Untouchable

In some contexts, untouchable is a high status thing. 

Commoners are typically not supposed to touch kings and queens and as someone with a serious, incurable medical condition and compromised immune system, I've often thought that my life would be vastly better if ordinary people got their bodily autonomy respected similar to kings and queens. 

We don't actually need servants to handle THAT. 

Most Walmart bathrooms have no doors and are spacious and provide a public space where strangers can avoid touching each other for germ control reasons. 

1. You need space designed to serve that goal. 

2. And you need social and cultural practices that support that, such as bowing to show respect instead of shaking hands to greet people. 

Multiple older cultures with dense populations bow in greeting (instead of shaking hands), have spicy cuisine and other practices in line with my views of germ control. I'm guessing morons like MERIKA get a Darwin Award at some point and the cultures NOT being stupidly unnecessarily germy survive.

The Untouchables were special agents, also known as "dry agents," of the U.S. Bureau of Prohibition led by Eliot Ness... Legendary for being fearless and incorruptible, they earned the nickname "The Untouchables" after several agents refused large bribes from members of the Chicago Outfit.

In India, untouchables are the lowest class of the cast system. 

they still live in secluded quarters, do the dirtiest work, and are not allowed to use the village well and other common facilities

It seems likely to me that the untouchables of India are an assholish attempt at germ control for a large, dense population. Have them clean up the garbage for the benefit of other people, and now that they are sick and germy, forbid them from contaminating the well water and public spaces rather than providing them adequate means to get cleaned up and stay healthy enough to participate in public life without being a danger to other people.

I kind of feel like whether you are talking kings and queens being "untouchable" or lower cast individuals in India being "untouchable," in both cases an underlying goal is likely germ control.

The Untouchables who worked for Elliot Ness were metaphorically untouchable rather than literally and they were called that as a way of saying you can't corrupt them, not that you shouldn't.

We shouldn't have a class like the Dalits of India. It doesn't really accomplish the same thing.

In India, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the poor health of the servant classes was a problem for the wealthy upper classes who still heavily employ servants. 

If the poorest of your poor can't stay adequately healthy, no one can. Their germs don't stay their germs. 

You may imagine that's not a big problem for you because you are well fed and shower regularly, etc. so you may not become as obviously seriously ill as quickly as the poorest people in your culture, but creating conditions that actively make poor people sick is the start of things like pandemics and treatment resistant infections.

I happened to be homeless in San Diego and left shortly before the US saw a quiet little hepatitis epidemic start in San Diego and spread outward from there. Because of my blogging and my interest in homelessness and community development, I watched it spread in real time. 

I left downtown San Diego shortly before the hepatitis epidemic because things in downtown were deteriorating. Being homeless in downtown San Diego was becoming more problematic.

I was still homeless in California when the state instituted a bag ban and began charging ten cents for bags instead of giving them away free. I saw and heard other homeless people talk about re-using bags that had trash or dog poop in them or digging bags out of the trash because this was no longer a freebie.

I know for a fact some homeless people will poop in a bag and toss it in the trash if they can't arrange bathroom access. I'm absolutely certain the bag ban made the existing hepatitis epidemic worse and helped spread it.

I left the state shortly after the bag ban and moved to Aberdeen, Washington, a town I drag ENDLESSLY now. My first year or two there, I routinely said "I'm so glad we moved to civilization!" because a zillion little things about Washington State made life better than it had been in California.

Including free bags at the grocery store.

Footnote

This post isn't really about India. I'm an American woman. But:

HRW noted that Manmohan Singh, then Prime Minister of India, saw a parallel between the apartheid system and untouchability.[67] Eleanor Zelliot also notes Singh's 2006 comment but says that, despite the obvious similarities, race prejudice and the situation of Dalits "have a different basis and perhaps a different solution"

If you think my views here of India's untouchables have merit and you see that as potentially suggesting a different solution, see: Eclogiselle.