mobility of modern, urban, anonymous life) involve too much pollution to be performed by caste Hindus: (1) dealing with the bodies of dead animals (like the sacred cattle that wander Indian villages) or unclaimed dead humans, (2) tanning leather, from such dead animals, and manufacturing leather goods, and (3) cleaning up the human and animal waste for which in traditional villages there is no sewer system (with their bare hands).
Their children are often indentured for loans the family will never be able to pay off and girls sometimes become ‘temple prostitutes’.
http://www.friesian.com/caste.htm
As a matter of fact, Ive visited India and Nepal, and I havent seen any such thing, at least in the cities. I asked folks out there about it, and noone seems to care about caste, theyre just too busy getting on with their lives. In fact, Im afraid they seem to have some sort of compulsory affirmative action, with 50% of all jobs and college places going to the so called lower castes.