Blog RSSTearing Down the Wall of Caste by Navi Pillay
A group of representatives from caste-affected communities in Asia recently gave me a piece of brick from the wall of a torn-down latrine. The brick symbolized the global struggle against the degrading practice of making members of a “lower caste” clean public toilets with their bare hands.
This practice, which persists in many places despite increasing prohibition in law, is not the workers’ choice. It is rather a task that they inherit because of their social origins and descent. In turn, these discriminated individuals are further “contaminated” by their work and further trapped in a generational cycle of social exclusion and marginalization.
Today caste-affected communities and civil society activists are hoping to tear down the much bigger invisible wall of discrimination by trying to promote new international standards of equality and non-discrimination. I have tremendous respect for their determination and courage. As a woman of color from a racial minority growing up in apartheid South Africa, I know a thing or two about discrimination.
“Untouchability” is a social phenomenon affecting approximately 260 million persons worldwide. This type of discrimination is typically associated with the notions of ritual purity and pollution which are deeply rooted in different societies and cultures. The problem is neither confined to one geographical area nor exclusively practiced within one particular religion of belief system. It is a global phenomenon.
Caste is the very negation of the human rights principles of equality and non-discrimination. It condemns individuals from birth and their communities to a life of exploitation, violence, social exclusion and segregation. Caste-discrimination is not only a human rights violation, but also exposes those affected to other abuses of their civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights.
“Lower caste” individuals are frequently confined to hereditary, low-income employment and deprived of access to agricultural land and credit. They often find themselves battling high levels of indebtedness or even debt and labor bondage, which is practically a contemporary form of slavery. The barriers they face in seeking justice or redress are formidable. Child labor is rampant in descent-based communities and children of “lower castes” suffer high levels of illiteracy. For women, caste is a multiplier that compounds their experience of poverty and discrimination.
Laws and policies have been put in place in many to combat this scourge. Constitutions prohibit caste-based discrimination and “lower caste” members have been elected to the highest offices of the land. Special legislation has been enacted to provide for affirmative action in education and employment, as well as protection from violence and exploitation. Judiciaries have sought to enforce laws and provide relief to victims. Dedicated institutions monitor the conditions and advocate on behalf of “lower caste” groups.
At the international level, the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination explicitly lists descent as a ground of racial discrimination. The Durban Declaration and Program of Action, adopted at the World Conference on Racism in 2001, recognized descent-based discrimination. It also provided a comprehensive roadmap to combat it which was reaffirmed by states in April this year.
Yet, there is a real need for targeted social policies and programs to address caste-based discrimination. It is imperative to implement education programs that can change deeply rooted systemic, cultural and social prejudices, customs, beliefs and traditions based on descent, power and affluence. Above all, caste-affected communities must be given a voice and full participation in the development, implementation and evaluation of strategies aimed at empowering them. The international community should come together to support these efforts as it did when it helped put an end to apartheid.
This action to stem an abhorrent form of marginalization and exclusion which traps the victims in hopelessness and poverty is long overdue. We owe it to those “lower-caste” families forced to leave their village because they dared to vote in a parliamentary election against the favored candidate of the upper caste. We owe it to the villagers belonging to the lowest social class starving to death because they were not able to benefit from the public services which they were entitled to. We owe it to that “lower caste” woman assaulted, publicly humiliated and forced to eat her own excreta by members of the upper caste community accusing her of witchcraft. All caste-victims demand and deserve remedies. The plight of hundreds of millions cannot be justified as age-old traditions, nor can it be regarded merely as a “family business.”
The Human Rights Council, the premier intergovernmental body for the protection and promotion of human rights, should promote the 2009 Draft Principles and Guidelines for the Effective Elimination of Discrimination based on Work and Descent. This study complements existing international standards of non-discrimination. All states must rally around and endorse these norms. The time has come to eradicate the shameful concept of caste. Other seemingly insurmountable walls, such as slavery and apartheid, have been dismantled in the past. We can and must tear down the barriers of caste too.
Posted on: October 12, 2009
Untouchability and the hug of the century
Originally published in the Deccan Chronicle, April 19, 2009.
The visit of US President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, to the British “democratic kingdom” turned out to be historic not just because of the Group of Twenty (G-20) summit, but also because of an impulsive hug.
In a disarming and charming manner, Ms Obama hugged Queen Elizabeth at a formal function, breaking the feudal protocol that the monarch can only be touched by her family members.
This was the first visit of the first African-American President and his wife to the mother of democracy, Britain, which still refuses to be a republic and continues with its pre-feudal monarchic system, while its colonial daughter — the United States — has evolved into a democracy with the capacity for unbelievable change.
Those of us who stood for abolition of slavery, apartheid and untouchability of all forms felt that Martin Luther King Jr’s dream had come true when we watched the First Lady’s left hand encircling the body of the Queen.
What a day indeed! Not only apartheid, which British racist colonialism initiated, but also “feudal untouchability” — which was converted into protocol — crumbled like a house of cards.
In fact, all forms of cultural untouchabilities are houses of cards constructed as ideological belief systems. Bringing down such systems without shedding much blood through democracy is a wonderful game of history.
Also, to see both the British public and the media accepting Ms Obama’s hug as something that should happen is the fun part of this millennia.
While Britain gave America slavery and democracy, America marched ahead to abolish slavery and has even enabled a black man to become its President and the granddaughter of a slave to become its First Lady.
But the mother country remains as much a conservative democracy as America moves forward to be radical democracy.
In fact, how can Britain even teach monarchical Islamic nations that democracy is the hallmark of modernity when a feudal, protocol-centred Queen is ruling that nation.
Even now, Britain does not allow a Catholic to become its Prime Minister — leave alone any migrant settler. When John F. Kennedy became America’s first Catholic President, Britain had hidden its face within a cloth of Anglican Protestantism. “You can change, but I remain what I am”, was its attitude.
By embracing the Queen, Ms Obama literally washed away the sin of untouchability. As an Indian who has seen the worst form of untouchability, the change in the touch-me-not attitude of the Queen itself is inspiring. Here is a Queen who is willing to change along with the times.
Of course, Britain had produced its own brand of reformers, such as William Wilberforce and others, who fought against racism and slavery but the nation has not dared to abolish monarchy as yet. That feudal institution needs to be abolished and Britain needs to step into republicanism.
If Mr Obama’s victory was itself an experience of democratic transformation of America, what his wife did in Buckingham Palace in full public and media gaze is yet another milestone in transforming iniquitous feudal institutions that persist even now.
India too cannot be considered to be a modern nation without abolishing untouchability in all its forms. If the Obamas come to India and if they want to visit the Puri Jagannath Temple or Guruvayoor Sri Krishna Temple, will they be allowed?
Untouchability destroys democracy. To be true, democracy has to become operative in every sphere of life — social, political and spiritual. India too should ponder over several forms of untouchabilities that persist in our socio-spiritual life.
The President’s wife raised all these questions in a disarming manner by touching the Queen. Michelle, I salute you.
Posted on: April 27, 2009
Death of a statesman: Indian Lincoln ignored
By Kancha Ilaiah
Originally published in the Deccan Herald, Dec. 3, 2008.
On November 27, I was back home at around 3 pm. Prof Bhagya Naik, who once was a student leader in the Mandal movement, called me and said, “There is bad news amidst worse news of terrorism. VP Singh has died and an occasional scroll (news ticker) on NDTV is informing us of that.”
All TVs were hooked on to the Taj, Oberoi and Nariman House. I tried to catch up with the news of the death of India’s former Prime Minister. I went on looking for at least flash news, on any one of the English channels, which are considered to be “national channels”. No ticker could be seen. After quite a long time one channel put out the news, “VP Singh dead”. No details. No channel was showing his dead body, no discussion was being organised around his role as Prime Minister.
The next day I looked up several news papers. In almost all the publications, a small news item in a corner of the front page with a regular photo (not of his dead body) was published.
The electronic media has treated his death as inconsequential, at a time when they were protecting the nation, while broadcasting about what was happening minute to minute around the Taj and Oberoi. In fact, the police and military officials were saying that the round the clock TV cameras around those hotels had obstructed the operation of flushing out the terrorists. On those three days TV channels were competing to get top spot to make more advertising revenue. No one would pay to view that ‘Mandal ghost’s’ dead body. The upper caste media had taken its revenge against a man who initiated a mini civil war in order to establish an egalitarian India.
VP Singh was the one who deployed a serious discourse of social justice and and worked out a method to make India caste free from the position of Prime Minister. In one sense he was comparable to Abraham Lincoln who initiated a major civil war to abolish slavery in America, in late nineteenth century. He was a white man who stood for the rights of the black people. VP Singh initiated a similar battle of social justice in a country of castes and brazen inequality in 20th century India while holding the position of Prime Minister.
He was a Kshatriya who stood by the lower castes who had been suffering inequality for centuries. Abraham Lincoln was killed by the whites. The upper caste anti-reservationists saw to it that VP Singh lost his power within just eleven months. His political life with any meaningful visibility had been murdered since then. Abraham Lincoln became a hero of the blacks and became a villain among racist whites.
Similarly VP Singh became a hero among Dalit-Bahujans (particularly OBCs) and a villain among the upper castes who claimed themselves to be anti-quota. These anti-reservation upper caste forces claimed that they wanted to save the nation from terrorists. But the forces that are working in the media must remember that a nation that promotes equality alone can checkmate terrorism that was working in full force on the day when VP Singh died.
The media and the UPA leaders, by treating him like dirt, even in his death, forgot a basic fact of human life. If someone, who stood by the oppressed, is ignored and humiliated, even in death, the oppressed will treat that as their own humiliation. If this is the attitude of the elite towards a man who sacrificed his Chief Ministership (Uttar Pradesh) on moral grounds, his Defence Ministerial position on the grounds of opposing corruption (Bofors case) and became Prime Minister of the nation on his own political movement’s strength (transforming Jan Morcha into Janatha Dal) people know how to read the signs. Therefore such media cannot protect the nation from even the terrorists, as the oppressed majority do not believe in it at all.
VP Singh was a philosopher in his own right, a poet and painter. The media behaved as if he was nobody to this nation. He implemented the Mandal Commission Report, to which suicide attempts by upper caste youth were made. This was subsequently followed with a Kamadal Yatra of Advani, who then became a hero of the upper castes.
If Advani had died amidst the trauma of the Bombay terror attacks, would they have ignored his death as they did in the case of VP Singh? Certainly not, because there is big business in talking about him. Most of the people in the press claim to be secular but when it comes to business and caste communalism, they give it major coverage as it means big money. The media plays a major role in every thing, including arresting terrorism. But it must remember that if people come to disbelieve what they churn out, then even the terrorists would have be placed in safe havens in our civil society.
More than any other prime minister, VP Singh made Indian democracy transformative. But for his intervention from the position of Prime Minister even the survival of politicians like Mulayam Singh, Lalu Prasad, Kanshiram, Ram Vilas Paswan and Mayawati would have been difficult. Ironically, these leaders from backward communities also did not bother about him. But he was an icon who had a dream for social equality. Ever since he implemented 27 percent reservation for Central government jobs he never compromised on the philosophy of social justice and equality.
The media must have ignored him today but a man of his calibre, will be resurrected soon.
Posted on: February 19, 2009
My sobering reality: The slumdog millionaire's India
Originally posted to Sojo.net on Jan. 23, 2009.
The movie Slumdog Millionaire and the Booker Prize winning novel White Tiger have highlighted the non-shiny part of India. Far from exploiting poverty, these are stories about India which demand a global response – especially for the sake of the children.
This is the India of 80% of the population—the India of the slums, the outcastes, the exploited, and of abject poverty. The India where Dalit, tribal, and poor children are sold into the sex trade. Where fully healthy children are maimed into becoming beggars. Where children become victims of religious communalism. And where the elitist classes keep them out of prosperity and development by not being willing to change a system that disenfranchises the children of the downtrodden.
I have worked with the disenfranchised and marginalised for most of my life. I’m a citizen of India who is proud of my country’s progress in recent years, yet I must point out the obvious again. The movie is not about selling the poverty of India as a British newspaper alleged (“Shocked by Slumdog’s poverty porn”, Alice Miles, The Times, Jan. 14, 2009). Instead, it is the story about the real India of the majority where children become the primary victims of all that is dysfunctional in society (as The Guardian pointed out).
As the movie is released in India this week, expect another barrage of attacks by a section of the elitist Indian media. Likely there will be heavy emphasis on the simple fact that this is a movie made by a white Brit! All this while forgetting that this movie—which was won Golden Globes and other awards and was nominated for several Oscars—is far truer to Indian reality than the popular fantasized Bollywood movies.
But isn’t this the time for truth-telling about what ails India and our world?
Are not the children of our day the primary victims of caste and racial discrimination, human trafficking, war, poverty, and religious extremism?
The world has about 1.2 billion children—with India and China accounting for more than a fourth—400 million children. The vast majority of India’s roughly 250 million children are affected by dire poverty, caste discrimination, and exploitation.
Millions of children living in Africa, Latin America, and the Muslim world suffer the same plight. Many of these are in similarly desperate situations. Is it crystal clear to you like it is to me? The slumdog of our generation is the boy or girl less than 14 years old.
I have a sobering, reoccurring thought these days. Is the main sin of our generation what we are doing to children—both born and unborn? What is our part in changing the conditions of the slumdog kids of the world?
Posted on: February 2, 2009
Will Obama Spell Justice Outside of the U.S.?
By Joseph D’souza via sojourners.
More people around the world will watch Barack Obama’s inauguration than any other presidential inauguration in history. From here in South Asia, it is also safe to say the world’s oppressed will follow the statements and actions of this president more than any other. Will Obama courageously speak for a group of slaves numbering more than 250 million?
It was understandable and, in many people’s opinion, right for Obama to distance himself from race issues and slavery’s legacy in his election campaign. This is largely possible because of a U.S. that is post-Martin Luther King and post-civil rights movement. But would it be right for him to keep silent on issues of modern slavery and neo-colonialism in our world?
Recently, while riding in one of London’s famous black taxis, I asked the black driver from Ghana what he thought of Obama’s election as president. He said, “It is the best thing that has happened to Africa.” When I enquired further, he said Obama has become a symbol of self-belief and hope for many Africans.
I looked at the Bible next to the driver’s seat and asked the taxi driver what he expected from Obama as a Christian. “To remind the world of the current problems of racism, slavery, and poverty in the world,” he said.
I wonder who Obama’s speechwriters will be. Will they compel him in the world of realpolitik to toe the line? To not mention the problem of modern slavery? India’s human rights defenders wonder whether he will, for example, mention the Dalits — the single largest group of humans victimized by a historic, religiously-sanctioned racism? One of Obama’s fellow students at Harvard, an Indian attorney who now litigates in India’s Supreme Court, told an Indian newspaper that as a law student, Obama was curious about the “untouchables” of India — today known as Dalits.
When President Bush gave his main speech in New Delhi in 2006, he (or his speechwriters) chose to quote three citizens of India in his comments on freedom and democracy: Gandhi, Nehru, and Tagore. I’ve explained elsewhere why this was a huge mistake. In brief, Gandhi and Nehru were indeed India’s great founding fathers, and Tagore was a Nobel Prize winner in literature. But one of the names should have been Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, the father of India’s constitution, a Columbia University trained lawyer, the emancipator of the Dalits and backward castes, and India’s own Martin Luther King.
Will Obama mention the name of Ambedkar in any of his India speeches? Will he remind the world of India’s own struggle with slavery? Will Obama understand and embrace the symbolic power of his presidency outside the U.S.?
Joseph D’souza is the International President of the Dalit Freedom Network. He lives in Hyderabad, India, and works out of Hyderabad, London, and Denver.
Posted on: December 22, 2008
Ethnic Cleansing in Orissa: India's Persecuted Christians
by Joseph D’souza 11-20-2008
In India, the world’s largest democracy, millions applauded the recent U.S. elections as a shining example of perhaps the world’s greatest democracy in action. But the plight of Dalit and tribal Christians in Orissa demonstrates disturbing contradictions hidden by democracy in South Asia.
Even as India was admitted to the global nuclear family through the efforts of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Bush, the same ‘modern’ India allowed ethnic cleansing in the last three months. In the eastern state of Orissa, Dalit and tribal Christians were devastated in a violent campaign orchestrated by extremist Hindu groups known as the Sangh Parivar. The Prime Minister said in a meeting with the European Union that Orissa was a “national shame.” But then he said the Orissa violence was sporadic. This is far from the truth.
The displacement and violence against Orissa’s Christians ebbed and flowed for over seven weeks. The murder of a Hindu priest on August 23, 2008, provided the original excuse for retaliatory violence….
Read full article in Sojourners
Posted on: November 25, 2008
Politics and Violence in Orissa
Politics and Violence in Orissa
Nov. 11, 2008
By Vishal Arora
From the Livemint
Attracting Dalits has proved difficult for the BJP. Its focus on tribal districts should be seen in this light
Why have India’s tribal-majority districts witnessed the bloodiest anti-Christian attacks? The answer to this question indicates why at least 60 people were killed and more than 4,500 houses and churches destroyed in Kandhamal district of Orissa recently.
India saw its first large-scale attacks on the minority community in December 1998 in Gujarat’s Dangs district, where 93% of the population is tribal. In March 2004, anti-Christian violence broke out in Madhya Pradesh’s Jhabua district, where tribals constitute 85% of the population. Then followed the mayhem in December 2007, and again in August 2008 in Kandhamal, where nearly 52% of the population is tribal. These incidents took place during the rule of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) or its allies.
The BJP has made inroads into the tribal-majority pockets of central India, where roughly 75% of country’s tribal population lives. During its six-year tenure at the Centre, beginning 1998, the party implemented its Hindutva agenda in tribal regions. In 1999, it created a separate ministry of tribal affairs, which was part of the ministry of social welfare. Not surprisingly, the scheduled castes community, which is much bigger, was not given a separate ministry. The party also bifurcated the commission for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes and the national scheduled castes and scheduled tribes corporation by creating new panels for the tribal people.
The Sangh Parivar worked in tandem with the BJP to “Hinduize” tribals. For instance, the Ekal Vidyalaya (one-teacher school) Foundation was registered as a “charitable” trust in 1999. It is well known that these schools, that operate mainly in tribal areas, seek to “Hinduize” tribals and oppose conversions among them. The BJP government aided these schools. More recently, Sangh outfits made an overt attempt to “Hinduize” tribals through the Shabri Kumbh rally in Dangs in February 2006. Shabri, a character in the Ramayan and tribal devotee who offered berries to Rama, was made into a goddess of the tribal population there.
Tribals form only around 9% of India’s population, but their votes are crucial. This is why BJP leader L.K. Advani launched his Sankalp Yatra from the tribal district of Jabalpur in February with an eye on the forthcoming elections in Madhya Pradesh. Later, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh laid the foundation stone of a new rail line in Jhabua, another tribal district in the state.
However, wooing tribals has not been easy for the BJP, which faces not only the Congress as an opponent, but also Christian missionaries. Christian agencies have been working in tribal areas for much longer. Due to their good development record and social acceptance—evident in the fact that a portion of the tribal population today is Christian—the BJP finds it difficult to compete with them and undermine their influence. Therefore, the BJP and other Sangh organizations launch hate campaigns and attacks on Christians under various pretexts, including that of “forced” conversions.
Tribals form only around 9% of India’s population, but their votes are crucial for any political party
That the Sangh’s anti-Christian agenda is more about politics than conversions is clear from the fact that Christian persecution is not endemic in Dalit-majority districts, although a majority of Indian Christians (around 70%) are from Dalit backgrounds. This is why Dalit districts—such as Sitapur, Hardoi and Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh;Jalpaiguri, Cooch Behar, Nadia, South 24 Parganas and Bardhaman in West Bengal; and Gaya in Bihar—have not witnessed any major anti-Christian riot though Christian agencies are working there as well. On the contrary, a majority of tribal districts—be it Jashpur in Chhattisgarh or Banswara in Rajasthan— have long been communally sensitive. The reason is clear. Wooing Dalits is an uphill task for the BJP, as it is seen as an “upper caste” party and Dalits are well organized and support parties such as the Bahujan Samaj Party. The tribals, however, fall in the indecisive vote category.
Even in Kandhamal, Sangh outfits “befriended” the majority tribal community and not the minority Dalits, many of whom converted to Christianity in the last 100 years or more. What’s more, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) fuelled tensions in an already strained relationship between the two communities by using reservation and land issues. Exploiting these tensions, the Sangh organized a deadly wave of anti-Christian attacks using the unfortunate assassination of VHP leader Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati in August as a pretext. This is why when the Orissa Police recently confirmed the role of a Maoist group, that had claimed responsibility for the murder, a Sangh outfit circulated forged documents to implicate a local church.
Recall the attacks on Christians and their property in Kandhamal in December 2007 over an alleged attack on Saraswati—although there were no visible injuries on his body. Recall the 2004 Jhabua violence, which erupted after a nine-year-old Hindu girl was found murdered in a Christian school—a Hindu man was later arrested for the murder. Recall also the 1998 Dangs attacks that were launched after an alleged attack on a Hindutva rally—an allegation that had no evidence.
That the Orissa violence was organized is also clear from the fact that what started in one district soon spread to more than 14 districts of Orissa and several other states, mainly BJP-ruled Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh. This at a time when several state assembly elections as well as national elections are around the corner.
Vishal Arora is a Delhi-based commentator. Comments are welcome at
Posted on: November 14, 2008
Stark Truths Of Hinduism
From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 5, Issue 42, Dated Oct 25, 2008
Read original article by clicking here.
RIGHT-WING HINDUS never had any issue with Christians or with conversion when it came to using — and exploiting — Christian institutions. They have had no problem in availing Christian medical facilities. No abhorrence has been evinced toward convent schools, where the so-called upper castes were taught the English that got them jobs abroad and enabled them to articulate their views at global forums. That changed around 1998, when the BJP came to power. Targetting Christians became politically useful. A massive campaign was launched against Sonia Gandhi, making an issue of a person of foreign and Christian origin wielding power over a Hindu majority country. It culminated in the hatred for Christians, who are now seen as villains instead of the gentle community they had hitherto been known as.
