The UNDP/LRP supported youth organization in Barathawa Village of Sarlahi district has utilized the greatest festival of the Tarai belt, Chhath to break the age old practice of caste discriminations and share this message through youth focused activities. The Chhath sees largest gathering of people from all backgrounds for the festival when the Sun god is fervently worshipped.      
The Janahit Sewa Samaj Nepal was established to calm down the increasing rivalries between the youth of hill and Tarai origin during Madhes Andolan in 2007. Chairman of the organization, Rupesh Karna recalls, “We started fearing our own friends and stopped going to the canteen together in the college. The political movement almost separated us. As we say need is the mother of invention, we thought of breaking this awkward situation by working together between the youth of hill and Tarai background.”
Janahit Sewa Samaj Nepal capitalized the Chhath festival this year to challenge the age old practice of caste based discrimination. The non-Dalits had been using the Bagmati Irrigation Canal to take bath during the Chhath festival at Hathidanda of Barathawa VDC whereas Chamaars (termed as Dalit) were kept at bay from using the irrigation canal for celebration. The Dalit communities collected water from their hand tube-wells to celebrate the festival. “We thought of making the beginning of the end of caste-based discriminations from the auspicious day of Chhath. We discussed in the club and coined the slogan, Santike lel ek kadam aagu or One Step Further for Peace and convinced the community members to welcome Dalits to use the canal to celebrate Chhath since we were all humans with red blood,“ recalled Rupesh Karna, Chairman of the club.
The club members also involved Dalits in the decoration of the area where Chhath is celebrated. Instead of using festoons for decoration, the club used several posters to generate popular awareness on fundamental human rights and rights to be treated equally and live a dignified life. To further attest their crusade against caste-based discriminations, the club also arranged for a free tea stall and requested a Chamaar to serve tea so that other non-Dalits would accept it. “Nobody objected to our idea. So much was our programme accepted that we served more than 2000 cups of tea!” exclaimed Anita Devi Mijar Sarki.
“When several people are going hungry, I was very critical of the UNDP that it was giving money to celebrate Chhath and organize sports events. After seeing the free tea stall programme with a Dalit brother serving tea I understood the value of sharing the behavior and changing people’s attitude through the tea,” said Laxmi Mahato, Chairman of District Irrigation Office.
What appears like casual youth-focused events are actually laden with specific goal to promote social harmony and peace. The message behind the tea cups has largely given the new learning of no discriminatory behavior to the community members.