“The Dinner Table” is a docuseries produced by Newsreel Asia and co-published with ReligionUnplugged. Upcoming episodes will feature India’s other persecuted communities to explore what identity-based discrimination and violence does to the minds and hearts of members of a community. View the second episode here, featuring a Hindu family from Muslim-majority Kashmir.

Jawahar Singh is one of the more than 160 million people in India once considered “untouchables” due to the caste hierarchy in Hinduism. On Aug. 14, the day before the country celebrated its 74 years of independence, Singh and his family members in Bharatpur, Rajasthan, were attacked. A Hindu priest and his associates beat the family with sticks for drinking water from a tap inside the temple.

India’s caste system is based on the belief that the “creator” God, Brahma, gave birth to some people from his mouth, some from his shoulders, some from his thighs and some from his feet. The others were not considered worthy of any of the four categories. They are now called “Dalits,” or scheduled castes, a legal designation.

Although it is now illegal to refer to Dalits as “untouchables” — and there’s a special law to protect them against discrimination and violence — atrocities against them carry on. On average, 140 cases of caste-based violence are recorded every day under the Scheduled Castes Prevention of Atrocities Act, and 10 Dalit women are raped across the country every day, as per the latest data provided by the government’s National Crime Records Bureau.

In their conversation with Rathore, the Jatavs explain the layers of social stratification that exist in their village, revealing how Dalits are forbidden by upper-caste Hindus from entering a place of worship, drawing water from public wells or setting up shops in public spaces.

In this episode of “The Dinner Table,” an observational docuseries produced in partnership with India-based Newsreel Asia, host Rathore cooked a meal with the Jatavs and sat down to have dinner with them while the crew filmed the unscripted, heart-to-heart conversations that took place.

The upcoming episodes of “The Dinner Table” will feature India’s other persecuted communities to explore what identity-based discrimination and violence do to the minds and hearts of members of a community.