Wisdom lies in understanding the causes which escalate the processes of hatred. So it becomes our responsibility to fathom the mystery of conversion, usually assigned as the basis for attacks on Christians. The RSS, Bajrang Dal and VHP blame those said to offer inducements to convert; they also accuse the global Church of pumping money into India to influence the country’s have-nots. In such a context, the word ‘conversion’ becomes synonymous with ‘terrorism’, a connotation that could not be further from the truth. What does conversion mean except the choice of another faith or ideology? Laws against conversion are in operation in several states and, to date, not one case has been reported where a conversion was made in the greed for inducements.
What worries the Sangh Parivar is not the welfare of dalits but a possible reduction in upper-caste Hindu numbers. Their prejudice is so entrenched that they are not in a position to sense the agony of those who suffer under the caste-based system. In general, Hindu believers treat the disadvantaged as sinners reaping the fruits of a past life. Thus, a leper is to be shunned; the exploitation of dalits is justified. On the contrary, a Christian finds an opportunity for spiritual fulfillment in serving the leper and healing the sick. Before they build churches, Christians normally build schools and hospitals.
“Why do major Hindu religious establishments involve themselves only in collecting donations and not in performing such community services?”
Let us examine the few hopes still left for Hinduism. Are dalits, tribals and members of backward groups allowed to become priests? Tall claims are made of dalits being trained to become priests or being welcomed to take up Hindu rituals. But, on the ground, the traditional situation has not changed. Though physical untouchability receded in the 20th century, the mental block remains.
The Hindu Right and the so called upper castes see ‘saving’ Hinduism as their mission. But, in this competition with Islam, Christianity and Buddhism, the superficial brotherhood shown by right-wing Hindu organisations toward tribals and dalits does not ultimately win their hearts. Unless the problems inherent to Hinduism are addressed, conversion can never be stopped. A Christian marries his or her co-religionist; a Muslim does the same. Is that possible for Hindus across caste? Are the upper castes ready to welcome reservation for their Hindu brothers? Is their society ready for inter-dining and for inter-caste marriages? Without these conditions being fulfilled, no one on earth can stop the rejection of Hinduism by the socalled lower castes. The so-called upper castes can only stop conversion if they introspect, eradicate the evil in the caste system, and visualise themselves in a situation where they and their families are carrying human excreta on their heads. Then, they will feel the suffering of those condemned to do so for life.
Udit Raj is a Dalit activist
Posted on: October 21, 2008
Fifty-two years after Ambedkar changed his faith, conversion still treated with suspicion in India
For Immediate Release from the aicc
Today the All India Christian Council (aicc) celebrates Dhammadiksha, the day on which Dr. B.R. Ambedkar freely chose a new religion on October 14, 1956 in Nagpur, Maharashtra. The author of India’s Constitution showed that conversion is not a crime, but fifty-two years later voices inside India want a moratorium on conversions. The aicc is united in support of the freedom of religion and the freedom of conscience which includes conversion. The aicc President, Dr. Joseph D’souza, has written an essay on the topic. Please see below.
Dr. B.R. Ambedkar commented in a speech, Mukti kon pathe? (What path to liberation?), published on June 20, 1936, To remain in a religion because it is ancestral is only suited to a fool. No thinking man can take such a policy. Remaining in a situation in which one finds oneself fits an animal; it cannot satisfy a human being. Under Ambedkar’s leadership, millions of people embraced Buddhism.
To remain in a religion because it is ancestral is only suited to a fool. No thinking man can take such a policy. Remaining in a situation in which one finds oneself fits an animal; it cannot satisfy a human being. Dr. B.R. Ambedkar
Seven states have passed Freedom of Religion Acts and five are enforcing it, but, today, there has not been one conviction for conversion by allurement, fraud, or force. Even if wrongful conversions do exist in India, major religious leaders – especially from Christianity – have condemned them and believe this type of conversion is not legitimate.
Legitimate, legal conversions are now on the table for debate. On Oct. 8, 2008, Roman Catholic leaders in New Delhi agreed to meet with the senior BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) leader, Mr. L.K. Advani, along with a delegation. Mediated by Swami Chidanand Saraswati of Rishikesh, Uttarakhand, a joint press statement discussing conversions was issued after the two hour dialogue.
John Dayal, aicc Secretary General and member of the National Integration Council, said, “The aicc welcomes true dialogue. It is the cornerstone of our everyday life and Christian witness. But a dialogue presupposes free will, a peaceful platform, a structured agenda, a common goal for peace through mutual respect, and acknowledgement of each other as equals. Religious leaders should dialogue with other religious leaders in bilateral and multilateral forums. Parliament provides the forum for political dialogue. Civil society is the best platform for a larger, continuing dialogue and debate. These are forums we trust.”
Dr. Joseph D’souza, aicc President, said, Dialogues don’t identify the killers, arsonists, and rapists of Christians in India. Calls for moratoriums on conversion don’t put the onus of the violence where it belongs – on government structures which are guilty of inaction in saving victims, and, in many cases, of supporting the violence against Christians. Dialogues will not save Hindu fundamentalist organisations from facing justice.
India has signed the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights which says, in Article 18, people must remain free to choose their own religion. India’s Constitution, in Article 25, guarantees the right to propagate religion, which will naturally lead to conversions.
D’souza said, As long as laws of the land are respected and other faiths are not denigrated, each person has the right to convert. And other Indians have the right to tell fellow citizens about different choices in religion so they have the knowledge and options to convert. We believe each Indian citizen must be allowed to shop in the marketplace of religions and choose a faith. We appeal to Indians of all religions to protect this freedom. Conversion is the sign of a healthy democracy. Conversion is the ultimate symbol of freedom of conscience.
The All India Christian Council (http://www.christiancouncil.in), birthed in 1998, exists to protect and serve the Christian community, minorities, and the oppressed castes. The aicc is a coalition of thousands of Indian denominations, organizations, and lay leaders.
A Moratorium on Conversions: Who Decides?
By Joseph D’souza
In the first wave of attacks on Christians in modern India during the late 1990s, a Christian leader flinched under the pressure of Hindu extremists and called for a five year moratorium on conversions. Extremist Hindu forces have repeatedly said Christians are engaged in forced and fraudulent conversions and this is the chief reason for ‘spontaneous’ violence against Christians. The Christian leader apparently succumbed to the incessant propaganda campaign.
During the rule of the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) government, the emboldened RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) maneuvered to bring various Christian denominations and associations into a dialogue that would result in a public agreement to end conversions among the downtrodden castes of India. Major Christian organisations were forced to come to the table due to political pressure and veiled threats. After every meeting with the RSS, the spokesperson of the RSS informed the media that the Christians had agreed to their agenda of stopping conversions in modern India.
In the midst of this theatre of the absurd, the All India Christian Council (aicc) was one of the main groups that refused to dialogue with the RSS. This aligned with the position of major civil society leaders and human rights movements in India. This decision was also taken in conjunction with Dalit-Bahujan leaders. The aicc differentiated between a genuine dialogue with non-Christian religious leaders and the sham of ‘discussions’ with Sangh Parivar outfits who have already decided, before the meeting begins, what they want the outcome to be. The aicc supports a genuine dialogue with other faiths out of our respect for our neighbours – Jesus said we must love our neighbour as ourselves – and in order to maintain civil law, decency, and peace.
Currently, the issue of a moratorium on conversions has emerged in the media in fulfillment of the propaganda of the Sangh Parivar. If the Hindu nationalist parties come to power in New Delhi, I suspect Christian organisations will be forced to come to the table again. Once again the aicc will refuse any dialogue on the issue.
Why? The answer is found in a deeper question.
Who ultimately decides the issue of conversion?
According to the India’s Constitution the freedom of religion is given to every individual Indian citizen. He or she has the freedom to believe and practice the faith he or she chooses. The freedom of speech enshrined in the Constitution gives every Indian citizen the right to propagate his faith as long as civil norms and decency are maintained.
In the context of the caste revolt in modern India, a revolution which began with Mahatma Phule, Ambedkar, and Periyar, there is another logical reason. If our country does not give the Dalits, tribals and the OBCs (Other Backward Castes) the right to choose their faith, we have effectively imposed permanent slavery of the caste system on them. It was Ambedkar who said that I was born a Hindu but I will not die a Hindu. In 1956 he fulfilled that promise with hundreds of thousands of followers. Since then, rightly or wrongly, the liberation of the oppressed castes is fatefully tied with the choice to convert out of the religion that imposes the caste system on them.
I was born a Hindu but I will not die a Hindu Dr. B.R. Ambedkar
The Indian State tried to deal with caste discrimination by banning the practice of ‘untouchability’ in the Constitution. With affirmative action provisions through reservation programs, the State tried to lift up the low castes of our society.
In contrast, the Hindu fundamentalist groups led by the RSS only revived and enforced casteist religious practices that demean both the Dalits and also women. These extreme groups have done nothing to enforce the banning of the caste system within their religious systems. It was the Vice-President of the VHP who said the life of a cow is more valuable than the life of a Dalit. This was immediately after five Dalit young men were lynched to death in Jhajjar, Haryana, for skinning a dead cow.
Hindutva groups tried to revive the practice of Sati and have distributed books which contain the Law of Manu which codified the caste system in ancient India.
So who decides on a moratorium on conversions? The RSS? The media ? Those who come to the table and dialogue on this issue? Or the oppressed Dalit and low caste person in India? Dare we take away this final and most basic of human rights from the most dehumanized group of people in human civilization?
Those of us in the aicc movement – we are a coalition of many Christian groups from mainline to Pentecostal – refuse to strip this right from the Dalits or any oppressed group. And we acknowledge there are two sides to the coin. Thus, we refuse to take away this right even from those who are Christians but may choose another faith. Simply said, we believe that, without the freedom of conscience, all other freedoms become meaningless.
We unconditionally condemn all forced and fraudulent conversions and we consider the terms themselves as oxymoron. We condemn proselytizing or any effort to denigrate another faith.
The targeting of Dalits who turned to Christianity in Orissa is now out in the open. This is blatant violence against Dalits who exercised their freedom of conscience. The Dalits are not stupid in matters of conscience. Their leader Ambedkar has shown them the way. They neither need the State nor upper caste religious leaders to tell them how to make their choices.
The aicc is determined to protect and serve the Dalits. We have stated long ago that we will love and serve them unconditionally with Christ’s love whether they are Christians or not.
The Dalit Christian ethnic cleansing of Orissa must be contested by every means possible under the Indian Constitution and the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The freedom of religion must be supported in every corner of our beloved country.
Dr. Joseph D’souza is President of the All India Christian Council. Birthed in 1998, the Council is a coalition of thousands of India’s Christian denominations, organizations, and lay leaders. D’souza lives in India and operates out of London and Denver.
Posted on: October 14, 2008
Understanding the Khairlanji Verdict
Original article by S. Anand via The Hindu.
IMAGE: Justice served? Bhaiyalal Bhotmange (left) and “Khairlanji” by Savi Savarkar, the cover page art work of Khairlanji.
On September 24, 2008, judge S.S. Das of the ad hoc sessions court in Bhandara district, Maharashtra, pronounced the death sentence for six persons and life term for two in the case related to the massacre of four dalit-Buddhists of the Bhotmange family in Khairlanji village on September 29, 2006. This was hailed as a “historic verdict”. For the first time in post-independence India, we were told, “capital punishment was given to killers of dalits”. In an editorial comment headlined “A Strong Message”, the Times of India (September 26, 2008) wrote, “The Khairlanji verdict sends out a clear message that perpetrators of caste violence won’t be allowed to get away.” The reports filed by Meena Menon for The Hindu echoed this view. Menon quoted Milind Fulzele of the Khairlanji Action Committee as saying: “This was the first time the court conducted a speedy trial and awarded the death penalty” (September 25, 2008).
However, on September 15, 2008, judge Das had made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that “Khairlanji was a case of murder spurred by revenge for an earlier case of assault involving the police patil of a nearby village.” He did not see any ground for invoking the provisions of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, (known as the PoA Act) — a legislation regarded as radical though it is rarely invoked in letter and spirit. Das also did not invoke Sections 354 (assault or criminal force with intent to outrage the modesty of a woman) or Sections 375 (that deals with rape) of the Indian Penal Code, though it had been amply demonstrated by several independent fact-finding reports in October–November 2006 that the mother and daughter, Surekha and Priyanka, had not just been raped repeatedly but tortured in ghastly ways (stripped and paraded naked, with reportedly even bullock cart pokers being thrust into their vaginas, and Priyanka being raped even after her death).
Destroying evidence
Before the CBI took over the investigations in November 2006, the initial two post-mortem reports had also incredulously ruled out rape and ensured that what little evidence was there was destroyed. After the judge’s September 15 ruling, the sole survivor and key witness, Bhaiyalal Bhotmange and most activists who had worked on the case and led agitations demanding a CBI inquiry and justice, expressed shock and disappointment. They feared that the criminals would be let off with some light punishment. Dalit leaders expressed concern over the ruling out of caste hatred, for, this would embolden caste-Hindu aggressors. Economist and Pune university vice-chancellor Narendra Jadhav demanded stringent punishment for the eight who had been convicted. Meira Kumar, Union Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment, too, expressed concern, saying if such episodes were treated as mere criminal acts, devoid of any casteist motivation, the Prevention of Atrocities Act would lose its relevance. Kumar even wrote to Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh and Home Minister Shivraj Patil demanding a judicial review and action against the State police personnel for any dereliction of duty. Clearly, between the day of the verdict (September 15) and the day of the announcement of quantum of punishment (September 24), there was social and political pressure mounting for something radical and dramatic. In this sense, the death sentence seems to have been overdetermined, almost in compensation for not invoking the PoA Act or rape laws.
How do we then understand the verdict? Having weakened all the grounds for stringent punishment, when people were expecting acquittal, the judge slammed death penalty. However, since the judge has ruled out rape, conspiracy and caste hatred, there is a good chance that the High Court will not ratify the death sentence. The little “gain” that seems to have been made would be forfeited in no time.
Read the rest of the article here.
Find out more information about the Khairlanji murders.
Posted on: October 5, 2008
Is this 21st-century apartheid?
Original article from the Guardian, by Peter Tatchell.
Eight people were convicted on Monday of the murder of four members of a lower-caste Dalit family in the western Indian state of Maharashtra.
A Dalit farmer’s wife, daughter and two sons were lynched and beaten to death by an upper-caste mob in a land dispute in 2006. The women were also raped.
What is unusual about this case is that the perpetrators were successfully prosecuted. Normally, the killers of Dalits walk free.
One reason why the murderers have been bought to justice is the rising tide of Dalit militancy. There has been a wave of mass demonstrations by Dalit people demanding justice and equal treatment. Newly confident and organised, the Dalits are fighting back with strikes and boycotts.
Shaken by this burgeoning protest movement, some Indian authorities are finally being pushed and pressured into action, albeit slowly and exceptionally.
About time too. India’s 170 million Dalit people, formerly known as “untouchables,” are at the bottom of the Hindu caste system. They are victims of the most extreme form of caste discrimination. It is, in many ways, analogous to racism. By virtue of their birth into a Dalit family and community, they are condemned forever to a life of social stigma, exclusion and victimisation.
Human Rights Watch has condemned India’s abuse of its Dalit people as a “hidden apartheid,” comparable to the institutional discrimination of pre-democratic South Africa.
According to a major Human Rights Watch report, Dalit people are still today seen by many Indians as sub-human and undeserving of basic rights. Shunned as inferiors and social outcasts, they suffer insults, violence, rape, discrimination and impoverishment. Often forced into de facto slave labour, they are made to eat, sleep and pray separately, and denied equal education and healthcare. In some schools, Dalit children are required to sit separately, at the back of the classroom. Similar segregation happens in housing, temples, hospitals and in relief camps after natural disasters like floods and earthquakes. Many Dalits are refused use of land and water wells. Others are pressed into degrading jobs, ranging from prostitution to the manual clearing of human waste. Payment is often in food, not money. Of those who get paid cash, many earn the equivalent of less than 50p for an eight-hour day.
The plight of the Dalits is well-known to the Indian government. In 2006, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh became the first serving Indian prime minister to acknowledge a parallel between the practice of “untouchability” and the abuses of apartheid.
He condemned anti-Dalit casteism as a “blot on humanity”, adding: “Even after 60 years of constitutional and legal protection and state support, there is still social discrimination against Dalits in many parts of our country.”
This failure by successive Indian governments to adequately address the subhuman mistreatment of the Dalit people was exposed in 1999 by Human Rights Watch.
Similar criticisms were voiced in a 2007 report by the UN committee on the elimination of racial discrimination. It reiterated that laws protecting Dalits were not strong enough and that existing laws were often not enforced. No surprise there. Anti-Dalit casteism is also deeply entrenched among law enforcement agencies, including government officials, police officers, judges and lawyers. Even many of the people who are employed to ensure the protection of Dalit human rights are either hostile, indifferent or fearful of a backlash if they do their job with any effectiveness.
Over 100,000 cases of rape, murder, arson and other abuses against Dalits are reported in India each year.
Some states record conviction rates as low as 2-3%. Moreover, the police themselves are sometimes the perpetrators of abuses against Dalit people. Human Rights Watch confirms that police officers have been guilty of detaining, torturing and extorting money from Dalits.
These abuses are not happening in apartheid-era South Africa. They are occurring, with virtual impunity, in modern-day India – the world’s largest democracy and an emerging economic superpower.
If India wants to be an internationally respected world player, as it has every right to be, it needs to eradicate this blight on its national character. As long as the feudal caste system exists, India will never fulfil its potential, economically or ethically.
You can help the Dalit struggle for dignity and human rights by emailing the Indian high commissioner in London, Shiv Shankar Mukherjee at
Urge him to press the Indian government for tougher laws and stronger law enforcement to protect the Dalit people, backed up with a mandatory education programme to promote Dalit equality in all Indian schools, businesses, temples, mosques, government offices and police and judicial agencies.
Posted on: September 17, 2008
Faith accompli
Originally article from the Hindustan Times by Soumitro Das.
The violence against Christians in Orissa, Madhya Pradesh and now in Karnataka should be seen at various levels — from the economy of conversion to the historical roots and real meaning of conversion.
First, funding. Nobody seems to know exactly how much money the VHP receives from abroad. The only figure we have is $1.7 million from the India Development and Relief Fund (IDRF) that raises money from individuals and corporations in the United States (including Cisco and Sun Microsystems) to distribute them among a plethora of Sangh parivar agencies, some of whom work for ‘tribal welfare’.
On the Christian side, thanks to the Foreign Contributions Regulation Act, the Home Ministry is in possession of the Annual Report on Foreign Contributions for 2005-06. It lays out in minute detail the funds received by churches and Christian organisations in India. We know, for example, that the top donors are church-based or Christian-inspired organisations from the US, Britain, Germany, the Netherlands and Italy. We also know that a greater part of the funds — Rs 7,785 crore — goes to mainly Christian and church-based organisations in India. According to the Home Ministry’s analysis, the major part of the fund are spent on disaster relief and establishment costs. Welfare of scheduled tribes gets only Rs 25 crore and welfare of scheduled Castes only Rs 9 crore. The rest of the money goes into social work — building of schools, colleges, hospitals, etc. Nowhere is the word proselytisation mentioned. There are also no records of mass conversions.
Hence, the Sangh parivar’s argument that Christian charitable and social work is a disguise to convert ‘innocent, illiterate’ tribals and Dalits is a lie — at least as far as the records go. The Home Ministry report also tells us that the bulk of the money is spent in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Delhi — not in Orissa or Gujarat.
Now to come to the violence at Kandhmal in Orissa. The man, Laxmananda Saraswati, whose murder had sparked off the latest round of violence, was a VHP sant who was at the forefront of the VHP’s ghar wapasi (‘home coming’
movement that consisted of reconverting tribals and Dalits who had been converted by the Christian missionaries.
At one level, the violence that followed Saraswati’s death was a result of a century-old conflict between the tribal Kandhs and the Dalit Pano. The former accuse the latter of stealing their land, aided by missionaries who, on their part, continue to occupy land that belongs to the state. The Panos who have converted to Christianity in large numbers are clamouring for Scheduled Tribe status because their conversion has not mitigated the effects of caste prejudice against them. As a Scheduled Tribe the Panos hope to preserve their religious identity and also be eligible for reserved government jobs. This infuriates the Kandhs as well as the VHP.
Conversion has two dimensions to it. In the first place, it is an intensely personal affair. It is this individual realisation occurring over a period of time that makes the conversion of entire communities a slow, painstaking and laborious process. It is also this individual repudiation of Hinduism that rattles the VHP beyond measure. It means that the tribal or the Dalit in question is no longer bound by any fate or destiny, but is, in fact, a free agent who can transform his life by changing his value and belief system.
The second dimension of conversion is that it is a political act. When, over a period of time, an entire community is converted, it has revolutionary implications. What does it mean for a Dalit to convert to Christianity? To know that, one has to understand where the Dalit is coming from. He lives beyond the pale of ‘caste Hindu’ society — even his shadow is considered polluting in some regions of this country; the jobs that he does are considered the most filthy — dealing with animal hides (chamars), disposing of the corpse after cremation (doms) and cleaning the night soil (bhangis). He does not have the right to use a mechanised transport, wear nice clothes, or jewellery. His house is frequently burned, his women are routinely raped. He lives in a night without end.
Then, he finds a God who, like him, suffered excruciating pain, who chose his disciples among the poor and the wretched and gave his own life so that others could find salvation through his suffering. The Dalit also understands that, in the light of Jesus’ story, the Hindus do not seem to have a moral order, that the only thing that counts for them is ritual purity and impurity. Instead of good and evil, Hinduism deals in the categories of ritual cleanliness and uncleanliness. The community, fortified by its realisation that the Hindu world view is only one among many others and not even of the most superior kind, gradually revolts and crosses over to Christianity.
Thus what began as a conversion of an individual ends as a collective revolt against the oppression, the brutality and the inhuman humiliations of caste society. That is what the VHP and the Sangh parivar do not want. They want to crush this revolt.
Soumitro Das is a Kolkata-based writer.
Posted on: September 15, 2008
Destroying a Dream
Original article from The Week, by Gail Omvedt.
Atrocities are events that happen in villages. We recoil at scenes of the brutal slaughter of a young couple breaking caste rules to seek love; naked and beaten bodies of a family which had had the gall to cultivate land that dominant caste villagers wanted; police kicking a pregnant woman in the stomach until she has a miscarriage.
