Photo of the Day 429

Steaming Laundry, India, 2003

Photograph by William Albert Allard

Untouchables work for a pittance washing clothes at dawn. The Hindu caste system forces 15 percent of India’s population to do jobs deemed “unclean”—anything that involves contact with bodily fluids, such as leatherwork and laundry or burying the dead. Untouchables suffer greatly from discrimination and violence.

(Text adapted from and photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, “India’s Untouchables,” June 2003, National Geographic magazine)