include anti-conversion laws, blamed by human rights groups for empowering Hindutva groups to conduct campaigns of harassment, social exclusion and violence against Christians, Muslims, and other religious minorities across the country’. Laws ostensibly meant for the protection of cows continue to provide institutional backing for similar campaigns against Muslims and Dalits." While discrimination against Dalits has declined in urban areas and in the public sphere, it still exists in rural areas and in the private sphere, in everyday matters such as access to eating places, schools, temples and water sources. Some Dalits successfully integrated into urban Indian society, where caste origins are less obvious. In rural India, however, caste origins are more readily apparent and Dalits often remain excluded from local religious life, though some qualitative evidence suggests that exclusion is diminishing. According to the 2014 NCAER/University of Maryland survey, 27 per cent of the Indian population still practices untouchability; the figure may be higher because many people refuse to acknowledge doing so when questioned, although the methodology of the survey was also criticised for potentially inflating the figure. Across India, Untouchability was practised among 52 per cent of Brahmins, 33 per cent of Other Backward Classes and 24 per cent of non-Brahmin forward castes. Untouchability was also practised by people of minority religions – 23 per cent of Sikhs, 18 per cent of Muslims and 5 per cent of Christians. According to statewide data, Untouchability is most commonly practised in Madhya Pradesh (53 per cent), followed by Himachal Pradesh (50 per cent), Chhattisgarh (48 per cent), Rajasthan and Bihar (47 per cent), Uttar Pradesh (43 per cent), and Uttarakhand (40 per cent). Examples of segregation have included the Madhya Pradesh village of Ghatwani, where the Scheduled Tribe population of Bhilala do not allow Dalit villagers to use the public borewell for fetching water and thus they are forced to drink dirty water. In metropolitan areas around New Delhi and Bangalore, Dalits and Muslims face discrimination from upper caste landlords when seeking places to rent. In 1855, Mutka Salve, a 14-year-old student of Dalit leader Savitribai Phule, wrote that during the rule of Baji Rao of the Maratha Empire, the Dalit castes were chased away from their lands to build large buildings. They were also forced to drink oil mixed with red lead causing them to die, and then they were buried in the foundations of buildings, thus wiping out