Or we may think of the atrocities of daily life: low-paid and scorned labour, having to endure the humiliation of separate tea cups in hotels and lack of equal access to water of the village well, the temple, street or public square where Dalits are not welcome.
We do not think of atrocities as events that happen in schools. Education, after all, has been the dream of so many Dalit and non-Dalit youth from the supposedly ‘superior’ and the supposedly ‘low’ castes. Universities, research institutes and colleges are supposed to be places for ‘free play of the mind’, and where thinking is taught.
Schools are supposed to be training grounds for the India of tomorrow, free from the slime and degradation of the past. Every social reformer and revolutionary has focused on education; the reservation of ‘seats’ in educational institutions has been a central hope for the destruction of caste differences.
Yet, when a Dalit boy or girl steps into an educational institution, it may be their first step of confronting a humiliation unknown outside of their kin and caste circles. Schoolteachers may scorn them, treating them as unable to ‘speak right’ or think clearly, often expecting them to do the menial tasks, such as cleaning toilets (“After all, this is YOUR work.” and beating them brutally when they don’t-an experience of Dalit girls in a village near Coimbatore.
College teachers may treat them as ‘reserved’ students, as not really capable of being taught, sometimes failing them, sometimes passing them without giving any encouragement or paying attention to their work. (This can happen even in top institutions; it has been reported, for instance, by JNU students that professors would do the latter.) Fellow students can reveal with every word the inherited ways of thinking; there are many examples of ‘caste’ students refusing noon meals if cooked by Dalit teachers.
In 2007, two research scholars of IISc-Bangalore, committed suicide. For V. Ajay Shree Chandra, a Dalit boy, it was discrimination, rejection of his work and verbal abuse that led him to end his life. For R. Chaitra, an OBC girl, it was pressure from family to marry against her wishes. In Kerala, Rajani S. Anand, a Dalit student of engineering, committed suicide as she could not get a loan to fund her studies. Dalit students at AIIMS have been abused.
Various special schemes for Dalit and Adivasi students often exist only on paper. For example, a Navodaya model school with 163 Dalit students from all over Karnataka, located near a reserve forest in Dakshina Kannada district, has no science laboratory, science teacher or sports ground, and all teachers are on contract (which means they do not benefit from government salaries and are insecure and poorly paid).
The result is backwardness in education. Dalit literacy remains significantly lower than the average and drop-out rates have gone up. As per a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General released on August 3, 2008, this rate increased in 2003-04 from 2001-02 in several states. Literacy rates for SCs and STs were 55 per cent and 47 per cent, according to the 2001 Census, compared with the national average of 65 per cent.
Education has been the hope of free India and the dream of social revolutionaries who hoped to free their people from the menial and scorned work of the past. But the road to education is not a free, four-lane highway. For the Dalits, it is full of potholes, speedbreakers and roadblocks.
Omvedt is fellow, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla.
Posted on: August 23, 2008
Tryst with English medium
Original article by Kancha Ilaiah via Deccan Herald.
The Government of Andhra Pradesh has introduced English medium from Class 6 in 6500 Government high schools starting this academic year. All these high schools have also been upgraded to be multi-purpose high schools where all students can complete their Class 12 at their village high school itself. These high schools offer several electives depending on the choice of the students so that they can choose the direction of their higher education after Class 10 in the same school.
On an experimental basis the schools will run the English medium section parallel to the Telugu medium section so that students can choose their medium of education at that school itself. The government has also adopted the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) syllabus in all the schools since this mode gives scope for continuous education up to Class 12.
Among the grants given for education, AP is likely to get about Rs 750 crore, under the SUCCESS school education programme. About one crore, the government says, will go towards establishing a new English medium section in each school. By introducing this novel mode of education system, the Rajasekhar Reddy Government has taken a bold initiative.
When the government order was issued, there was opposition by some teacher organisations and mother tongue lovers to this scheme. But after seeing the support coming for English medium from parents and even the poor living in rural areas, the teaching bodies came around.
Of course, the so-called proponents of the mother tongue who put their own children in private English medium schools realised that the government was firm about its decision. By the end of the first week of July some newspapers reported that 1,50,000 students joined the English medium in Class 6 across the state, which means, that on an average, about 23 students joined each school. Most of these students came from Telugu medium background and in terms of their social background, most of them were from SC/ST/OBC. Thus, the scheme has overcome the initial hiccup of students not opting for English medium and that too with CBSE syllabus.
If this experiment succeeds, the entire education system in the state will undergo a sea change. Already, there are forces that demand introducing English medium right from Class 1. Although after a lot of debate, the government introduced teaching of one subject in English from Class 1, the mother tongue theorists were of the opinion that at least primary education in government schools must continue in Telugu. As a result, the idea of introducing a parallel English medium section in primary schools took a backseat. But that demand will increase now.
There is a lot of demand for English medium education even in the rural areas. Even the lower middle class rural families send their children to urban residential schools at a huge cost of Rs 25,000 per annum. This kind of investment starts from the tenth year of the child itself. Many families are entering into huge debts because of this hunger for English medium school education. In fact village folks want their children to be put in English medium schools right from the level of kinder garden, similar to their urban counterparts. This is a welcome desire and that desire must be respected by the state too.
Within a short time the same convent kind of school education would be preferred by all parents across the country. Should the State say that they should not desire quality English medium education for every child, whether they are poor or rich?
Any modern democratic state must aim for uniform quality of school education for all children across the board. And gradually, we must move towards school education, where all private schools are nationalised. This will give the poor and the rich the right to get the same quality of English medium education. And this choice should be made the fundamental right of every child.
The debate in Andhra Pradesh has reached to a meaningful stage and the linguist jingoistic forces who educate their own children in English medium but were forcing Telugu on the poor and the oppressed castes as part of their linguistic nationalism has come to a dead end.
The problem with private English medium school education that caters to the needs of the rich is that it closes the option of allowing the child learn through the medium of its region. But that system has come into force because money is available only in English medium schools and the parental preference is also confined to just one language — English.
But when it comes to a public debate about the morality of school education, the very same parents take a moralist posture of mother tongue education being the best and most creative. When their private desire gets interrogated in public discourse every such linguistic nationalist gets upset and takes his or her dagger out to kill the agent of English education for the poor. I got killed several times and resurrected to see a day of change in my own state. And hopefully that will follow in other states too.
Posted on: July 15, 2008
Use Your Freedom to Defend Others' (Unveiling India's Apartheid, Part 4)
Original article by Benjamin Mash via God’s Politics.
Slavery in the United States did not end in a night or even a year or decade. Even now, long past slavery’s demise, the twin poisons of racism and class oppression echo as terrible reverberations from our forefathers’ horrific acceptance and perpetuation of brutal violence against their fellow humans. The whips and chains are gone, but the hatred and violence too often well up while inequitable social policies ensure the longevity of poverty for certain classes of people. Even after 150 years, we in the U.S. have a long road ahead in the abolition of racism and class oppression.
I begin with the U.S. because the timeline of our own struggle means everything when examining the hopes of India’s Dalits. Yes, India is changing, but how quickly can a nation change social mindsets that have endured for well over 2,500 years, longer than any known form of human oppression? How do we even begin to dislodge a system … ... so thoroughly entrenched that the “matrimonials” section (for Indians do not date, they marry) of every newspaper is divided quite clearly by caste?
The hope of change lies in the minds of Dalits themselves. “Educate us,” they have cried out. “Teach our children that they are human beings of worth and dignity, that their suffering is not required by any true God. Teach them English that they might find and open the door to the new global market. Free our minds.” And so we do. The Dalit Freedom Network, partnering with Operation Mercy Charitable Corporation, has built 80 schools serving more than 10,000 children. Our goal within the next decade is to build 1,000 schools across India, bastions of freedom where Dalit children learn that their humanity is intertwined by their creation by God, that God loves them, and that they need not bow to any other man or woman for fear or threat of violence.
With these schools comes economic development, as Adam has mentioned in his previous posts, and health care clinics. Our aim is holistic transformation of entire villages, and already we have seen the miraculous transformation of spirits. The smiles on Dalit children as they recount their hope for the future is a fresh gift from the grace of God. We see India changing from the bottom up.
But even as India changes and the Dalits change, there are those who would use fear and tension to promote their agendas, who would divide villages and set brother against brother in vociferous anger in order to build new identities of hatred and fear. The right-wing agenda of India’s Hindu nationalists, represented by the BJP party, the VHP social organization, and the Bajrang Dal, a national Hindu mafia, cultivates fear in the hearts of India’s Hindu majority, especially within the middle class.
Like our own war hawks, these nationalists tell their fundamentalist followers that the future of India lies in the past, in a nation with renewed faith in the old religion and in the effective enforcement of caste distinction. They believe in caste, believe that caste should be kept as the rule for social order. Moreover, they believe that any religion but Hinduism is non-native and therefore a spot on an otherwise pure people. To purify their nation, they set Hindu against Christian and Muslim, the result being attacks like the one Adam detailed in Kandhamal.
Our goal at the Dalit Freedom Network Social Justice Department has been to combat these destructive political aims of Hindu fundamentalists by any means available:
We pursue justice against Indian leaders who perpetuate violence against minorities, including working with the State Department and leaders of Congress to ensure that Hindu leaders who have used their public office to promote and allow violence within their states, such as Chief Minister Narendra Modi of Gujarat, are persona non grata in the U.S.
We raise awareness via hearings and briefings about the rise of anti-conversion legislation in several Indian states, legislation that in its very nature is antithetical to the freedom of the will necessary for the proper practice of democracy.
We combat Hindu fundamentalists who would change America’s textbooks, as they tried in California two years back, to reflect their version of history, one that says that caste was and is not a problem in India and that women have not suffered violence in India’s social system.
Our next step is to ensure that the U.S. government is properly taking the Dalit issue into consideration when they develop their India policies. How are the Dalits being treated in our international giving and foreign development investments? Are we being equitable? Are we setting a positive example? We must answer these questions with a “yes” if we are to assist India in its long-term development lest we, through a combination of negligence and shadowy political manipulation in our own electoral politics, completely ignore India’s downtrodden people and perpetuate the world’s oldest oppression.
I invite you to join with the Dalit Freedom Network, as Adam and Sojourners have joined with us, to pursue justice and create a new world for India’s Dalits. To support our schools, we’ve developed a simple child sponsorship program at http://www.dalitchild.com. Our goal in this program is accountability and trust, and I hope that if you support a child you can one day visit him or her, as so many of our donors have.
I also encourage you to become involved in our social justice work. Contact the presidential campaigns and ask them to speak freely of caste and untouchability in India. Were candidates Obama and McCain to even mention the freedom of India’s Dalits in passing, their words would resonate on the front pages of every Indian newspaper.
Also contact your senator and ask her or him to take a look at House Concurrent Resolution 139, currently in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Ask them to support this important public statement about caste and untouchability. The house passed the resolution in July 2007.
Finally, please contact me personally if you would like to be involved in an ongoing way in the struggle to free the Dalits. We may not see the end of caste and untouchability in our lifetime, but our children and our children’s children will be blessed by the word we pursue on behalf of justice and peace in the name of God.
Benjamin Marsh () is the State Department Liaison for the Dalit Freedom Network.
Posted on: July 4, 2008
Dalit Converts to Christianity Face Persecution and Violence (Unveiling India's Apartheid, Part 3)
Original article by Adam Taylor via God’s Politics.
As you were singing carols, placing the last presents under the tree, and worshiping at a Christmas Eve service this past year, Indian Christians halfway across the world were being victimized by the largest attack on the Christian community in India’s democratic history. The complex and combustible layers of caste-based oppression and religious persecution came to a head on Dec. 24, 2007, through a spate of violence in the Kandhamal District of Orissa state. During the course of a four-day campaign of terror, more than 100 churches were damaged, at least 700 homes were destroyed, and thousands of Dalit and tribal Christians were forced from their homes.
As preparations were being made to celebrate Christmas, Christian leaders approached the police …
... seeking to delay a strike organized by Hindu radicals designed to disrupt their celebration. In the town of Brahminigaon, Dalit converts to Christianity have enjoyed greater social and economic empowerment, which threatens the social order put in place through the Hindu caste system. These Dalit and tribal Christians were beginning to own shops and repudiate their inferior status. According to Christian Solidarity Worldwide, the violence was rooted “in a long-term campaign to Hinduise a tribal population, which involved the vilification of religious conversions to Christianity.” Hindu nationalists and extremists had been fomenting violence in the region, pitting the majority Hindu population, who are from the lower castes but still maintain a higher position in the caste order than Dalits and tribals, against tribal and Dalit Christians. The police, siding with the non-Christian community leaders, decided to allow the strike to proceed. The stage was set as tensions between the Christian and non-Christian communities reached an apex. On the day before Christmas, the rampage began after a dispute in a local market. Churches and homes were targeted with impunity. The people of Kandhamal awoke on Christmas Day gripped by fear as the attacks escalated and spread across the district. Reportedly, no churches held worship services for several weeks.
I prayed with a tribal leader who recently converted from Hinduism to Christianity. Because of his conversion he was given a choice by Hindu extremists to either re-convert to Hinduism and be spared or have his home destroyed and be killed. He courageously chose his Christian faith and fled his village. Five months later, after having rebuilt his home with his own meager resources, his report filed with the police remains unanswered and his community continues to face intimidation and threats.
The state of Orissa is one of seven states in India that have passed anti-conversion laws, which severely curtail conversions. In most of these laws, there are particularly severe penalties if Dalits or Tribals change their religion without prior permission from a district magistrate. Even though these laws arguably violate the Indian Constitution’s protections for religious freedom, they remain in place. Under India’s constitution, Dalits are entitled to affirmative-action benefits, including 15 percent of all federal government jobs and admissions in government-funded universities. Tribals who convert to another religion maintain their affirmative-action privileges. In contrast, Dalits that convert to a religion other than Sikhism, Buddhism, or Hinduism are stripped of these affirmative-action benefits, called reservations. India’s Supreme Court is currently reviewing several challenges filed by Christian and Muslim Dalits that could result in an overturning of the affirmative-action exclusion. A separate bill to remove the restriction is pending in Parliament. Government members, influenced by India’s 150 million-strong Muslim community, have indicated their cautious support.
The Dalit struggle and Christian persecution is inextricably tied to a broken and biased justice system that fails time and time again to prosecute perpetrators of crimes. Just as all politics are local, all justice seems locally administered in India. According to local leaders, six months after the attack not a single perpetrator has been brought to justice. While dozens were arrested, most have been released and no leaders were implicated. Meanwhile, many communities live under the constant specter of intimidation and fear. Women in one village described being threatened and chased by Hindus living in adjoining villages anytime they tried to bathe or wash clothes in a nearby lake.
Dalit Christians who assert their rights and claim their equality pose a direct threat to the established caste system. Many Dalits are turning to Christianity, attracted by the message of a God who made everyone equal. A cover story in The Wall Street Journal last year reported that, to the dismay of Hindu nationalist groups, the number of India’s secret Christians has climbed in recent years to an estimated 25 million, about the size of the officially registered Christian population. According to Dr. Joseph D’souza, AICC president and DFN international president, “Conversion is the way of revolt taught to the Dalits by their champion and liberator, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, a lawyer educated in the U.S. who turned to Buddhism himself. His writings are well-known all over India among the Dalits. Amdedkar clearly called for the Dalits to convert in order to escape caste-based humiliation and discrimination. In response, some Dalits probably convert due to a motivation to simply protest, but the Christian faith demands that the church receive all—including Dalits—who want to follow Christ.”
While the vast majority of Hindus in India are friendly or ambivalent toward Christians, Hindu fundamentalist groups led by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP, the World Hindu Council) are instigating violence and exacerbating tensions. Most Rev. Raphael Cheenath, archbishop of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar, offered a critical insight into how the church must respond, saying the “church needs to open itself up to all sectors of society,” arguing that the future security of the church rests in its ability to build real relationships throughout the Hindu community.
During our sojourn through Khandhamal, we stayed at a Catholic training center that was spared during the attack, in large part due to Hindus in the area who protected the center. The center had opened its doors to Hindu organizations, allowing Hindus to sponsor trainings, events, and conferences. According to Archbishop Cheenath, “the church must learn to teach the gospel without demeaning Hinduism and serve the community without proselytizing.”
Other acts of violence targeting Christians are much more sporadic and smaller in scale, lacking the gravity and scale to grab headlines both in India and across the world. Catholic lay leader and AICC Secretary John Dayal said that, unfortunately, “the conscience of the world is driven by numbers.” On the other hand, attacks each year on Dalits are around 25,000. And there are probably thousands that are unreported. Yet Hindu religion casts a protective shadow over the plight of the Dalits. The Western world is reluctant to fully engage in the Dalit struggle due to fears of being accused of religious intolerance, cultural insensitivity, and sheer ignorance. However, a pernicious distortion of the Bible was used to sanction the systems of Jim Crow in the South and apartheid in South Africa. However, the world can’t escape the harsh reality that oppression against Dalits is inextricably linked to the Hindu-based caste system within India. Indians must ask whether Hinduism can survive without caste? Prayerfully, the answer is yes.
Posted on: July 3, 2008
Seeds of Liberation (Unveiling India's Apartheid, Part 2)
Original article by Adam Taylor via God’s Politics.
As our motorcade approached the Dalit village of Nayagarh, we could see the bright and brilliant image of 500 Dalit women gathered to welcome us, their saris forming a kaleidoscope of color. Cheers and whistles erupted from the crowd of women as we approached. I felt like a presidential candidate as I passed through the crowd, shaking as many hands as I could reach, wanting to make human contact with women whose dignity is so often demeaned and whose worth too often dismissed. These women had formed 130 self-help groups composed of 10 other women in villages across the region to invest in entrepreneurial projects that generate income and create a better life for their families and villages. They had come to show off their products and seek additional assistance from Operation Mercy Charitable Company (OMCC), an initiative supported by Operation Mobilization India (OM) and the All India Christian Council (AICC) that provides training and micro-loans. The women proudly showed off their products, ranging from beautiful saris to rice and roti. Access to loans are providing the keys to emancipation from bonded labor and careers of doing the most degrading work, such as cleaning latrines.
Many of these women also send their children to an English instruction school that has been set up by OMCC, funded in part through the Dalit Freedom Network. The majority of Dalit children are either denied access to primary education or only receive instruction in Hindi or other native languages. The public school system has become a dismal refuge for the children of the lower and middle castes, where Dalit students face daily abuse by teachers and students. According to a government report, 73 percent of Dalit students drop out in secondary school. Instruction in English represents a passport to higher education and India’s service- and high-tech economy. Already OMCC has set up 81 schools in rural villages across the country. The combination of educational opportunity and asset creation are planting seeds of social and economic empowerment.
Educational opportunities provided by the missions and churches have built a new generation of Dalit Christian leaders …
... including Rev. Sam Paul, AICC national secretary of public affairs, and Albert Lael, OMCC national director. While the Brahmin caste still dominates church leadership, caste is slowly dying within the church and is all but dead in the more recent wave of churches. During a meeting in Bhubaneswar, I had the privilege of meeting more than 30 pastors active in the All India Christian Council from across the region, including a Catholic archbishop who is leading the fight for their freedom, the most Rev. Raphael Cheenath. These leaders on the front lines of the Dalit freedom movement shared their stories of struggle, and I shared information about the American civil rights movement. According to these leaders, while the church has played an instrumental role in economic and social empowerment, the reticence of many churches to confront systemic injustice still poses a major obstacle. Many churches, particularly evangelical ones, have preferred to remain apolitical, focusing almost exclusively on saving souls. This trend started to shift in the late 1990s with the creation of the All India Christian Council, which built on earlier work by other denominationally-based organizations. The Council was created in the aftermath of a brutal killing in Orissa in which an Australian missionary and his two young sons were burned alive by Hindu radicals. With its back against the wall, church leaders united to protest persecution and advance religious freedom within India. The Council formed strong interfaith relationships. And, in the process, the Council became more engaged in politics and came face to face with the oppression suffered by Dalits. As the AICC shifts its focus to include the Dalit cause, it risks losing support from within and outside of India. Religious persecution seems to galvanize attention and incite moral indignation much more than fighting a hidden and entrenched system of caste oppression.
The struggle for Dalit freedom appears to be on the tipping point of bursting forth into a social movement. India’s free press, strong civil society, and good laws provide key ingredients for such a movement. With greater political empowerment and cohesion, the Dalits, scheduled tribes, and lower-caste Indians could form a formidable swing constituency in Indian politics. However, according to political science professor Dr. Kancha Ilaiah, of Osmania University in Hyderabad, “in the context of elections many Dalits remain disenfranchised and are bribed through money or alcohol.” Language barriers, factions in leadership, and religious differences have also stifled national unity. Despite these barriers, Dalits have made a number of historic political gains. In 1997, a Dalit woman, Mayawati Kumari, was elected to the top post in the state of Uttar Pradesh in a landslide victory in which she was able to garner support across castes, including from high-caste Brahmins. While Uttar Pradesh benefits from the largest concentration of Dalits, elements of this success story can be replicated in other parts of India. The Dalit vote was also pivotal in bringing the more nonsectarian Congress Party back to national power in 2004. In 2006 Manmohan Singh became the first sitting prime minister to publicly acknowledge the parallel between the practice of “untouchability” and the crime of “apartheid.”
Despite the encouraging rhetoric of the Congress Party, a chasm still exists between words and action to redress the Dalit plight. The weight of 3,000 years of caste precedent and tradition can feel overwhelming and intractable. However, seeds of empowerment have already been planted and are bearing fruit in the fertile soil for Dalit liberation. The upcoming national elections will provide another test and opportunity.
Posted on: July 2, 2008
Unveiling India's Apartheid (Part 1)
Original article by Adam Taylor via God’s Politics.
In the shadow of India’s economic miracle lies a people often deemed untouchable, largely impoverished, and seemingly invisible. Bubbling beneath the shimmering image of a new India is a cauldron of inequality, caste-based subordination, and religious tension that could boil over into even greater civil strife and violence. At the center of these forces lies the Dalit struggle. While Dalit rights are often denied and hopes are crushed, growing political, economic, and spiritual empowerment is fueling a movement for liberation. The emancipation of the Dalits could serve as the key to securing India’s nonsectarian, democratic future. However, this future collides with the ancient system of castes, which still confers profound benefits or burdens upon Indians simply because of their birth names.
For more than 3,000 years, the caste system has divided Indian society into four distinct classes, or varnas. Outside this system are the Dalits, who according to caste are not considered part of human society and are therefore less than fully human. While untouchability was outlawed in the 1950 Constitution and atrocities against Dalits are prohibited through the 1989 Prevention of Atrocities Act, a lack of political will and widespread corruption at all levels makes the law all but obsolete. Untouchability remains particularly acute in the rural areas of India, where 70 percent of the population still resides. While a great deal has changed in the sprawling and more tolerant cities, in rural areas people’s entire lives are circumscribed by a caste identity that suffocates their dignity and segregates their lives.
The Dalit population approximates that of the entire United States. Imagine the U.S. population living in a perpetual state of discrimination and marginalization. This should strike a familiar chord with our own recent history with Jim Crow segregation. According to Joseph D’souza, president of the Dalit Freedom Network and All India Christian Council, the government has outlawed the symptoms of untouchability but ignores the actual disease of caste that still relegates nearly 250 million people to an apartheid-like existence. Comparing the Dalit struggle to a system of apartheid may seem like hyperbole. However, the entrenched system of caste systematically subordinates a large segment of Indian society.
The name “Dalit” means “broken” or “ground down.” Approximately 25 percent of India’s vast population is Dalit. To this day, people from higher castes refuse to marry Dalits; they are relegated to occupations that are considered degrading; most caste Hindus will not eat or drink with Dalits; and the majority of bonded laborers and sexual slaves in India are Dalit. Caste is part of a Hindu belief that people inherit their stations in life based on the sins and good deeds of past lives. Despite signs of economic mobility, Dalits are often the victims of dehumanizing acts of violence and humiliation designed to keep them in their place. As I learned more about the mounting crisis of AIDS in India, it is the Dalits who are most prone to be living with HIV and most likely to die a painful death from the disease.
I first heard about the Dalit struggle at the World Conference Against Racism, Xenophobia, and Discrimination in 2001. A large contingent of Dalit activists were present in full force. Their message was that the entrenched caste system in Southeast Asia was equivalent to racism and that their voices could no longer be silenced. Unfortunately, their voices were drowned by so many other oppressed voices vying for global attention, and by the controversy around the pulling out of the U.S. delegation.
It took another six years for the Dalit struggle to capture my conscience. In a presentation about the modern-day system of slavery, Gary Haugen, director of the International Justice Mission, based in Washington, D.C., described India as the worst abuser of human trafficking in the world. During a series of meetings over the past year, Rev. Sam Paul, national secretary of public affairs for the All India Christian Council, and Dr. Joseph D’souza have brought the Dalit struggle even closer to home, asking Sojourners to become engaged in the international Dalit freedom movement.
A year later I find myself in the crucible of the Dalit struggle, spending a week with the Dalit Freedom Network and the All India Christian Council, visiting one of the provinces in India that is hardest hit by Christian persecution and Dalit oppression. In many parts of India, the Dalit struggle intersects directly with the issue of religious freedom, as nearly 70 percent of Christians in India are Dalit. While Christians constitute a small minority in India, 2 to 3 percent of the population still translates into roughly 30 million people. Many Dalits and tribal caste people converted to Christianity in order to escape religiously sanctioned inferiority within Hinduism, drawn to a new identity and equality in Christ. However, many in India cling to the notion that India is a Hindu nation and that to be Indian is to be Hindu. Dalit Christians are thus twice-oppressed, once as the outcasts, and then again as members of an often-despised faith. This series will explore the Dalit struggle based on my experiences over the past week through what has felt like a baptism by fire. I hope and pray that you will join me in learning more about this modern system of apartheid.
To learn more, read Hidden Apartheid: Caste Discrimination against India’s “Untouchables.” Feb. 2007
Posted on: July 1, 2008
Rejected by Their Own Gods
Recently, one of my colleagues and I had an opportunity to visit and worship at an ancient cathedral in Cologne, Germany. The cathedral is a World Heritage Site, one of the best-known architectural monuments in Germany, and Cologne’s most famous landmark. Described as an “exceptional work of human creative genius”, Cologne Cathedral is one of the largest churches in Europe.
It is 144.5 meters long and 86.5 meters wide and its two towers are 157 meters tall. From 1880-1884, it was the tallest structure in the world until the completion of the Washington Monument followed by the Eiffel Tower.
What fascinated me was not its magnificent architecture or the extraordinary construction by human beings – after all, we have numerous temples in India, which are very impressive and much older. But I was amazed that Cologne Cathedral, in fact almost all churches and cathedrals, are open to anyone who wants to come in. As I sat at the mass in the cathedral and later climbed all 509 steps to the rooftop, I deeply appreciated the egalitarianism of the church and asked myself: Why can’t all the people of India, including me, who are called ‘Dalits’, go into such magnificent places of worship?
Dalits, throughout my country and throughout the centuries have made innumerable attempts to enter the famous 12th century Jagannath Temple in the coastal town of Puri, Orissa. They want to worship the deity like other caste Hindus, but 
their dreams remain shattered in spite of the order by the state’s highest court to the district administration and temple management on December 5, 2006, to allow Dalits to enter. This practice of barring Dalits from entering the temple is not just in Puri alone. It is practised throughout the country in keeping with traditions from time immemorial.
Last year, Leftist political leader B.V. Ragavulu embarked on a novel mission along with his followers to break open all the temples using force and political clout. But, sadly this met stiff resistance from caste Hindus. As he broke open temples and helped Dalits enter into sanctum sanctorum, the caste Hindus and upper caste men quickly reacted with equal force and determination. They purified the temples with cow milk and special ceremonies to reverse the ‘defilement’ that Dalits brought into the temples. Then they locked them out again. A few temples attempted a compromise by erecting smaller gods outside the temples for the Dalits. Ironically, most Dalits are considered to be Hindus, but their very presence makes the Hindu gods unclean!
To be clear, it’s not just at the hands of Hindus that Dalits are discriminated, humiliated and their fundamental rights to religious freedom taken away. All the so-called egalitarian religions discriminate against Dalits. This includes Buddhism, Islam, Sikhism and, sadly and to the utter disgrace of the teachings of the Bible, Christianity. Yes, Christians are not lagging behind when it comes to oppressing Dalits at places of worship. Will there be an end to this oppression? The ardent caste Hindu with his or her strong beliefs in the teachings of karma will neither let these people into the sanctum sanatorum nor ever allow them to become priests. I believe the only solution lies in releasing people from this oppression into a society and community where they are respected as people created in the likeness of God. We must participate in creating a just society that gives equal opportunity in the field of economics and education, and in places of worship. It is our resolve and constant endeavour to bring this positive change – beginning in the places where Dalit Education Centers operate!
Albert Lael is National Director for Operation Mercy Charitable Company and is in charge of Dalit Educational Centers.
Posted on: June 6, 2008
A crap job
By David Griffiths via New Statesman.
Nothing highlights the absurdity of India’s caste system more than the practice known as ‘manual scavenging’, argues David Griffiths of Christian Solidarity Worldwide.
I met Peddanna in his village in Andhra Pradesh, near the main highway linking two of India’s most prominent ‘hi-tech’ cities, Hyderabad and Bangalore. His pre-defined role in life is to scoop up human faeces from a dry latrine and carry them in a basket to a dumping ground. When some faeces fell onto his head recently, he complained about his working conditions to an official at the local municipality which employs him. The official seemed surprised, and said, “You are a dirty man doing a dirty job; why are you worried about this?”
Peddanna belongs to the Thoti sub-caste among India’s Dalits, the lowest rung of the ancient caste system which continues to shape Indian society. The occupation into which these Thotis are born is ‘manual scavenging’, or the cleaning of human shit with their hands, as the human rights activists more vividly describe it.
Euphemisms do not hide the realities of this occupation for long. Every morning, Peddanna and his five colleagues carry their baskets through the village to the dry latrine. It is a walk of shame, which forces them to parade their baskets as symbols of their outcast status. Once they arrive at the dry latrine, an area of dust and grass surrounded by a low wall, they scoop the faeces into baskets and carry them away, leaving the ‘higher’ castes in the village with a clean toilet. They use flimsy makeshift scoops, and have no gloves, masks or protective equipment to wear. For others, the job can be worse: many dry latrines have cement floors, from which the faeces must be scraped meticulously, using whatever is to hand.
Peddanna said: “If it is raining, when we put the basket on our heads, the shit covers our bodies.” Like many manual scavengers, he complains of regular stomach problems and an inability to eat because of the persistent smell which lingers with him. Instead, he turns to country liquor to mitigate his sense of shame about this work.
Manual scavenging is banned by law in India. But as is so often the case, legislation passed in Delhi has little impact in rural areas, home to the vast majority of the population. The problem is that prosecutions under this law must be sanctioned by the district authorities and they are often guilty of perpetuating or, at least, turning a blind eye to this practice. Manual scavengers sometimes point out a communal dry latrine exists in the Nizamabad district court in Andhra Pradesh state. Proof if nothing else that local authorities are not remotely serious about tackling this issue.
Many manual scavengers are officially employed by municipal authorities as ‘sweepers’, another job traditionally associated with Dalits. In Peddanna’s village, he and five other men clean the dry latrines in the morning and sweep the streets in the afternoon. The village head (sarpanch) has threatened to punish them by holding back their wages if they tell the municipal authorities or anyone else about this. The manual scavengers and their families are avoided by other villages, and treated as unclean. They cannot enter restaurants or other public places anywhere they will be recognised. Even other Dalits treat them with disdain.
Every society needs its sanitation workers, and no doubt those in any context may face some stigma. However, the deeper reality in India is that this job is reserved for Dalits, the ‘untouchables’ of old, and it is their job for life. As members of the Thoti sub-caste, Peddanna and his colleagues were destined for this work by their birth, with no right of appeal. Members of equivalent sub-castes endure similar work across numerous districts of India: perhaps as many as 1.3 million of them. The nature of the caste system is that it generates a powerful combination of social and psychological pressures, constraints and expectations, which means that they cannot simply walk out of this work into another job of their choice. Because the scavengers do this work, there is little incentive to bring about change by introducing proper toilet facilities into the areas they work. Yet as long as the scavengers do it, they will be treated as untouchables. Theirs is a story of institutional dehumanisation and the flagrant abuse of their human rights.
Humiliating descent-based occupations, of which manual scavenging is one of the worst, continue to blight the lives of India’s Dalits, who number 167 million according to the latest census data. The 84 million tribals often suffer similar exploitation. India’s population of Dalits and tribals is roughly equivalent to the combined populations of the UK, Germany, France and Spain, and they are the worst victims of labour exploitation and human rights abuses in India.
The UN has affirmed that discrimination on the basis of caste is covered by the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. Having ‘noted with concern that very large numbers of Dalits are forced to work as manual scavengers’, the UN called on the Indian government to properly implement the law banning this practice.
Frustrated with government inaction, the NGO Safai Karmachari Andolan (SKA) has taken matters into its own hands. Describing manual scavenging as a ‘national shame’, the SKA leads a movement ambitiously campaigning to eradicate the practice by the time the Commonwealth Games come to Delhi in October 2010, and has engaged in several drives to demolish dry latrines in Andhra Pradesh. It has been immune from an official backlash by the fact that the government has claimed there are no dry latrines operational in the state.
Away from the first-world facilities in parts of Hyderabad and Bangalore, there is no question that India’s infrastructure remains very poor, especially in the rural areas. However, the continuance of this practice is not simply a question of infrastructure development, but instead rooted in the social hierarchy of caste. Infrastructural development needs to go hand-in-hand with a resolve to do away with the communal dry latrines and the dehumanisation which they perpetuate.
Just occasionally, an irony shows manual scavenging for the absurdity it is. At a dry latrine in another village I visited in Andhra Pradesh state, a crowd gathered around, watching the manual scavenger perform her work, and taking the opportunity to complain about the appalling toilet facilities which they had to endure. The manual scavenger at work, named Uma, had served us with tea in her house before beginning her day’s work. As we had left to follow her to the dry latrine, I could not help noticing that her own house had a clean, flushable toilet.
Posted on: May 30, 2008
Racism blindness, cricket, and the Untouchables
By Joseph D’souza
On January 8, 2008, CNN/IBN’s ‘Face the Nation’ broadcast focused on racism within India. It was not surprising that, during a call-in survey, 83% of their audience agreed that India has its own racism. The caste system is at the core of this social illness.
Reporters interviewed black students from Africa in the famous Jawaharlal Nehru University who prefer to stay inside the campus rather than venture out onto the streets of New Delhi to face racist comments and taunts. The broadcast was triggered by the huge controversy around allegedly racist comments by one of India’s cricket players to an Australian player in the ongoing cricket series between the countries. The match referee banned the Indian player for three matches. The Indian team has appealed.
While it appears the Indian player is not guilty, it is baffling to see how some Indians are trying to take a higher moral ground on the whole issue of racism. The argument is that India raised its voice against Apartheid. We are the ones who condemned racism in America. We are the pluralistic society that will not stand for racism.
Yet, while this is true, one of the CNN/IBN panel members expressed the unsaid truth. He stated that Indians are hard-core racists due to the caste system and our obsession with being fair and white in skin color. Nowhere in the world is there such an obsession with becoming fair-skinned. Cosmetic companies blatantly run ads which are racist in character. There are numerous quacks who offer creams and treatments that are harmful, but promise to make your face ‘fair’ in a couple of weeks.
Professor Kancha Ilaiah, a political scientist who was on the show, pointed out that Indian life is replete with terms that are racist. When the lower castes are called ‘Chamars’ or ‘Bhangis’ or ‘Chandalas’ or ‘Kalia’ and similar names, it degrades and insults people who were born into this category, occupation, and place in the caste system.
A few Australian papers indirectly pointed out that all is not well in India on the racism front. But the editors did not go on to directly point out what I commonly hear during my travels around the world. In the wake of globalization, the world is very aware of India’s caste or racism problem.
Increasingly, very few people are buying the argument that the caste system is not racism. From genetic discoveries to binding United Nations’ judgments, the truth is becoming obvious.
In fact, not only is caste a form of racism, it is a greater evil. Educational achievements or economic successes sometimes eliminate the barriers of most racism. But my beloved country is full of examples of Dalits who returned home after great accomplishments only to be scorned by the upper castes. In 2001, Dalit leaders said with one voice at the UN conference at Durban that caste is worse than racism because there is no way out of the caste system. Once a Dalit, always a Dalit.
What’s the solution? Non-governmental groups, like ours, can continue to empower Dalits through primary education, microeconomic projects, and more. The national and state governments should enforce the good laws which are already on the books. But transformation of our racism-laden society will only happen when corporate responsibility is practiced. Corporations wield power and respect. Companies, whether Indian or multi-national, must address racism in their operations. And, more important, they must invest in schools, colleges, and continuing education which teach the equal potential for every human being. Knowledge of the truth sets people free.
Posted on: January 20, 2008
State of Terror
Original article from The Asian Age.
By Seema Mustafa
It was a near midnight telephone call from colleague and trusted friend John Dayal. The panic in his voice carried over the telephone lines: “Do something, we cannot get through to anyone, the people are surrounded in Orissa, they are going to do another Gujarat.” He had slammed down the receiver before one could respond. Do what John? Call whom? Who is going to listen? No one cares. Oh yes, after the violence is over they will all emerge, clucking their tongues, announcing compensation, denouncing violence, but that will all be after the event. Images of Ahsan Jafri, the veteran Congress leader, calling everyone from Gujarat to Delhi for help as the mobs gathered outside his house, flashed by. He was brutally butchered.
The Congress disappeared from Gujarat then, as it has disappeared from Orissa today. Violence has become a state subject, with state governments being given full freedom to terrorise and kill Indian citizens at will. Orissa chief minister Naveen Patnaik had little to say about the violence that targeted the Christians in the state, so little that he actually appeared to endorse it. The report of the National Minorities Commission has come like a gust of fresh air as it has confirmed that the violence was premeditated. And what was worse, the state government had full knowledge of it but did nothing to protect the traumatised people who went through hours of sheer terror as mobs vandalised, burnt and attacked them and their places of worship.
The NCM took suo moto cognisance of the violence following media reports. It was not asked to take note by the Central government, read the home ministry that does not react to such violence in any part of the country. Home minister Shivraj Patil has decided that communal violence should be ignored, and the government must not react to the attacks on the minorities in any part of the country. He has reduced his ministry to a cipher, where it does nothing to prevent violence, to ensure action against the perpetrators of violence, and the dispensation of justice. Everything for this ministry is a state subject — although it does not hesitate to hold meetings on the Naxalite issue, sponsor and support questionable tactics such as Salwa Judum in the states, and yet maintain a grim silence when PUCL activists are arrested and hounded by the state police as being pro-Naxalite with little or no evidence at hand. Mr Patil has established himself as the most incompetent minister in the Cabinet, and strangely enough, that is the reason why he has survived every Cabinet reshuffle. Inefficiency pays, overzealousness attracts unwarranted attention and jealousies, and such ministers are either dropped or left with little more than panchayati raj.
The NCM found that the violence against the Christian community was “organised and preplanned.” It also found alarming that despite the fact that the “Christian community had given prior information to the government and the administration that it was apprehending trouble, sufficient steps were not taken to prevent the violence.” What has gone wrong with our politicians, with those elected to power to protect all citizens of India regardless? What is wrong with these people who support and condone the worst kind of violence, and even participate in it? What is this sickness that has taken hold of their minds, where they see the people of India through the prism of caste and communal hatred?
True, hatred and divisiveness are the stated ideology of one group, one parivar that revels in inciting death and destruction. That creates stereotypes and spreads anger and hatred. That cashes in on frustration to motivate anger and subsequent violence. But what about all the others who are in power, and watch helplessly, and often, as in the case of the Orissa government, with a level of connivance and even delight. How is it that those who preside over pogroms are feted, wined and dined by supposedly respectable leaders of India? How is it that no one holds them accountable for the violence that has left hundreds and thousands dead? What is happening to secular, democratic India that gained independence with the pledge to treat all equally, to wipe the tears from every eye, to bring liberty and justice to its people?
Our policies create monsters, and then in tackling these we beat the poor and the oppressed mercilessly. Terrorism was converted by our governments here into communalism, and used to beat innocent Muslims all over the country — in Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra, in Gujarat and Rajasthan. Not a single terrorist has been caught, but hundreds have been imprisoned, beaten and tortured as the police and administration have been given the latitude to do what they will. The same is happening in the name of tackling the Naxalite problem. Salwa Judum, where the poor were made to attack and kill the poor by cynical and unscrupulous governments, has fortunately been exposed as a terrible policy. But that has not stopped the administrations of the affected states from attacking the poor and arresting the civil rights activists who are trying to highlight the plight of the poorest of the poor. Naxalites are not these hydra-headed monsters, they are the poor of India who do not get even one meal a day, and have been convinced, wrongly of course, that violence is now the only way to get justice. The problem has two dimensions: one of social equity and justice, and the second, of law and order. Our home minister, unfortunately, does not understand the first as social justice does not seem to be part of his vocabulary.
There is a certain silence in Delhi about the role of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and its mentors in Orissa. There is complete silence about the role of chief minister Naveen Patnaik who has added insult to injury with a compensation package that basically confirms his support for those who sought to take justice into their own hands. The NCM has done a good job, but its jurisdiction is limited. It has little strength except as a moral force, and morality and conscience are certainly not the weight that politicians carry these days. Terrorism is happily recognised by all as violence. There are no two views on this, even though in the name of terrorism state governments take actions that are unjust and highly questionable. Why is communal and caste violence no longer given the same status in India? Why does it not, at least, earn pious homilies from those entrusted with India’s national security, as it actually corrodes and destroys the innards of Indian polity?
Surely, even the politicians seeking to lead the country, at the Centre and the states, today realise this basic fact. Of course, there is one group that is wedded to the polity of hate and injustice. But what about the others? The silence is now ominous, as it is indicative of a certain apathy and perhaps even a lurking sympathy for those seeking to destroy India through the politics of hate. And what is worse, as has been the case in several states in recent years, use the administration and the police to wreak state terror more effectively, and with far more dangerous consequences than the governments today are prepared to admit. When a terrorist attacks, the people turn to their government for help? When they become the victims of terror unleashed by the state, who do they turn to for help? If this question is understood and the answers are placed in the correct perspective, then perhaps, the government can even today come up with a policy that is genuinely pro-people and pro-India.
But first, get Mr Patil out of the home ministry and find someone who understands and is sensitive to the real politics of India. One can suggest at least two names even amongst the present lot, but such is the paranoia of the Congress in power, that the suggestion from these columns will effectively place the two individuals in the dog house. After all, the reason why Shivraj Patil continues to head the most important ministry of India is because no one likes him, and he is answerable only to the powers that be. The country be damned.
Posted on: January 20, 2008
India's Burning Issue
Original source from Christianity Today Magazine by Joseph D’Souza.
On Christmas Eve, violence broke out against Christians in the Kandhamal district of the eastern Indian state of Orissa, which has become well known for poor governance and class tensions. Hindu fundamentalist groups led by the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP, the World Hindu Council) have attacked Christians and their institutions at will in rural areas. Over 90 churches and Christian institutions have been burned and vandalized, over 700 Christian homes destroyed, and the number of pastors and Christians killed is yet to be known, according to a report by my colleagues in the All India Christian Council. A pastor in Chennai told me that 11 pastors have been killed and thousands of Dalit (formerly known as untouchable) Christians displaced. Compass Direct reports that the death count is at 9. Many people are missing, and others have vanished in the nearby forests.
Human Rights Watch and others have decried the present carnage in Orissa and have recognized that freedom of religious choice — especially in a democracy like India’s — must be respected. The Prime Minister promised immediate action to restore peace in the state. But the affected areas are still reporting sporadic violence over two weeks since the attacks against Dalit Christians began.
Despite reports that Christians retaliated in some places, so far Dalit Freedom Network investigations and statements by the Orissa government indicate that Maoist rebels — called Naxalites — were behind the revenge attacks that left dozens of Hindu families homeless. Most Naxalites are armed Dalits, and their involvement gives evidence of the root problem: ancient caste divisions.
My colleagues and I have condemned all forms of extremism and violence, whether Hindu or Christian. However, the underlying story is not about violence, but instead about the caste discrimination and impoverishment that infect India.
Time magazine was quick to state that Hindu caste discrimination is one major factor in the present persecution of Dalit Christians in Orissa. In the Kandhamal area, there are about 100,000 Christians, mostly Dalits, and 500,000 non-Christian Tribals. IBN Live reports that the Dalit Christians have “done well after converting to Christianity.” Their social, educational, and developmental conditions have conspicuously improved.
A transformed Christian community becomes a powerful motivator and attractor of all those who are still treated as subhumans by the caste system in Orissa. The inhuman and fraudulent social structure of the caste system is fully exposed.
The caste-ridden Hindu fundamentalist groups find this difficult to stomach and have produced threats and false propaganda against Christian missionaries and humanitarian workers in recent years. Hindu fundamentalist ideologues have publicly raised the issue of conversions again, telling NDTV that conversions motivated the violence.
In Orissa eight years ago, Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two children were burned to death when Hindu radicals lit fire to their car. This New Year’s Day, his widow Gladys Staines, sent a letter to India’s prime minister, Manmohan Singh, and Orissa’s chief minister, Naveen Patnaik expressing grief over the violence and urging forgiveness.
Conversion is the way of revolt taught to the Dalits by their champion and liberator, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, a lawyer educated in the U.S., who turned to Buddhism himself. His writings are well known all over India among the Dalits. Amdedkar clearly called for the Dalits to convert in order to escape caste-based humiliation and discrimination. In response, some Dalits probably convert due to a motivation to simply protest, but the Christian faith demands that the church receive all — including Dalits — who want to follow Christ.
Violence against Dalit Christians in Orissa and state-sponsored anti-conversion laws will not stop conversions to other faiths. Nor will it take care of the decay within the caste-based Hindu social system.
Sadly, the Orissa state government is not implementing national hate crimes laws that call for severe punishment for crimes against Dalits and tribal Indians. (In most cases, only Sikh, Buddhist, and Hindu Dalits find it possible to get a government-issued Dalit-identity document.)
I pray that my beloved country will back away from the ledge of discrimination and limitations to religious freedom. Only then will India achieve its potential as a superpower in the 21st century.
Joseph D’Souza is international president of the Dalit Freedom Network.
Posted on: January 10, 2008
Dalits March for Dignity, Again
by Staff Reporter, Dalit Freedom Network
Originally published July 5, 2007.
The heat in June is almost unbearable in many parts of India. But Dalits in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh are finding the discrimination unbearable throughout the year. So the summer heat didn’t even faze a group of protesters as they began their long march. Besides their physical determination, the declaration issued at the end of a recent march is a potent example of Dalits’ desire for change.
About 20 women and girls marched across India’s most populous state, covering 230 miles (370 km). They passed through 140 villages, 7 slums and four districts during their 22 day journey. They marched to highlight hunger, land, water and sustainable development issues for Dalits.
Across India today, Dalits often hold similar marches or processions, also called yatras, to bring attention to crucial issues. In the face of indifferent government officials or corrupt justice systems, it is one of the few ways to gain attention and be heard.
Called the “Land, Dignity and Freedom Footmarch”, the women were led by Vidya Bhushan Rawat, an experienced activist who has tackled many issues over the years, including the abolishment of manual scavenging (removing human waste from toilets by hand). The women started from Tilakwania village on June 1, 2007 and ended on June 22, 2007.
At each stop, the group discussed the failure of the previous government to improve the livelihoods of marginalized communities and the continuing challenges of hunger, malnutrition, and poverty. They voiced concern over growing communalization – where different religious communities are being pitted against each other. In many places the Dalits spoke to small gatherings, visited affected areas, and conducted surveys.
At the end of the march, tired but energized, they issued a list of demands that was named after their final stop, the village of Chauri-Chaura. For those in the West that fight for the dignity and freedom of Dalits, their declaration clearly explains the reality of caste. And through it we glimpse the practical needs and daily discrimination faced by Dalits.
Similar declarations are made throughout the year by dusty, sweaty, tired protestors who end marches in small villages or towns across India. They hope their plight will be noticed by decision makers and authorities. They ask for someone to listen. They plead for justice.
When doors are shut and ears turned away, the success of their appeal largely rests on the solidarity of compassionate citizens around the world. Issued by 20 women in a rural village on the dusty plains of North India during a hot day in late June, the declaration eloquently states, “This war of independence is not possible without the support and alliance of anti-caste, anti-communal, anti-superstition and progressive forces.”
You may never see Dalits’ pleas, demands, and declarations in a newspaper. The cries of the marginalized may rarely reach the ears of compassionate Westerners. But, for at least once, you have the opportunity to read their words. Feel their pain. See their determination. And take action.
Their courage inspires us to persevere in the epic struggle to abolish caste – now and forever.
The Chauri-Chaura Declaration (abridged version)
At the culmination of 22 days padyatra at Chauri Charua, we demand the following:
1. The government must take special measures to improve the condition of Mushahars, Rajbhars, Bansfors, Nonias, Machchuaras, Dom, Swachchakars, Pasis and Chamars. These [caste] communities are living in abysmally degrading conditions and need special measures.
2. In the Eastern Uttar Pradesh the “Sand Mafias” are controlling the rivers like the Chhoti Gandak, Gurra, Rapti and Ghaghara. The mechanised sand mining has resulted in soil erosion by these rivers during the monsoon. Thousands of hectares of land have turned infertile. …We demand the immediate halt of mechanised sand mining…
3. In many villages of Eastern Uttar-Pradesh powerful local people have illegally grabbed the land given to Dalits and “most backward” communities. In many villages, the Dalits are not even allowed passage to move out. Government must ensure that every person lives with dignity at his/her land that every one has a right to access roads from his/her house.
4. The sugar factories and distilleries in Ramkola, Kaptanganj, Deoria, Rudrapur, Sardarnagar are throwing chemical waste in the rivers… The fishworkers are facing hunger as the fish catch is almost nill. Apart from this, the waste has spilled over to a vast agricultural land turning them completely barren and dangerous. The ground water in most of the eastern UP town is contaminated which is a severe threat to public health. We demand immediate action against these factory/mill owners and ask the government to compensate the farmers who have lost their land to these mills. The Pollution Control Board should be asked to explain why they continue to allow such hazardous industries to run.
5. In Kushingar and Gorakhpur …the National Employment Guarantee Scheme …has not been implemented. We found work being done through tractors, and people without work despite having the valid card. The scheme seems to have failed because of the connivance between the village Pradhans [leaders] and block officials. We demand severe action against erring officials …and ask the government to form a monitoring and evaluating committee which should include civil society representatives.
6. In Poorvanchal, we found …discrepency in the distribution of ration cards. Those who should have been eligible for the cards have not got it while others have got it. We demand strong action the Sarpanches [village leaders] and officials who are involved in nepotism and corruption. We also demand from the government that the reach of the Public Distribution System should be expanded and it must include important edible items, books, cloths, Masalas, etc so that the poor can benefit from this.
7. Hunger and starvation is prevalent in Eastern Uttar Pradesh. …It is shameful that children from Mushahars, Chauhan, Rajbhar, etc. are eating rats and fishermen are forced to survive on snails. We demand the government to focus on these communities with special programmes particularly developing schools in the villages with mid day meals and other incentives for school children and their parents.
8. The government must form special Land Courts to settle land disputes and implement the land reform measures strongly and effectively. The government must concentrate on giving communal entitlement. We also demand that women should be given priority in allotment of agricultural land and all new entitlement whether residential or agricultural should have joint entitlement.
Today on the day of culmination of Padyatra we commit ourselves to continue our struggle for Land, Dignity and Freedom. We will continue to make government aware of the ground situation while fighting for our rights democratically. We also want to make it clear that this war of independence is not possible with out the support and alliance of anti caste, anti communal, anti superstition and progressive forces in which the role of women, Dalits, most backward communities and tribals have an important role to play. We …have to take inspiration from Baa Saheb Ambedkar, Jyoti Ba Phule, Savitri Bai Phule, and EV Ramaswamy Naicar. They remain our icons and role models in our struggle for the creation of a civil society.
Signed by:
Uttar-Pradesh Land Alliance
Social Development Foundation, Delhi
Food for Hungry Foundation, Delhi
Dr B.R.Ambedkar Gramodyog Sansthan, Deoria
Swachchakar Kalyan Samiti, Ghazipur
Smt Sonia Gramin Mahila avam Bal Kalyan Samiti, Deoria
Lord Buddha Trust, Kushinagar
Hitkari Sewa Samiti, Deoria
Jan Kalyan Sansthan, Chauri Chaura, Gorakhpur
Palanjivi Samiti, Rudrapur, Deoria
Mushahar Shakti Sanghthan, Deoria
Tharu Development Society, Lakhimpur Khiri
Tal Ratoy Machchua Jan Kalyan Sansthan, Mau
Bharatiya Jan Seva Ashram, Jaunpur
Chitrakoot Sewa Ashram, Chitrakoot
Dalit Mahila Mukti Morcha,
UP Machchua Adhikar Manch, Rudrapur
and many others
Posted on: July 15, 2007
Will Dalit Christians Get Justice This Time?
by M. Madhu Chandra
Originally published July 11, 2007
Excerpted below. To read full article, click here or here.
1. Introduction
After constitutional denial of Scheduled Caste origins converted to Christianity and Muslims after the Presidential Order 1950, a million dollar question remains in the minds of Indian Dalit Christians “Will the Judicial system of India give justice to Indian Dalit Christians now after 57 years of injustice done to them?”
After much prolong delay, Commission for Minority Religion and Linguistic Minority known as Misra Commission has finally submitted its report to United Progressive Alliance Government with recommendation that Dalit Christians and Muslims suffer socio-economic and educational backwardness, who should be given back the Scheduled Caste status and its beneficiaries to them. Upon its report and recommendation, Supreme Court of India is to give its judgment on July 19, 2007.
India’s 75% Christians belong to Scheduled Caste communities, whose statutory and benefits available in Constitutional were denied after 1950 Presidential Order.
The debate on Dalit Christian reservation has been ongoing for many decades in spite of repeated assurance given to Dalit Christian communities to be included in Constitution Scheduled Caste Order 1950.
The fundamental, birth and constitutional rights of Christians from Scheduled Caste origins have been denied for last 57 years. Looking at then and now background of Dalit Christians’ demand for Scheduled Caste status, we will able to conclude to say that Justice Misra Commission setup by present UPA government is unnecessary commission because enough commissions before it, have done the necessary research and submitted with recommendation to provide Scheduled Caste status to Dalit Christians.
2. Background of Dalit Christian Reservation Movement
For first time, Indian’s lowest caste known as “Untouchables” or “Depressed Classes” have been identified as Scheduled Castes introduced by Colonial Government of India in 1935.
In the following year Colonial Government of India (Scheduled Castes) Order 1935 specified, “No Indian Christian shall be deemed to be a member of a Scheduled Caste.” Since then any Scheduled Caste origins converted to Christianity lost its Scheduled Caste status, although they remain economically, educationally, socially and politically backward as much as before their conversion.
After India got Independent from Colonial power, while framing Indian Constitution the Presidential Order of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Order 1950, the Scheduled Caste Origins converted to any other faiths or religions different from Hinduism has been left out in Para 3 of Article 341.
Dalit Sikhs protested to be included in Constitution (Scheduled Caste) Order 1950 and got after six years’ denial of their birth, fundamental and constitutional rights of being Scheduled Caste origin converted to Sikhism. They were listed in Presidential SC/ST Order 1950 by amending Para 3 of Article 341 in 1956.
Dalit Buddhists remained their birth, fundamental, constitutional rights of scheduled caste status denied for 40 years until the Para 3 of Article 341 was amended in 1990 to include Scheduled Caste origins converted to Buddhism.
Every time Dalit Sikhs and Dalit Buddhist demanded to be included in Constitution (Scheduled Caste) Order 1950, assurances were also given repeatedly to Scheduled Caste origins converted to Christianity. The birth rights of Dalit Christians have been kept suppressed for 57 years that too without any assurance either from legislate nor political heads.
Posted on: July 14, 2007
Therapy for Elite
by Chandrabhan Prasad
From the Pioneer
Should we abandon the Indian elite as an ill-fated sect or deploy some reliable social tools to help them out from their lack of history conditioned social circumstance?
In a world where the speed of time has changed dramatically, the socially disjointed elite can only impede the wheel of modernity. After all, elite in all societies play a key role in clearing road blocks in the way of modernity.
Unfortunately, the Indian elite has become a roadblock in the way of modernity. In this concluding series on the predicament of the Indian elite, we offer a proven treatment called the Dalit therapy in our resolve to treat the elite. To recognise the significance of the Dalit therapy as an unfailing social medicine, we can recall the experience of the UP elections.
It is now widely acknowledged that a significant section of the countryside dwijas voted for BSP. In other words, BSP’s dwija voters were educationally and economically marginalised.
Here we are faced with an extraordinarily self-contradicting social situation. The Indian elite – a social sect hostile to anything Dalit, and the countryside dwijas – are the same social block in terms of origins. The dwijas in rural areas chose a Dalit as their ruler whereas the elite rejected Dalits as their potential colleagues. Why so? It is here that we can explore the miracles of the Dalit therapy.
Consider the case of a 70-year-old Brahmin and his decision to campaign for the BSP. Or, a 17-year-old Brahmin hoisting the BSP flag after the elections in Uttar Pradesh. What would have been playing in their minds while aspiring to be ruled by Dalits?
Sheer greed for power, one may say. Rank opportunism, probably. But, the same could have been true for the elite as they, too, are politically sidelined! And herein lies the secret of the Dalit therapy.
The 70-year-old Brahmin may remember his youth where he had seen a Dalit family living in penury. He may remember the time when an elderly Dalit waited for hours at his door for a rupee so that he could feed his family. He may recall the days when Dalits worked in his fields while it rained, or harvested wheat under the scorching sun. He remember a Dalit face – despised and dependent.
Things turned upside down in just half a century. Thanks to the State’s affirmative action and policies, coupled with an intense social reform process within, a child of that Dalit family has since entered school and gone on to become an engineer. Employed in one of the public sector companies, the younger Dalit changed the profile of his house – a new house came into being, women stopped working on dwijas fields, and their attire changed too.
The Dalit engineer bought a bike and visited his village twice a year. Almost two decade down the line, he is a proud owner of a car and drives 500 km to his village.
The Brahmin family on the other hand, has witnessed a steady decline. Left with no reliable source of income, the 70-year-old Brahmin hung around the house of that Dalit family.
Whenever the Dalit engineer made a trip home, the elderly Brahmin would want financial help, and the situation was now just the reverse. The Dalit became a giver and the Brahman a dependent.
The village dwijas have witnessed that transformation and have reconciled to a new social situation. Not that every Dalit household has transformed but a significant section has made it good. This is the Dalit therapy which the dwija in the village has undergone.
Not that the elite should undergo a similar process of fall. The elite should allow Dalits to become their colleagues where they can see how, given an opportunity, the Dalits can even outperform them.
Sharing workplaces and dining with them will emancipate the elite from their present cultural ghettoism.
Posted on: July 2, 2007
My reservations about SC verdict
By Kancha Ilaiah
Originally published in The Asian Age, June 19, 2007.
Recently, while rejecting the revision petition moved by the Centre seeking the revocation of the stay on OBC reservation in Central institutions, the Supreme Court used very harsh language.
The court’s line of argument was that if the Centre had not implemented OBC reservation for the last 50 years, what was the hurry now? Why couldn’t it wait for one more year?
By the same logic, we can also say that the caste system has been there for 3,000 years, so let it remain in place for another 100 years.
The Supreme Court’s position on the issue is uncannily similar to the position taken by the United States Supreme Court in the early stages of the abolition of slavery. It opposed the abolitionists for quite a long time.
From the days of Thomas Jefferson, the US judiciary was doing a racist reading of the equal rights promised by the American Constitution and was resisting reforms for a long time.
Similarly, the Indian apex court is also on a collision course with the Centre on the issue of reservation which implies the abolition of the evils of caste and untouchability.
Unfortunately, there is no evidence to show that the Supreme Court ever took a pro-active position on the issue of abolition of caste and untouchability.
Here it will help to delve into US history to see what we can learn from the conflicts between the executive and the judiciary during Jefferson’s period and Abraham Lincoln’s period. In a recent book, Winning the Future, penned by the former Republican Speaker of the American Congress, Newt Gingrich, this issue is referred to at length. Jeffersonians called the irresponsible judges who were using their class ideology, “the midnight judges.”
Jefferson said, “You seem to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all Constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one that would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.”
He further warned that the “the germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the Constitution of the federal judiciary, an irresponsible body.
“Working like gravity by night and day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped from the states and the government of all be consolidated into one.”
However, we are unable to find a bold Jefferson among our politicians. Needless to say, there is no Lincoln either in India. Gingrich says that Lincoln was forced to lead the nation to a civil war as the Supreme Court of his time was refusing to accept the liberation of slaves as an essential ingredient of democratic polity.
Sadly, our Supreme Court has also been taking a similar approach in recent years towards issues of social justice. The very same Supreme Court had upheld 27 per cent reservation for OBCs in government jobs in the Mandal judgment. Its decision was that reservation should not cross 50 per cent.
In this context, there is no logic in disputing the Centre’s decision to give 27 per cent reservation to OBCs in Central educational institutions. If the Supreme Court bench thought that the 1931 census data was too old to be relied upon, why didn’t it ask the Centre to go for a caste census? OBC organizations have been asking for such a census for quite a long time.
We should remember that the court also praised the students of AIIMS (All India Institute of Medical Sciences) as Abhimanyus for organising a strike against the reservation policy and asked the government to pay the doctors who struck work their salaries.
This very judicial system insists that the working class that goes on strike should not be paid wages.
So far we have not seen the Supreme Court or any high court directing governments to provide equal educational opportunities for all children of the country. Should we assume that Indian judges are unaware that there is no equality possible between the children of the elite who study in private English medium schools and that of the poor who study in government-run schools where education is conducted in regional languages? How many of our judges are willing to put their children in a Hindi medium school or some other regional language school?
How come the courts have not asked for a uniform medium of instruction in the country, at least up to the level of school education? If the courts do not understand the basic principle of a democratic system, they would lead society towards civil strife.
A political system has to work towards a process of socioeconomic transformation. And the guiding principle of that transformation is equality. The judiciary cannot and should not come in the way of this transformation.
Posted on: June 19, 2007
Will India Now Have Her First Woman President?
By Dr. Joseph D’souza, Click here to read original blog.
In a series of dramatic developments in New Delhi, the female Rajasthan Governor who refused to sign the anti-conversion law of the State-led BJP Government became the consensus candidate of the UPA government (the Congress Party and its allies) for the post of the next President of India. Women’s rights groups, civil society leaders, and large sections of the media are enthusiastic about Mrs. Pratibha Patil as the UPA candidate as the July 19th Presidential election nears. India seems to lead the way in putting women in power at the highest level of Government.
Though the post of President is seen as ceremonial, it does play an important role in India’s governance structure as the President has to sign all Central Government bills before they become law. If the President believes the Constitution is being violated in some way, bills can be sent back to the Parliament for reconsideration. The President also has enormous sway in an era of coalition politics when no single party is able to obtain the majority. The President decides which coalition is able to prove its majority in Parliament.
Mrs. Pratibha Patil’s main challenger in the Presidential election is going to be the current Vice-President, Mr. Shekawat, who has been a BJP political leader in the past. Presently, however, Mr. Shekawat does not have the required numbers to win the Presidential race.
The Left and some other allies of the ruling UPA alliance rejected two other political leaders nominated as first choice candidates by the Congress Party. The Congress Party seemed to have got it wrong, as it did not seem to gauge accurately the mood among its allies.
The Left and their allies were concerned that the next President of India had an impeccable record on the ‘communal’ front in light of the rise of right wing Hindutva political forces that time and again have assaulted the secular fabric of the nation. After all, the main agenda on which the present alliance was formed was the provision of a secular alternative to the communal agenda of the BJP party.
The Left party’s main concern about the two candidates who were not accepted was their perceived communal leanings. One of the candidates is the present Home Minister of India whose handling of some communal issues (including the handling of the anti-conversion law which was passed in Himachal Pradesh) has left some major political parties and major communities disappointed. There was also some criticism of the handling of two violent communal incidents in Gorakhpur and Belgaum.
In addition, there is widespread discontent within civil society on the draft bill curbing and restricting foreign aid to charities involved in social and educational work that is alleged to have been drafted by the present Home Ministry. While money through business is allowed to come freely (and by which India’s caste structured society benefits the elitist minority), money through aid for empowerment, health and education of the majority oppressed is being severely curtailed by restrictive laws. There is no acknowledgement that India’s new wealth and the new class of the super rich has not given rise to an equivalent new Indian generosity and philanthropy. Human rights groups believe that charities will be further harassed and intimidated by political parties who do not like the empowerment of the oppressed and marginalized peoples if the new draft bill goes through Parliament.
Representations have been made to the various allies of the present Government. Various petitions and delegations have approached leaders in the present Government to scrap the present draft bill on foreign contribution, as extremist political parties will harass and curb organizations that do not toe the line of their Government. During the BJP rule, scores of NGOs were harassed, intimidated and a few were even shut down.
Further, Dalit leaders have protested that the draft bill is anti-Dalit as much of the educational and health work going on among them will be threatened by political forces that do not want their empowerment.
There are some political leaders in the Congress Party who support the ‘soft-Hindutva’ line and it is because of them that anti-conversion laws and the present draft bill on foreign aid have been passed even under Congress rule when the party’s public posture is that they are secular, pro-poor, and care for minorities and the oppressed sections of society.
This ‘soft-spot’ for undemocratic agendas has been the downfall of the Congress Party. Some of their leaders not only hold a ‘soft-Hindutva line’ that results in anti-minority acts, but there are also others who hold a ‘soft-caste’ line thus allowing for widespread discrimination against Dalits. Thus, their base among the Dalits and backward castes in the north and among the minorities has largely eroded.
Those who have supported the present UPA alliance were shocked when the Congress Party-ruled Himachal Pradesh government passed the anti-conversion bill as a direct result of the ‘soft-Hindutva’ line, when one of the allies of the UPA government, the DMK, had scrapped the anti-conversion bill in Tamil Nadu soon after they came to power on a manifesto of holding to the secular, democratic traditions of India.
So, given Mrs. Pratibha Patil’s excellent track record on the communal front and following democratic traditions in her stints as Minister in Maharastra and as the Governor of Rajasthan, come July 19, based on the numerical strength of the UPA alliance and barring any major cross voting across political lines, India could welcome Mrs. Pratibha Patil as her first female President… and a strong secular, democratic President at that!
Posted on: June 19, 2007
"..and now disclosure of discrimination by IIT in Chennai…"
by Dr. Joseph D’souza. Read original blog at http://www.josephdsouza.com
Reflect on some of the major Indian headlines and other news stories in recent months:
*50,000 Tribals and Dalits convert to Buddhism*
*Caste violence triggered by the Gujjar community in Rajasthan*
*The growth of the Dera sect in Punjab, most of whom are Dalit Sikhs*
*The Chief Justice Misra Commission recommends reservations for Dalit Muslims and Sikhs*
*The OBC reservation issue referred to a full bench of the Supreme Court*
*Media and human rights groups focus on the human trafficking issue, most of them being SC/ST children and women*
*Election of the Dalit leader Mayawati as the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh*
Despite all of these, a section of the upper caste intelligentsia and extremist right wing groups continues to deny the caste issue, blaming the social disruptions, the emergence of the caste vote and the Dalit voice on other forces. They say it is a conspiracy hatched by the foreign-born Sonia Gandhi or the Vatican or the West. There used to be a time when Indian political rulers would blame any Indian crisis on the ‘foreign hand’. In fact, when extremists murdered and burned Graham Staines and his two sons to death, the then-Defense Minister blamed it on the ‘foreign hand’, contrary to hard evidence.
Earlier I had reported of the caste configuration among the lecturers in Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. Now read the story of the Chennai IIT and judge for yourself if we really must advocate for Dalit rights…
DALITS NOT WELCOME IN IIT MADRAS
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main31.asp?filename=Ne160607Dalits_not.asp
There are only a handful of Dalit students and faculty members at the elite institute, but they face widespread discrimination and harassment.
PC Vinoj Kumar Chennai
All the noise against extending reservations for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in centrally-funded institutions might be a little irrelevant given that an institute like IIT Madras has parted with only a fraction of the 22.5 percent quota for students belonging to the Scheduled Castes (SCs) and the Scheduled Tribes (STs). According to information provided by the institute’s deputy registrar, Dr K. Panchalan, in September 2005, Dalits accounted for only 11.9 percent of the number of students. They were even fewer in the higher courses — 2.3 percent in ms (Research) and 5.8 percent in Ph.D. Out of a total of 4,687 students, Dalits made up only 559.
Activists who have been fighting for proper implementation of reservations for Dalits describe IIT Madras as a modern day agraharam — a Brahmin enclave. Located on a 250 hectare wooded campus in the heart of the city, the majority of the 460 faculty members and students here are Brahmins. According to WB Vasantha Kandasamy, assistant professor in the Mathematics department, there are just four Dalits among the institute’s entire faculty, a meagre 0.86 percent of the total faculty strength. There are about 50 OBC faculty members, and the rest belong to the upper castes, she says.
Vasantha says Dalit Ph.D scholars are routinely harassed. “They are forced to change their topic of research midway. They are unduly delayed, and are failed in examinations and vivas. It is a stressful atmosphere for them.” She says her support of Dalit students got her into the bad books of the management.
There have been many agitations against the management in the past over not filling the Dalit quota and the alleged harassment of Dalit students. Activists say there were even fewer Dalit students and faculty members in the institute some years ago, and it was only because of efforts by parties like Paatali Makkal Katchi (PMK), Dravidar Kazhagam (DK), Viduthalai Chiruthaigal (VC) and Periyar Dravidar Kazhagam (PDK) that the situation improved. In 1996, K. Viswanath, general secretary of the IIT SC/ST Employees Welfare Association, remarked in a letter to the institute’s director that the institute was yet to have a professor from the SC/ST community even after 37 years of its existence. There were only two Dalits of the rank of assistant professor and there was just one Dalit scientific officer, he noted.
In 2000, the PDK published a book based on a study it did on the anti-Dalit attitude in the institute. The study noted that there were several departments at the institute where even after 41 years, “not a single Dalit student has been selected for doing Ph.D or has successfully completed his degree”. The study also stated that, “almost all M.Tech and ms Students in IIT were Brahmins.” The PDK is now demanding that the institute come out with a white paper providing details of the total number of Dalit students who have completed postgraduate and doctoral programmes. “The National Commission for SC/ST should closely monitor if reservation policy for Dalits is being strictly followed in student admissions,” says Viduthalai Rajendran, PDK general secretary.
The PDK is not alone in levelling such charges. Retired IAS officer V. Karuppan, who is state convener of the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR), recalls that in 2005 a “meritorious” Dalit student was denied admission to the Ph.D course in the Mathematics department. “They didn’t call him for an interview initially. But he was asked to appear for the interview after we argued his case with the authorities. But in the interview, they asked him irrelevant questions and failed him,” he says.
There have been many complaints of discrimination against Dalit students in the campus. The PDK study cites the case of a Dalit student Sujee Teppal, who had scored 94 percent in Maths, Physics, and Chemistry in the public intermediate exam. Sujee had also secured admission in bits, Ranchi and bits, Pilani but chose to attend IIT Madras, where in spite of her meritorious track record she was made to join the mandatory one-year “preparatory course” for Dalit students. According to the PDK study, “at the end of the course in which she only re-learnt her 12th standard syllabus, she was declared failed.” The institute refused to reverse its decision in spite of the intervention of the National Commission for SC/ST and the then state SC/ST minister Selvaraj in her favour.
Another serious charge against the institute is that successive directors have flouted rules in appointing faculty members, and do not advertise vacancies in newspapers. Former Congress MP Era Anbarasu has brought the issue to the notice of Human Resources Development Minister Arjun Singh in several letters. In the memorandum submitted to the minister on September 2, 2006, he states: “The ambiguity is apparent because even the number of vacancies is not announced. In order to broaden this arbitrariness, applications to the entry level position of assistant professor are invited for all the 15 departments at the same time. Norms and guidelines for selection are wilfully abandoned by the respective departments.”
Anbarasu wants a high-level committee to probe irregularities in appointments and the violation of reservation policies by the IIT management. He has levelled charges against director MS Ananth, whom he calls a “highly casteist man”. He says that disregarding all norms, Ananth has mostly chosen faculty members from his own community of Iyengar Brahmins. Of the six deans in the institute, four are from the Iyengar community.
In his memorandum to Singh, Anbarasu has demanded that the present director be replaced with someone from the OBC/SC/ST community as the institute has had only Brahmins as directors so far. “I met the minister (Arjun Singh) three or four times and discussed with him these issues. He promised to order a probe, but nothing has happened till now,” he says.
A PIL filed by Karuppan last year against the allegedly flawed selection process in IIT Madras was dismissed by the High Court. Karuppan has now filed a review petition. He also met the IIT director along with a senior leader of the CPI to discuss the reservation issue, and says the director told him that no policy of reservation for SC/ST was applicable to IIT Madras. Karuppan says there are several cases pending in courts against the institute’s selection and reservation policy. They include writ petitions by the IIT Backward Classes Employees Welfare Association, and the Vanniar Mahasangam.
An angry Thol Thirumavalavan, general secretary of the Dalit Panthers of India, says, “Dalits are only working as sweepers and scavengers in the institute”. He wants the IIT management to release a white paper containing details of appointments and admissions given to Dalits and OBCs. “The Tamil Nadu government should demand this information from the institute,” he says.
When Tehelka tried to meet IIT Director MS Ananth to get his views on the allegations against him and the institute, his secretary wanted this correspondent to send a mail stating the purpose for the interview. In the mail to the director, it was stated that the interview was needed “on the issue of SC/ST reservation policy in IIT, Madras.” His reaction on Anbarasu’s memorandum to the Union HRD minister levelling charges of corruption against him was also sought. However, his secretary said the director was not available for comments.
Posted on: June 16, 2007
Strange journey
by Kancha Ilaiah. Originally published in the Times of India, May 24, 2007
After Mayawati became chief minister of UP, the upper caste intelligentsia in the media assumed that Dalit-Bahujan unity had given way to a new era of Dalit-Brahmin unity.
Dalit intellectuals, who had pitched their hopes on the new alliance, are convinced that Delhi is not too far for Mayawati — and for Dalits as a whole.
There is an attempt to project this electoral victory as one against the Shudra-OBC communities.
This attempt is, in other words, one that undercuts a historical social churning process — uniting Shudra-Atishudra masses from the days of Mahatma Jyotirao Phule to building a Bahujan Samaj by uniting Dalit-Bahujan masses till the Kanshi Ram days.
The Dalit-Bahujan project was based on unity of the historically oppressed productive masses, who were working on land and in casteised artisanal household industries — from shoe-making to pot-making to weaving clothes.
This process was mediated by the interventions, social, spiritual and political, set in motion by B R Ambedkar.
The upper caste intelligentsia is trying to tell us that Mayawati, a Dalit woman leader, whom they hated till the other day, had proved all of them wrong, and therefore had become their heroine.
The Dalit-Bahujan unity proposal is based on production relations and the fact of the two groups being at the receiving end of Brahminical oppression.
The Brahmins wrote ritual texts which established a spiritual and social practice of oppression against Dalits and Bahujans. Will Mayawati’s victory alter these conditions?
Will Brahmins soil their hands with actual work of production, or would Dalits be allowed to head Hindu institutions?
The whole discourse around social engineering, as opposed to social churning, is basically an RSS theory.
Social engineering is opposed to social churning. This election might teach OBCs a lesson, that power is best attained by combining various caste combinations.
But will that power help in social churning and transformation that erodes caste barriers, slowly but surely? Even in movements organized around class lines, only unity of forces from below can turn these into instruments of social change.
The top and bottom cannot make a dissolvable mix.
Ambedkar formulated the theory that caste was not merely division of labour, but also of labourers.
To churn them into a social monolith, one should work among many labouring castes, no matter how difficult and time-consuming the process.
As for social engineering, if Left and RSS forces were to form an electoral alliance, they can come to power even in Delhi.
Even if a Left politician were to become prime minister, what socio-economic change is possible in this situation? A Dalit-Brahmin combine is akin to the unity of the communists and RSS.
The latter was tried out during the Janata Party days, but failed. Not that one wishes the BSP to fail in UP.
But if one sees this as the model for abolishing caste and building a prosperous, productive nation, that would be nothing but a mirage and the end of Ambedkarism.
Mayawati’s success lies in the failure of Mulayam Singh, who left out the Dalit leadership in his political formation.
Mulayam’s party is also another kind of OBC-upper caste combine. He ruled UP almost for a full term and did nothing subs-tantial for OBCs.
Upper castes and a small section of Yadavs had their way. How many OBCs emerged as industrialists or as major contractors during his tenure?
Or, how many poor OBCs were uplifted during his tenure? Did they enjoy improved access to egalitarian, English-medium education?
fight caste, even while being in power, one has to fight Brahminism. How would Mayawati fight Brahminism, with Brahmins sitting in her lap?
With a Dalit-Brahmin combination, she would have to function like any Congress Dalit chief minister.
The promotion of such CMs perhaps began with Damodaram Sanjeevaiah, a Dalit Congress chief minister in Andhra Pradesh in the early 60s.
Can Mayawati break new ground, when Dalit-Brahmin unity holds no potential for social churning?
The writer is a political scientist.
Posted on: June 4, 2007
Is Corporate and Rich India Watching the Explosion of Violence in Rajasthan?
by Joseph D’souza
Originally published on Dr. D’souza’s blog, on May 31, 2007
The Gurjar community in Rajasthan wants to be classified as a Scheduled Tribe (ST) and does not want the Other Backward Caste (OBC) tag. Their Muslim co-brothers belonging to the same tribe in Jammu and Kashmir already have Scheduled Tribe status. There are five million Gurjars in Northwestern India with a large majority in Rajasthan. While another similar tribe in Rajasthan, the Meenas, were given the ST status, the Gurjurs were kept out. Governments have not followed a fair and just policy in giving reservation (affirmative action status) to marginalized groups. Dalit Christians and Dalit Muslims have been denied reservation benefits for decades.
The current BJP-led state Government in Rajasthan came to power promising the Gurjurs ST status. But now the same Government’s police have opened fire on 30,000 protesters and killed several people who were simply demanding that the promise be fulfilled since the BJP has been in power now for three years. The firing on protestors by the police has resulted in widespread violence all over Rajasthan. Gurjars have burned police stations, railway stations and have taken the violence across the state.
The caste monopoly and resulting discrimination during the decades after India’s independence (not to mention the discrimination of hundreds of years) have come to haunt today’s ‘Rising India’. The uneven economic and social development of the last two decades have made the problem worse for the oppressed tribes, the Dalits and the most backward castes. Many millions have lost their land and are displaced. Millions more work for a pittance and are exploited simply to boost the new economy.
The reservation system is now seen as the major way of dealing with poverty and social deprivation of the marginalized masses. This too will not meet the needs of the millions as Government job and education is severely limited.
What is extremely disappointing is that ‘Rising India’ does not care about the education and job opportunities for the Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes. The Rising India with its 9% economic growth does not care about investing some of their profits in providing English school education for the masses. It is not thinking of building tens of thousands of new schools that give quality education with a worldview that gives equal dignity to all human beings.
Therefore, it is not surprising that now the Meena tribe in Rajasthan is rising against giving the Gurjars ST status because they do not want to share the limited reservation benefits. One hopes that tribal violence does not break out in Rajasthan and the adjoining States on the reservation issue.
Is Corporate and Rich India watching? Can India survive the gross disparities between the majority oppressed peoples and the minority privileged? The growing anger against the State will sooner or later erupt against the Corporate world if Rising India does not include the majority people in the recent extraordinary economic and social development. The Prime Minister’s recent words to the Corporate world to include the oppressed poor in their prosperity fell mostly on deaf years, especially when watching the rise of corporate CEO salaries.
For more, see this link…
http://www.ibnlive.com/news/india/05_2007/gurjar-protest-stops-rajasthan-trains-cancelled-41778.html
To go to Joseph D’souza’s blog site, visit http://www.josephdsouza.com
Posted on: May 31, 2007
Indian TV's Evolving Grasp on the Caste Churning in India
By Joseph D’souza
Barkha Dutt is one of our most prominent and smartest TV talk-show hosts. I remember the Barkha Dutt NDTV talk-show episode covering the issue of OBC reservation when the Dalit/OBC minority group in the audience walked out in disgust as the rest of the audience and program agenda was clearly pro-anti-reservationist. It seemed to me that this time Barkha was out of her depth on the caste churning and discourse in society and was disconnected with caste discrimination in India like so many of the urban elite in this country.
Soon, however, there was a change. Barkha wrote a piece on how the upper caste English-educated had an undue advantage in Indian society and how those who did not have the means for a private English-medium school education had to struggle to make it in the ‘Shining India’, and that this business of the ‘merit’ discussion was only valid if everyone (especially the Dalits and the OBC’s) had the same opportunity as those who claimed ‘merit’ (which was the merit of talent plus English education, plus private coaching, plus right orientation, plus right location, plus right upbringing, plus… the rest!).
Barkha has now done a brilliant piece (link enclosed below) on the Mayawati phenomena and expressed the same kind of disgust we have felt about the upper caste prejudice and writings about her coming to power. This is seen all over and especially on the web where the upper caste fraternity are having a field day lampooning Mayawati instead of coming to terms with the emerging, evolving India of the majority oppressed – the Dalit-Bahujans.
This is crass prejudice and arrogance based on nothing but India’s hidden apartheid of the caste system.
The oppressed majority will take time to learn how to manage the power and governance structures. Sure, Mayawati should not act with a vendetta against those whom she perceives as her opponents. Sure, she should be inclusive and not run with divisive politics. Sure, she will have to grow in her leadership role and not run using another feudal system of leadership. But Indian political leadership and governance has become increasingly feudal in nature and it is not just the Gandhi clan which is feudalistic.
Mayawati has promised social justice for the oppressed. She is pro-reservation for Dalit Muslims and Dalit Christians. She is in fact in favor of some affirmative action even for the upper caste poor. We all hope she delivers and does not vacillate like she has done in the past and align with the communal and casteist forces for the sake of political power.
There is one further major point in Mayawati’s inclusiveness the media has missed. For a Dalit Chief Minister who has come to power on her own she has given far more members of the upper castes a share in power than the upper castes have ever given to the Dalits through the centuries given their population percentage. That is a telling comment on caste fairness!
Posted on: May 29, 2007
What Next for Dalit Christians?
Joseph D’souza
May 22, 2007
Finally, the Justice Mishra Commission has come out in favour of reservation for Dalit Christians and Muslims. The main argument, like the one in the petition before the Supreme Court, is that religion should not have been used as the criteria to determine Dalit reservation in the Presidential Order of 1950.
One member in the Commission, Asha Das, has dissented saying that the Parliament or Judiciary cannot change religious practice. Her argument is that Islam and Christianity as religions do not in principle have the caste system as part of their religious ethos. She is silent, however, on how Parliament was able to give reservation to Dalit Sikhs and Dalit Buddhists when both Sikhism and Buddhism also do not allow for the caste system. Further, she is silent on the research data which reveals that the caste system and caste-based discrimination of Dalits has penetrated all religions in India. Those who perpetrate crimes against Dalits do not first verify if their victims are Dalit Hindus or Dalit Christians. The fact that they are Dalits is enough to abuse and discriminate against them.
I think that despite the Mishra Commission’s recommendation, the Government is going to vacillate on the issue when the case appears for its hearing in the Supreme Court. The UPA Government has a strong upper caste lobby which is against any positive action or reservations for Dalit Christians and Dalit Muslims. They are also against reservations for Other Backward Caste (OBC) students in higher institutions.
The extremist Hindutva lobby fears that if Dalit Christians are given reservations, then all Dalits everywhere will exit Hinduism into Christianity and other religions. They are going to try and block this initiative by any means necessary. Their agenda is to keep the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes trapped in the caste system. Their response to the Commission’s recommendation shows the hypocrisy of the anti-conversion laws forced into practice in state after state under the guise of preventing forced and fraudulent conversions. If anyone has used forced and fraudulent means to imprison and discriminate against millions of people (namely the 250 million Dalits) it is the Hindutva brigade. Instead of passing anti-conversion laws, why are they not working on laws that will abolish caste ideology and the practice of the caste system in India? It is caste slavery that is pushing Dalits and the Backward Castes into other faiths.
The fight for Dalit Christian reservation is largely led by Dalit Christian groups who are involved in the Dalit Freedom cause. Now non-Christian Dalit groups like Udit Raj’s Confederation and others also support Dalit Christian reservation.
Upper caste Christians are not really in the forefront of the struggle, even though there are some exceptions. The question for the predominantly upper caste Christian leadership of the Church is: How long will it take before you proactively remove casteism and the caste system in the Church? The writing is on the wall. Dalits will not be denied their just rights anymore both inside and outside the Church. The caste system is being revealed for what it really is – India’s Hidden Apartheid. How long before Church leadership removes this disgusting blemish of caste practice in the Church when it comes to marriage, community, leadership and fellowship? Will the Church in India (across denominational lines) split and break apart due to the unwillingness of the minority upper caste leadership in the Church to deal with the caste system within the Church? How can one argue for the unity of the Church based on the glaring unrighteousness and injustice within the Church?
I hope the international business community is detecting the major caste churning going on in India and is not fooled by the upper caste business community who live in perpetual self-denial about the caste system. The election of a Dalit as Chief Minister of India’s largest state (Uttar Pradesh) is the loudest political signal coming out of India this month. Multinationals cannot afford to walk around blindfolded to caste realities even as they rush in to enjoy the profits of the new Indian economy
The ‘India Rising’ is but one small facet of the India mosaic. The larger face of India is of the majority oppressed and facing discrimination, the poor, the suicidal farmers and the abused Dalits.
Joseph D’souza
Go to his blog by clicking here
Posted on: May 22, 2007
Globalisation of caste
By Kancha Ilaiah
Originally published in the Deccan Herald, May 11, 2007.
On May 1 in the 110th American Congress session, Franks, a Congressman from Arizona, introduced a concurrent resolution on caste and untouchability in India. It is now referred to the Congress Committee on Foreign Affairs. The resolution is the first of its kind in parliamentary history of the US. The first part of the resolution discusses the gravity and magnitude of the problem involving about 250 million SC, STs. Though it does not talk about the situation of the OBCs, it puts the caste system in perspective.
It says “Caste is the socio-economic stratification of people in South Asia based on a combination of work and descent”. This definition of caste is significant since India refused to accept this definition at the UN Durban Conference. However, the resolution lays emphasis on untouchability, violence against SC, ST women, and the socio-economic conditions in which these masses live in the globalised word.
It says “Discrimination against Dalits and tribals has existed for 2,000 years. It includes educational discrimination, economic disenfranchisement, physical abuse, discrimination in medical care, religious discrimination, and violence targeting Dalit and tribal women”. We know that the US has close relations with India and the Indian economy mostly depends on loans, charity funds from the US. America is also outsourcing lots of its industrial services. In a situation of a globalised market and software economy, the Indian upper castes see the US as their destination, where they do not have to live a life of shame and guilt about the discriminatory structures that their ancestors constructed and they want to sustain them silently. It is also because of the dollar money that the young upper caste children earn through means of English education from software and other service sectors.
Though some of us have been repeatedly demanding uniform English medium education for Dalit-Bahujan children, the protagonists of the very same upper castes have been dubbing us as anti-nationals. It is a fact that without English medium education many children of the upper castes would have not even been eligible for clerical jobs even in India.
Quite interestingly, the American resolution says, “The public education offered to Dalits and tribals, when available at all, is usually inadequate and conducted in regional languages or Hindi, thereby disqualifying them from access to India’s public universities, which teach in English, and from most government positions and most advanced jobs in India, which require English”.
At least now the US, the World Bank, the IMF which keep giving funds for school and university education know that two modes of education systems are in place in India — English for the rich and upper castes and regional language for the Dalit-Bahujans.
The American funds have been flowing into the Indian education system from the days of the PL 480 programme, way back in the 60s when I was a school child. Now every state government takes money from projects of American Aid and World Bank for school education. But all of them spend that money on the regional language school education infrastructure. And most of such money is garnered by corrupt ministers, bureaucrats and ruthless contractors. In education, healthcare and other programmes of poverty alleviation, the targeted poor and lower castes have not been getting anything that can substantially change their life. The Western countries never realised that caste, untouchability and tribalism are the main source of socio-economic stagnation.
There is no large scale public demand for uniform English medium education for all children in the country because the Hindu caste system made them think “the lower castes and the poor are not getting uniform English medium education or good healthcare because of their Karma”. Some of the saints, who claim to work to integrate Dalits into Hinduism, though they themselves are Anglicised and look for American trips and NRI dollar money, keep saying why should America interfere with the Indian caste system. These are all hoodwinking strategies.
However, the recent international campaign could successfully nail their pseudo nationalist agendas. The West is getting convinced that in the money that goes from the West in the form of loans and charity the Dalit-Bahujans must have their own share.
The Congress resolution seeks for a review of the American International development projects and also seeks for an “active participation of Dalit organisations in the planning and implementation of development projects from the US”. It also talks about “prioritising funding for projects that positively impact Dalit and tribal communities, especially women”.
The resolution and the possible debate on caste and untouchability in the American Congress will have serious implications on the Indian socio-political system. If the American Congress passes the resolution, it will have a major impact on the UN bodies and the World Bank. What those who oppose globalisation of caste should understand is that the masses who suffered from caste and untouchability will have to get their share of benefits from every pie that operates in India and in the global market. This resolution certainly helps that process.
Posted on: May 12, 2007
If There is Such Discrimination in India's Premier Institute . . .
by Joseph D’souza, http://www.josephdsouza.com
In the wake of the agitation launched by Upper Caste students against giving reservation to Backward Caste students, a government-appointed committee has delivered its report on the All India Medical Institute, the country’s premiere institute which trains medical doctors.
Leaving aside the politics of the agitation by students of AIIMS, the truly condemning part of this report is the how the Dalit and Backward Caste students feel they are being treated by upper caste students and lecturers. The percentage of lower caste students who report discrimination in such a top Institute underlines the prejudice that runs deep in educational institutions across the nation. The educational institution at the school, and at the graduate and tertiary levels is the place where an integrated and caste free community can be built. If it does not happen here, it will not happen elsewhere.
This is the reason why we need a new model, a new initiative of primary and secondary schools that create caste free communities, while giving the Dalits and Backward Castes a quality education in English and mother tongue which thus far has been available only to the rich and upper caste students. It is about creating an equal opportunity wherein the depressed caste students have the same opportunity to compete with other students at the graduate and higher levels of education.
The Dalit Freedom Network has helped start nearly 60 such schools and is moving towards the first 100 and then towards the first 1,000 institutions that will make a difference in the lives of millions of children who will know that God has created all men and women equal.
Enclosed find the newspaper article from ‘The Hindu’ on discrimination at AIIMS.
Date:06/05/2007
URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/05/06/stories/2007050609700100.htm
Front Page
`AIIMS Director Venugopal played provocative role in anti-quota stir’
By Aarti Dhar
Charge by Thorat Committee in report submitted to Union Health Minister
NEW DELHI: The three-member Thorat Committee constituted by the Centre in September last year to look into allegations of discrimination against reserved category students at the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) here has charged its Director P. Venugopal with “playing a provocative role” in the origination of the agitation against 27 per cent reservation for Other Backward Classes in elite Central education institutions.
The committee, headed by University Grants Commission (UGC) Chairperson S. K. Thorat, submitted its report to Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Anbumani Ramadoss on Saturday.
The report also suggests that the anti-quota agitation was “planned” by a group of people who had strong views against the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admissions) Act, 2006 (then Bill). The members in their report claim they have enough evidence to support their findings.
According to the report, AIIMS became the venue for the so-called anti-quota agitation primarily to paralyse health care for thousands of people and attract public attention against reservation. Paralysis of emergency services would also put pressure on the Government to withdraw the [then] proposed Bill, it says. The report says the AIIMS administration went to the extent of penalising and punishing the students and staff who did not support the agitation while questioning the credibility and role of the Youth for Equality – a student body that spearheaded the agitation.
The voluminous report says the AIIMS administration failed to ensure safeguards for weaker sections of society guaranteed under the Constitution like undergraduate programmes and special coaching for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes students.
It also says that the conduct of the faculty towards the SC/ST students was not fair and objective and the teachers often “misused” their powers given to them for internal assessment.
As many as 69 per cent of the reserved category students alleged that they did not receive adequate support from teachers, 72 per cent said they faced discrimination, and 76 per cent said their evaluation was not proper while 82 per cent said they often got less than expected marks.
In practical examinations and viva voce, these students said, the treatment meted out to them was “not fair”. Worse, 76 per cent said higher caste faculty members enquired about the castes of their students while 84 per cent said they were asked, directly or indirectly, about their caste backgrounds. An equal percentage of students alleged that their grading was adversely affected due to their background.
The reserved category students also alleged “social isolation” at various levels, including even from faculty members, with 84 per cent students saying they faced violence and segregation in the hostel that often forced them to shift to hostels No. 4 and 5 where there was a concentration of SC/ST students.
The Thorat Committee has recommended that a committee of students, residents and faculty be set up to examine and study social divisions on the campus and suggest measures to remedy the situation. The two other members of the Committee are K. M. Shyam Prasad, Vice-President of the National Board of Examinations, and R. K. Srivastava, Director-General of Health Services.
© Copyright 2000 – 2006 The Hindu
Posted on: May 8, 2007
12-year-old Charlotte's Speech
Last week I was in Canada campaigning for the Dalits and met up with some close friends of mine, a family I have known for many years. I am constantly amazed as to how in the providence of God so many are becoming a voice for the Dalits all over the world.
So when I met Charlotte, who is only 12 years old and the youngest in the family, and found out that she won a prize for a school speech in an elocution competition, I very much wanted to see it because she had spoken about the Dalits. One look at the speech and I knew that this was a first rate speech by my young friend Charlotte. That evening when I was speaking to a group of leaders, I invited Charlotte to give us the speech again. From the mouth of babes wisdom shall come forth…is a quote we all remember.
Here is Charlotte’s speech:
Honorable judges, teachers, parents and fellow students. My name is Charlotte Maxwell, but I would like you to imagine that I am Martin Luther King, because I would like to share with you his story and his dream.
My parents called me Michael Luther King, but I preferred the name Martin like the great German preacher “Martin Luther” so when I got older I changed my name to Martin.
My Daddy and Granddaddy were both preachers. In fact we all served as pastors of the same church, Ebenezer Baptist in Atlanta Georgia from 1914 on.
I went to an all black high school and graduated when I was 15 years old. Then I went to an all black college before going on to get my preaching degree from a mostly white seminary where I was honored to be our class president.
I spent my life as a preacher, peacefully defending the rights of black people. All I wanted was that we would be treated as equal citizens across America.
Do you know that in many places, we had to use different doors to enter buildings, we had to drink from separate water fountains and we had to sit at the back on public busses!
Probably the highlight of my life was on August 28, 1963, when I had the privilege of giving a speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. – that beautiful monument to the man who stood up and fought for the freedom of my ancestors who were serving as slaves.
I called the speech “I Have A Dream”. Let me share a little bit of it with you:
“I have a dream that is deeply rooted in the American Dream: ‘that all men are created equal.’
“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.
“I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
I was surprised and delighted to be given the Nobel Peace Prize for these efforts the next year – I was only 35 years old, the youngest person to have ever received this award.
Unfortunately, four years later I was shot and killed on the balcony outside my motel room in Memphis, Tennessee.
If I was alive today, I would be pleased to know that black people in America are treated with great respect.
If I was alive today, I would be a friend of that exceptional leader out of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, who spent 18 years of his life in solitary confinement because he was guilty of the crime of being born black.
But I would be deeply distressed about the challenges facing my black cousins in Africa – especially the widows and orphans who are fighting for survival after losing many of their families to AIDS.
But today I would like to tell you about an even greater problem. A problem that so few know about, but so many should. In that great country of India, the home of the world’s largest democracy, is a group of people that desperately need our help.
I am speaking about the Dalit people. These are people who follow the Hindu religion, but are not part of the Hindu caste system, and therefore are called “the out-castes”.
They are not allowed to have contact with the upper caste people and therefore are also called “the untouchables”.
There are about 250 million Dalit men, women and children in India. This is about one quarter of all the people in the country, about 8 times the number of people in Canada and about 6 times the number of people who have AIDS.
We often hear about AIDS victims, but not often about problems facing the Dalit.
They are commonly refused entry to public parks and temples. Use of public wells is denied and many restaurants keep disposable drinking glasses for Dalit use. Their women are frequently abused and sold into prostitution.
Seven out of every ten Dalits live below the poverty line. Millions of Dalit children serve as bonded laborers or slaves.
They are only allowed to go to certain schools, live in certain areas and hold the lowest of jobs. And this has been going on for 3500 years.
“Dalit” comes from a Sanskrit word meaning “crushed, broken or downtrodden”.
Sanskrit is the historical language of the Hindu religion. The Dalit are not allowed to learn Sanskrit. According to Manu, the law giver, Dalits should not even hear the reading of the scripture in Sanskrit. If this happens, boiled lead should be poured into the offending Dalit’s ears.
In Matthew 25, Jesus said, “Whatever you do to help the overlooked or ignored around you, you are doing to Me.” There could be no higher goal than to serve Him by helping these people.
Would you pick up the torch that has fallen from my hand? Would you decide now that you will learn more about the oppressed people around the world and then when you have a chance, will you give them a hand? For that I can only say thank-you.
Joseph D’souza http://www.josephdsouza.com/
Posted on: May 3, 2007
English Empowers
By Kancha Ilaiah
Originally published in Tehelka, May 5, 2007, vol. 4, issue 17, pg 13.
The school education system in India is squarely divided into two structures in terms of the medium of instruction—the regional language system and the English language system. In terms of population, regional language school education is meant for Dalit-Bahujan children, while English language school education is meant for the rich who constitute by and large the upper castes. This division also resembles that between government and private convent English medium school education. Although the Central government does run a few English medium schools like the Kendriya Vidyalayas and some state governments like Andhra Pradesh run a few residential English medium schools, the basic divide is clear. The Central schools basically cater to the upper castes and the employees of the government sector. Even though the children of a few reserved category employees benefit from these schools, the divide between the English medium schools and the regional language schools is a caste-class divide. India needs to change this divide almost immediately. The question is how?
The divide itself was created by the hypocritical nationalistic agenda of upper caste intellectuals for their own caste-class advantage. Right from the days of the freedom struggle, the upper caste intelligentsia argued that the British — particularly Lord Thomas Macaulay — introduced English education to transform Hindus into clerks and slaves and to transform Hindu culture (through language) into English culture. They quote Macaulay’s Minute on Indian Education, which said:
“It is impossible for us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the people. We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population.”
The Indian upper castes, instead of becoming vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of population as planned by the English, assumed ownership of the English language, just as they had owned Sanskrit in the ancient and medieval periods, and kept it in the private domain to preserve their interests. In the beginning, it were the Christian schools that catered to their aspiration of learning the English language, and later many Hindus started running their own private schools. But these very forces that got their English education through private schools, did not allow the Government school system to teach in the English medium.
Even after 60 years of our Independence, this dual mode of school education is sought to be sustained. At the same time, higher educational institutions of both the Centre and the States have been created to suit the English medium student community. As of now, all the Central Government-run higher educational institutions use English as their medium of instruction. All Central universities, iits, iims and medical schools teach only in the English language and admit students only through English language entrance examination papers. The rural students — particularly sc, st and obc students — find it difficult to cope with higher education imparted in the English language as they mostly come from regional language schools. When they fail, the upper caste intelligentsia turns around and says there is a problem of merit with rural and lower caste youth.
The Central government adopted Hindi as the national language and imposed compulsory learning of Hindi even on the southern states. Only Tamil Nadu resisted the teaching of Hindi and adopted a system of bilingual school education in Tamil and English. Students in other southern states had to suffer however. Learning three languages was for them an unnecessary burden as Hindi had no role in their day-to-day lives or in their educational career. Yet it was forced on them in all Government schools from Class 3 onwards. In comparison, the teaching of English in these states starts only from Class 7. The misplaced assumption that students who have had their school education in regional languages would catch up with English medium students at the higher education level has been proven wrong.
Over time, English has become the common language of the global science and technology market and the overall economy. As Government schools do not teach in English medium, those who study in them are denied the opportunities given to their richer counterparts in English medium schools. Students in regional language schools cannot therefore think of achieving anything in the globalised economy.
(Excerpted from What Kind Of Education Do Dalit-Bahujan Children Need?)
Posted on: May 2, 2007
US should stop caste virus
By Udit Raj
As published in chapter 38 of his book, Dalit & Religious Freedom, 2005. Also, published in appendix three of Dalit Freedom by Joseph D’souza.
America is really a melting pot of various ethnics, traditions, cultures, and civilizations; though India too claims it, but caste system has not allowed this to happen. Address of a person, physical presence, qualifications do not complete the identity of any Hindu, till he/she discloses the caste linkage. India houses a stock of population from Eurasia (Europe and Asia) through migration at different intervals of time. However, most of them still maintain their caste identity more than as fellow brothers or countrymen. Needless to say, US population is mostly of those from Spain, England, Denmark, France, and other parts of Europe. In less than 300 years, these migrants have become more American than what their ancestors were. People who migrated to America in earlier decades, have become Americans first. Dr. Rochinga Pudaite, based in Colorado Springs and running Bibles for the World, is proud of addressing himself as “We Americans”, although he migrated from India only 40 years ago. Almost all places of the world have contributed and still contribute their population to the stock of US and melt with each other, contrary to India. Aryans came to India about three thousand years ago, but have not melted with aborigines.
Any society or country can afford foreign wrath or worst type of calamity, but not internal conflicts for a prolonged time as in India. This has given birth to undeclared civil war. For about three thousands years, and before independence, India could not win a single battle against whosoever attacked and invaded, who were successful without much resistance. Two to three hundred Afghanis and middle east aliens had hardly any hindrance to reach Delhi. The simple reason was: division of Indians among four castes, namely, Brahmins on top of hierarchy who were supposed to have been born from the mouth of God, Kshatriyas occupying second slot were born from the arms of God and were assigned to protect boundaries of the country from invaders and establish law and order; the Vaishyas falling in the third strata of society were meant to carry out trade and commerce, their origin of birth being from the stomach of God. At the bottom were Shudras (Dalits) who were to do the menial and scavenging works whose origin was attributed to feet of God.
The quality of Indian soil and climate is excellent, but social system does not allow translating the fruits of modern democracy, technology and education etc.. British imperialism left behind many institutions like Judiciary, Bureaucracy, and Parliamentary systems. To run the parliamentary or democratic form of the Govt., political party is a must. People think that political parties are from the background managing the largest democracy in the world, but essentially it is the social system which is more effective. Competition among political parties is due to castes, rather than ideological or articulation of interests of various groups. Germany and other countries are having elections on issues like environment and unification of Europe, but our largest democracy has not yet solved minimum basic needs like housing, clothing, education etc.. Poverty and begging are justified under the garb of simplicity, spiritualism, and immaterialism.
Caste Hindus can give up anything, including their life, but caste attitude. In 1998, when I was invited to attend the first Dalit International Convention at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, it was unbelievable at first sight, but became a reality, when I attended. About 150 years back, British took Indians to Malaysia as labourers and assistants and eventually Indians made their homes there. More than one million Hindus are living there, but are still maintaining their caste identity. Dalits living in Malaysia have lots of grievances, which is not a contribution of the concerned soil, but virus went with them. So far, no medicine has been manufactured that can kill the caste virus. However, Lord Buddha did try, and effectively too, but counter-revolution demolished Buddhism. All Buddhist temples and even remnants were destroyed, and we are knowing through the accounts of Chinese travellers and other sources that once upon a time there was a great Buddhist religion.
Last week, two cab drivers of Indian origin in the lower mainland in Vancouver, Canada, had an argument, and upper caste one assaulted and uttered casteist remarks against the dalit driver, who reported the matter to the management authority, and the other driver was suspended. How US can escape from this menace ?
Hundreds of thousands of Hindus are fast settling in San Francisco, Texas, and other parts of US. Are Americans aware of the virus which is spreading through them in the American society ? No doubt, Hindus are very intelligent and hard working and are doing well in computers and internet, but at what cost ? Are they being scanned through ? In early July 2004, I was on a visit to San Francisco and my host, who took me for sight seeing, informed me that Hindu community carries out caste and religious rituals including Kumbh Mela – a fair in which Hindus come together to perform Hindu rites – even in America. In fact, these rituals and customs are the sources of caste system and discrimination. Is American Govt. aware of these social activities which will imbalance the social equilibrium in future ?
In 2001, the UN Conference on race, caste, and related intolerance at Durban, South Africa, sensitized about victimization of dalits all over the world. As a natural corollary, so called upper castes faced, and are going to face, questions on social discrimination. But their simple and clinching answer would be – “It is our way of life”. Every wrong, and social discrimination is justified in the name of Hindu way of life, but when it comes to liberation of Afro-Americans in South Africa, these caste Hindus would be in the forefront to ask for restoration of human dignity and rights. Murder, rape, and torture of Dalits (Shudras) are the order of the day, and if anyone questions, the simple reply will be that it is the way of life.
The US attack on Iraq is a subject of their great concern, but injustice and worst form of discrimination of their own brethren – Dalits – is no matter of concern. It emanates from this philosophy, that Dalits are not human beings. When five Dalits were lynched for the carcass of so called holy cow in Jhajjar (Haryana) in 2002, this heinous act was supported by the statement of Vice President of Vishwa Hindu Parishad that as per Hindu scriptures, life of a cow is more important than that of Dalits.
Economic globalization is welcomed in India, but what about cultural globalization? Indian businessmen are fascinated by US businesses, work-culture, quality and efficiency, but when it comes to fulfilling social obligation, they take U-turn. Affirmative action for Afro-Americans and Hispanics no longer fascinates them.
Recently, Congress led Govt. has come at the Centre which promised to give jobs to Dalits in private sector, thereafter it met with big opposition from business houses. Media, business, films, export and import, education, modern technology, and other important fields are controlled by so called upper castes. They oppose anything which empowers marginalized people. Newly born, abandoned infants, can be eaten by dogs and animals, but if a Christian missionary gives them shelter in orphanages, RSS – an outfit of Hindu fundamentalists – will attack him saying that he is converting. In Hindu society, if any child is abandoned, it is because of his sins in past life, therefore he should suffer, and the child’s mother is a criminal because she gave birth to an illicit child. Unwanted girl child is also thrown away because woman has inferior position in Hindu society.
Two years back, Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) took out a rally and procession in America, to infuse Hinduism among Hindus living in America, but Americans did not object to it. Hindu priests are not denied US visa on the ground that they will propagate Hinduism, but Christian missionaries are denied Indian visa. Why are Hindus afraid? US, proud of adjusting and amalgamating everyone coming into that country, will have serious problems in future due to this caste virus. If about 250 million lower castes have suffered the incidence of caste discrimination, any human being is duty bound to inform other human beings that they should not face such worst inhuman treatment. Nothing is greater than humanity, be it sovereignty of the country or the community interest.
I wish my fellow brothers in America do not carry this virus. I, being a dalit, do not mean that I don’t love Hindus living in US, but I love humanity more.
Posted on: April 20, 2007
Examples of Ongoing Dalit Oppression
I was in Jhajjar Haryana, where Dalit youth were lynched to death. I also witnessed the revolt conversions of the Dalits to Buddhism, Islam and Christianity. Later on, there was more violence in Haryana against the Dalits.
Recently, there was yet another violent outburst. All of these were incidents that were covered by the media. Many more are not covered by the media. Human Rights Watch reports that there are 100,000 atrocities against Dalits in a year.
Our viewpoint is that the societal attitude of the upper castes has combined with official machinery in the land to violate the dignity and rights of the Dalits.
The following two part story by Subramanyam in one of India’s largest Eng! lish newspapers, The Hindu, tells an accurate account of what is happening in Haryana and as he says, ‘is symbolic of what is going on in the nation 60 years after Independence…’”
Part 1: http://www.hindu.com/2007/03/14/stories/2007031402091100.htm
Part 2: http://www.hindu.com/2007/03/15/stories/2007031505331100.htm
It is for these reasons, and untold more, that we continue to work on behalf of Dalit freedom!
Sincerely,
Joseph D’souza
Posted on: April 11, 2007
Genetic Evidence for the Aryan Roots of the Caste System
By Joseph D’souza
Originally published on Dr. D’souza’s blog, on April 3, 2007.
A large number of historians have long contested that the dehumanizing and discriminating caste system has its origins in the Aryan conquest of India. The Aryans constructed caste ideology as a religious, political and social tool to rule the original inhabitants of the land. The Aryan invasion thesis has been contested by some historians and most recently by the extremist Hindutva forces who are committed to the perpetuation of the caste system.
Finally, the Human Genome project analyzing the DNA composition of humans has produced scientific evidence stating that the genetic origin of the upper castes in India is more European than Asian.
I enclose below a large quotation from the results of the research carried by Utah University in collaboration with Andhra University, etc. But what follows is the main result of the research:
Analysis of these data demonstrated that the upper castes have a higher affinity to Europeans than to Asians, and the upper castes are significantly more similar to Europeans than are the lower castes. Collectively, all five datasets show a trend toward upper castes being more similar to Europeans, whereas lower castes are more similar to Asians. We conclude that Indian castes are most likely to be of proto-Asian origin with West Eurasian admixture resulting in rank-related and sex-specific differences in the genetic affinities of castes to Asians and Europeans.
This genetic evidence supports the long held view that caste slavery was constructed by foreigners who entered India and who created an elaborate social and spiritual system to dominate and rule the original inhabitants of the land. This genetic finding is no less important than the other finding which states that all human beings have come from one pair of original parents.
Caste, Racism and Slavery
Regardless of this fact about our common origin, human civilization is filled with examples of how one set of human beings has enslaved others on the basis of color, ethnic identity, nationality and religion. Human history is also replete with efforts to deal with racism and slavery. The modern anti-slavery and anti-racism movement has received another boost with the commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the passing of the law that abolished the transatlantic slave trade through the work of Wilberforce and others. Abraham Lincoln said of Wilberforce, “Millions yet unborn will thank God for the memory of this man.’’ Watch the movie “Amazing Grace” if you have not yet seen it.
Of all the slaveries inflicted on human beings, the caste system stands out as the longest standing system designed to keep the Dalits in perpetual slavery. Caste discrimination based on descent and occupation is nothing less than apartheid. The Dalits are visible victims of this invisible apartheid at work in Indian society. It is hard to believe that this system and ideology has brainwashed Indians for 3,000 years.
Given the scientific evidence and the social and moral arguments against the caste system, is this not the century to abolish the practice of the caste system globally?
Since the caste system degrades men, women and labor, it is imperative that India abolishes the system first as it stands in the way of India unleashing the full potential of its people and becoming the global power it is capable of becoming! Abolish anything that encourages the practice of the caste system, including caste-based marriage advertisements. Abolish the practice of the caste system in all religions by law!
More than the law, we must strengthen public opinion against this system which is so divisive in nature and scope that today it impacts all of life – politics, religion, education and economics, to name just a few areas.
Extract from http://www.genome.org
The origins and affinities of the 1 billion people living on the subcontinent of India have long been contested. This is owing, in part, to the many different waves of immigrants that have influenced the genetic structure of India. In the most recent of these waves, Indo-European-speaking people from West Eurasia entered India from the Northwest and diffused throughout the subcontinent. They purportedly admixed with or displaced indigenous Dravidic-speaking populations. Subsequently they may have established the Hindu caste system and placed themselves primarily in castes of higher rank. To explore the impact of West Eurasians on contemporary Indian caste populations, we compared mtDNA (400 bp of hypervariable region 1 and 14 restriction site polymorphisms) and Y-chromosome (20 biallelic polymorphisms and 5 short tandem repeats) variation in 265 males from eight castes of different rank to 750 Africans, Asians, Europeans, and other Indians. For maternally inherited mtDNA, each caste is most similar to Asians. However, 20%–30% of Indian mtDNA haplotypes belong to West Eurasian haplogroups, and the frequency of these haplotypes is proportional to caste rank, the highest frequency of West Eurasian haplotypes being found in the upper castes. In contrast, for paternally inherited Y-chromosome variation each caste is more similar to Europeans than to Asians. Moreover, the affinity to Europeans is proportionate to caste rank, the upper castes being most similar to Europeans, particularly East Europeans. These findings are consistent with greater West Eurasian male admixture with castes of higher rank. Nevertheless, the mitochondrial genome and the Y chromosome each represents only a single haploid locus and is more susceptible to large stochastic variation, bottlenecks, and selective sweeps. Thus, to increase the power of our analysis, we assayed 40 independent, biparentally inherited autosomal loci (1 LINE-1 and 39 Alu elements) in all of the caste and continental populations (∼600 individuals). Analysis of these data demonstrated that the upper castes have a higher affinity to Europeans than to Asians, and the upper castes are significantly more similar to Europeans than are the lower castes. Collectively, all five datasets show a trend toward upper castes being more similar to Europeans, whereas lower castes are more similar to Asians. We conclude that Indian castes are most likely to be of proto-Asian origin with West Eurasian admixture resulting in rank-related and sex-specific differences in the genetic affinities of castes to Asians and Europeans.
Posted on: April 5, 2007
Wilberforce and the Caste system
by Joseph D’souza, International President, Dalit Freedom Network and President, All India Christian Council
Originally published on Dr. D’souza’s blog, on March 18, 2007.
The West is commemorating the bicentennial of the abolition of the slave trade law that began the process of dismantling slavery in the modern world. William Wilberforce a parliamentarian, a friend of the then Prime Minister Pitt and a Christian human rights activist led the struggle against slavery in the British Parliament all his life. The new film ‘Amazing Grace’ is being released on March 23rd in London, which marks the 200th year of the abolition of the slave trade in the British empire.
Did Wilberforce have anything to say on caste discrimination and Dalits? Yes, he spoke on the caste system and untouchability in the British Parliament 200 years ago and described caste discrimination against Dalits as akin to slavery. Speaking on the caste system, he said, ‘The institution of caste is a system at war with truth and nature’.
If Wilberforce were alive today he would describe Dalits as modern slavery’s biggest challenge. It is not enough for us to hide behind the statements that we have all kinds of laws against discrimination of Dalits. Caste discrimination is a mindset, a worldview of fellow human beings and what family and society constructs for us as we grow up as children. If children are constantly told about their ‘jat’(caste), if popular bollywood movies talk about ‘jat’and if cultural events are built around people of certain ‘jatis’( castes) then caste slavery will not vanish. Bonded child labourers, girl trafficking, and 100000 cases of atrocities against Dalits is a symptom of the problem but not the disease. The disease is the caste system.
The upper castes hypocritically are quick to raise the issue of racism, take for example the recent TV episode connected with Shilpa Shetty in UK, but so blind about the blatant racism against the Dalits within our own nation.
The question has to be asked, ‘Why is it that the upper castes have not led a movement for the abolishing of the caste system for 3000 years when the disastrous effect on national development, unity, progress and economy due to caste discrimination is plain?’
If Wilberforce were alive today he would be leading a global campaign to abolish the caste system. What are you doing about this?
Posted on: March 19, 2007
By Social Conviction I am an Ambedkarite
Posted on: March 18, 2007
Green snakes in green grass
By Kancha Ilaiah
Originally published in the Deccan Herald, March 14, 2007.
In the last week of February 2007, the UN Committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) held a meeting to discuss whether the question of caste discrimination should be treated on par with race and racial discrimination.
India sent a team that included Deepankar Gupta, a JNU based sociologist, to give his neutral expert opinion. This expert, it appears, argued that caste discrimination is not equivalent to racial discrimination and therefore the UN should not have anything to do with caste discrimination.
His stand was that caste is India’s internal matter and it would work out its ways and means to solve that problem. This has been the stand of some such well-known upper caste sociologists even in 2001 when the UN was proposing to include caste discrimination in the agenda of the Durban Conference. Thus, there is consistency in their approach. But that consistency itself is based on the conspiracy of the Brahminic ideological hegemony. There is also dualism in their existence and consciousness.
In a recent debate about racial discrimination against Shilpa Shetty, when she participated in the Celebrity Big Brother programme of UK, there was enough elite and intellectual protest against Goody’s language of racism. Our newspapers wrote several editorials and our TV channels conducted a series of discussions on the racist culture of the West. Our External Affairs Ministry took up the matter with the British government.
Why were our upper caste elite so angry and upset with mere racist comments of just one white woman against an elite Indian woman? Quite interestingly the British mass were as angry as the Indian elite were and voted Goody out of the contest. They not only did that, but voted Shilpa as the winner of the contest. They proved that Britain has a great positive will and anti-racist consciousness to wash its own sin. Do the Indian upper castes show the same grace and vote out the casteists, who practice untouchability and casteism?
No historical hegemonic force will enhance the strength and vision of the nation if it does not show the grace and sense of shame and guilt for the crimes it committed against its own people. Of all the nations in the world, India is the only country which does not have any sense of shame and guilt for continuing the practice of caste and untouchability. Look at the American white media’s treatment of Barrack Hussein Obama, the first ever black planning to contest for the Presidency. The Time magazine, before even he started dreaming about being the nominee of the Democratic Party, projected him with a cover story The Fresh Face with his full cover page photograph.
There is a feeling of guilt among the American whites that they could not make a Black president so far. It was with this sense of shame and guilt that America, Britain and other European nations allowed the racial discrimination question to be part of the UN agenda. After all, the whole white racism discourse is against the Euro-American whites and their racist life processes. And they were the ones who headed the UN bodies when the UN resolved to admit the resolution to make a frontal attack on racism.
No American sociologist went to the UN forum to oppose the racial discrimination being taken up by the UN. Even the worst of sociologists, who supported the agenda of Klu Klux Klan, also did not dare to go to the UN to oppose racial discrimination. But Indian sociologists never became part of the movement to combat casteism. On the other hand, they quite shamelessly argued that caste and race are different things and they should not be confused with one another.
Now, a senior professor of the Jawaharlal Nehru University goes to the UN to oppose the inclusion of caste discrimination in the UN agenda. In fact, JNU should be ashamed of having a so-called leading sociologist of this kind on its rolls. Not that one would oppose any academic’s freedom to have one’s own views. But one who is known as progressive doing this kind of reactionary representation to oppose the rights issue of untouchables going global is being a green snake in green grass.
Why do some of these so called Left and democratic academics take this position and oppose the caste question getting addressed by the UN bodies? They simply want to follow the orientalist methodology and do not want to see what is the sociological reality around them.
The much bigger question is why the UPA Government that claims to stand for democratic and secular values is opposing caste discrimination being taken up by the UN bodies? What is the stand of both CPI and CPM, who are part of this Government? If they think that the UN is an unnecessary organisation, why do China and other Communist countries remain in that organisation? If they too think like the NDA Government that opposed the caste issue being taken up by the UN at the Durban Conference on Racism and Xenophobia in 2001 as it was seen as a national issue of India, the same is true of the race problem as that problem exists in other nation states as well. Let there be one more round of debate on this question.
Posted on: March 14, 2007
The End of Upper Caste Propaganda in Global Forums
by Joseph D’souza, International President, Dalit Freedom Network and President, All India Christian Council
Originally published on Dr. D’souza’s blog.
On February 23, 2007, the Indian government delegation appearing before the UN treaty body the CERD (International Convention of the Elimination of Racial Discrimination) testified that in India there are no more Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, Sudras and Dalits! It is unbelievable that the Government spokesperson for this viewpoint was the Jawaharlal Nehru University Professor Deepankar Gupta. The CERD body was not amused by this blatant denial of the operation of the caste system and the kind of unconvincing answers given by the Indian delegation to the pertinent and straight forward questions raised by the CERD experts on the issue of Dalits discrimination. India is a signatory to this International Convention.
Over a week ago, the States of Uttarkhand and Punjab held their State elections. Pollsters were openly describing the impact of the Upper Caste vote bank, the Dalit vote, the Jat Vote and the Backward Caste vote.
Hello Mr. Deepankar Gupta! Which India and New Delhi are you living in that you can deny that the caste system exists? Is it the city of the ‘Hindustan Times’ newspaper which weekly carries pages of matrimonial columns where the marriage advertisements are sub-divided along caste lines? Or do you also deny that these advertisements occur week after week? Perhaps we should deny that even a paper like the ‘Hindustan Times’ exists before the CERD committee. Alas, how far we Indians have fallen as we deny our soul-destroying social disorder.
The Indian Government and the economic bosses of India need to know that just as the phenomenon of ‘the world is flat’ has benefited India enormously in terms of jobs, economy and global presence, the same ‘flat world’ now fully reveals what was hidden about India for thousands of years – the social disorder of the caste system.
Fifty years after India’s Independence, the atrocities against Dalits have increased and not decreased. There are over 100,000 registered cases annually of violence against the Dalits today! The lack of a social conscience among the power brokers of Indian society stands exposed in the flat world.
We are only fooling ourselves by not addressing our social disorder. The flat world does not believe that the caste system is abolished. They now know that caste dominates Indian politics more than ever in our history. Caste polarization is a political and social reality. As the Dalit delegates to the UN conference at Durban announced, caste is worse than racism. The Prime Minister has compared the Dalit problem to apartheid in South Africa. So it is a moot point to enter into a philosophical discourse on whether casteism and racism are the same. The Dalits who are violated daily do not live in the lecturers’ hall of the universities. They live outside in the slums, the towns, the villages, in the bastis. They are found among the child laborers and the girls trafficked in the sex trade all across India.
The same disorder of caste ideology which devalues women and the girl child is causing havoc with our social balance. On December 12, 2006, UNICEF finally declared that we Indians kill off 2.5 million unborn female babies each year. This is nothing but the genocide of Indian women and there will be terrible consequences in the years to come as the ratio of men and women falls rapidly in many parts of the country.
This is the time to banish the caste system out of our social structure, minds, lives and society, and not the time to bluff the world in Global Forums. Time has run out for the caste system and its blatant devaluation and dehumanization of human beings.
Posted on: February 28, 2007
State of English
By Kancha Ilaiah
Originally appeared in The Times of India, February 21, 2007.
The proposal of the Congress party to constitute the second state reorganisation commission (SRC) necessitates a larger debate. Linguistic states deserve a relook at a time when English is developing as a pan-Indian language. The rationale behind establishing a linguistic federation of Indian states is questionable.
If one assumes that regional languages develop like the European languages, then the federation is likely to break, as each advanced linguistic region would like to be a nation by itself.
Would India like to take the course of Europe, where many developed linguistic nations emerge and contradictions sharpen? But Indian regional languages are not as advanced as European languages like English, French, German, Spanish and so on.
In the ancient period, Sanskritic forces stilted their growth. In the late mediaeval period it was stilted by Persian. In the colonial period, English intervened. Now, there is no possibility of these languages developing to the levels of European languages.
In an under-developed language system, thought processes will also remain underdeveloped. In modern knowledge societies, underdeveloped languages cannot produce advanced thought. The present Indian languages, including Hindi, were more underdeveloped than any European language of the early 18th century.
The advanced linguistic nationalism of Europe sharpened contradictions, leading to nationalist wars among them, even though they all shared the same religion. The common historical roots of all the European languages, in Greek and Latin, did not prevent the emergence of such contradictions.
Once each language branches out, it develops nationalist aspirations, whipping up linguistic chauvinism. The recent chauvinist expressions that Telugu is greater than Tamil or vice versa, in order to get ancient status, is an indication of that trend.
The Dravidian or Pali linguistic roots of these languages are set aside and every linguistic state wants to prove that its language is great. With English developing as a language of administration and the market in India, the country can now afford to sidestep the European model of linguistic nations.
It is important to initiate a debate on this larger question before Andhra Pradesh, the first linguistic state to be formed, is split on developmental grounds. Once this happens, the principle of underdeveloped regions within every linguistic state being divided on the same grounds as AP comes into play. Each region can put forth its own case.
The only option left for us is to choose the American model of developing one national language across the federation and dividing provinces into viable administrative units. Given the historical roots of English in India over a period of a few centuries, it can become the spoken language of all Indians alongside regional languages.
Linguistic history has enough evidence to show that whether one is literate or not every human being can become bilingual. By 1510 (before the Bible was translated into English facing a great papal resistance), English was a language of the British illiterate productive masses.
Within just 500 years it has become the most popular language of the world. Within 200 years of its introduction in India it has become the language of easily about 100 million people. Its expansion in future will be several fold faster than earlier. It has become a language of day-to-day use for several million upper middle classes and rich.
The poor and the productive masses have a right to learn the language of administration and global communication. This ground reality forces us to accept that at least 50 per cent of the school syllabus in all govern-ment schools across the country should be taught in English.
The country would then overcome the yawning gap between convent and missionary English-medium school education and regional language-centred government school education. When educated social masses communicate in English across the country, the concept of linguistic state would become redundant.
The provincial states then should be compact administrative units. This 21st century reality should compel us to have a second SRC. This should examine the very concept of continuing with language-based provincial units within integrated Indian federal system.
Posted on: February 24, 2007
Reorganising states
By Kancha Ilaiah
Originally published in the Deccan Herald, January 20, 2007.
There is a need to accept English as the national language as the concept of linguistic states has failed.
The Congress party’s move to constitute the Second States Reorganisation Commission is welcome for two reasons. It is not just the question of Telangana or Vidarbha that needs to be examined but the very concept of formation of linguistic states.
In the early days of Indian Independence nobody had any idea about how a national language would shape up. A major section of the national leadership felt that Hindi would emerge as a link language and other regional languages would emerge as well-developed administrative and market languages. But both expectations got belied. Hindi has failed to emerge as a globally competitive national language. In an age of globalisation Hindi cannot serve the purpose of the nation nor does it empower the national social mass.
The Indian ruling classes realised this and they adopted English as the basic central administrative and ruling class language. Even state governments realised that the regional languages were inadequate in the historical context of the British colonial background. Even the children of the elite were pushed into English education (qualitative or otherwise) with an understanding that English would be the Pan Indian administrative and market language. At Pan Indian level, from the recently carved out tribal states to Bengal, Maharashtra, and Tamil Nadu, a chain of English speaking class emerged with an inbuilt ruling class understanding that English but not Hindi would be the real language of power. Fortunately for them, with the emergence of English speaking American, European and Australian nations as dominant players in the world, the future of Hindi would be simply that of a regional language.
The ruling elite in the South, along with the elite in metropolitan cities like Delhi, Calcutta , Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderbad realised that the real national language was English. This linguistic reality changed the very basis of linguistic states. Assume a situation that in the footsteps of the ruling elite in all states, the mass also acquires the basic proficiency in English over a period of few decades, as that language is going to be the main player in the whole of India along with their regional languages. Then the very foundation of linguistic states gets shaken. And in the interest of the masses that is what should happen. Unless the whole national population acquires communication skills in English there is no way in which the whole nation could progress.
The formation of linguistic states itself was based on wrong premises. The assumption that regional languages would develop as globally competitive and the development of the linguistic states would depend on the development of the provincial languages without creating their own nationalist aspirations is wrong. The most advanced linguistic states like Tamil Nadu and West Bengal developed major contradictions with the Centre. But their ruling elite also got Anglicised. There is a contradiction in the very basic idea of forming linguistic states and they remaining loyal to Pan Indian ruling elite, which developed as a very advanced Anglicised social force. All this has created a linguistic colonialism within India. This needs to be broken by reformulating the states more as small and compact administrative units in which English and the regional languages should develop with equal priority.
The best way, therefore, is to break all big linguistic states and form small administrative states wherein English gets equal status with its regional language. That will produce a Pan Indian English speaking intellectual force from every village that can claim its place in provincial and federal politics and administration and at the same time it will have commitment to the Indian nation undercutting the regional parochial tendencies.
The knowledge with their state language or Hindi would not play any human resource developmental role in people’s real life in India . With an administrative will, the hegemony of small, selfish, English speaking class will have to be broken. That can be done only by transforming English into a mass national language.
In this background the concept of linguistic states is even administratively meaningless. In every state there is a small historically backward and politically hypocritical group that keeps on working around the sentiment of the so-called mother tongue and national tongue (Hindi). As it happens in some states, there are some, who keep saying that the state administration should work in Telugu, Kannada, Hindi and so on. But the demands of these forces will be swept of by the logic of global market forces. Hence the role of English will expand more and more and a day will come when it will be officially recognised as the national language.
The states reorganisation would not be on the ground of language. For example, the present Telangana demand is not worked out based on this larger context. Whether Telangana becomes an independent state now or some time later is not the issue. Breaking Andhra Pradesh into two or three administratively small and compact states is necessary. The united Andhra Pradesh failed the people on many accounts. The Telangana question should be an entry point to break all big unviable linguistic states. When English becomes the ruling and state language, all the literate social mass in the country should become bilingual — English and one regional language.
Posted on: January 20, 2007
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Posted on: January 16, 2007
What I want is quick justice
Staff Reporter, Dalit Freedom Network
As a new year begins, much remains the same in rural India. A horrific crime – and the ineffective response of authorities – demonstrates that the oppression of Dalits remains unchanged over thousands of years.
Four members of a Dalit peasant family were murdered and allegedly raped on 29 September 2006 in central India. The response was even more tragic than the crime. From police to medical examiners, a caste bias prevented swift justice and prolonged the agony of the only survivor, father and husband Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange. Finally, on 30 November 2006, the frustrated Dalit community lashed out in protests that shook the state of Maharashtra.
In its Nov 18-Dec 1, 2006 issue, Frontline magazine carried an in-depth piece on the attack in Khairlanji, Maharashtra, and said, “Before sunset on September 29, a mob of about 40 Kunbis from Khairlanji entered Bhotmange’s hut and dragged out his wife, daughter and two sons. Forty-year-old Surekha, 17-year-old Priyanka, 19-year-old Roshan and 21-year-old Sudhir were stripped naked and paraded to the village square where the women were probably raped. All of them were beaten with bicycle chains and other implements and their leg bones were broken, presumably to prevent their escape. Finally, they were killed by axe blows… The bodies were loaded on to a bullock cart and dumped in a canal about two kilometres away.”
Reportedly the attackers were upset over a land dispute. The 48-year-old Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange arrived home just as the mob dragged his family outside. Afraid for his life and realizing that he couldn’t take on the mob alone, he ran for help.
According to an interview in one newspaper, the Bhotmange children were educated, something many villagers resented. Ironically, Priyanka, the 17-year-old daughter, was on the merit list in the tenth grade examinations two years ago and had dreams of joining the police.
Yet the biggest tragedy was the negligence of local police and medical authorities, according to media reports. Evidence was likely destroyed, the post-mortem report improperly done, the stalling by local police gave the accused time to build alibis, and witnesses were threatened.
The local police station was informed of trouble in the village soon after the murders. The responding policeman said it was too dark to investigate. The District Superintendent of Police later admitted the police were careless. A search would have preserved crucial evidence, especially of rape. It took over twenty-four hours for the first police report to be filed.
The post-mortem was handled incorrectly. The doctor neglected to test for rape despite the battered and naked bodies. He claims the police didn’t request the testing, but other doctors say that is no excuse.
Of course, the police also faced the challenge of a caste-riddled community. No eyewitnesses came forward and, amazingly, upper caste villagers including the village chief claimed not to have seen or heard anything. In a close-knit and tightly built community, most find this incredibly hard to believe.
Of the five Dalit families living in the village, one Dalit woman told a fact-finding team that she knew of plans to assault and kill the Bhotmange family but did not report them because of the likely complications she would face from the police and her upper-caste neighbors. The sequence of events had to be reconstructed from forensic evidence and information given by a family friend who received a distressed cell phone call from the daughter and arrived in time to witness part of the attack.
Eventually, the Maharashtra police handed over the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) after the negligence of local police came to light. Local and national politicians including Sonia Gandhi, who heads the Congress Party which is currently in power on the federal level, met with the lone survivor. Each politician promised justice and gave their condolences to Mr. Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange. The State Home Ministry suspended a few officials who were lax in registering the atrocity and, two months after the crime, arrested the village head, suspected of having led the mob. And a fast track court was promised in early December.
In contrast, the administration that was careless in handling the case in September showed proactive tactics in dealing with November’s public protests. Dalit activists were subject to “pre-emptive” arrests. Homes of those who sat silently in various protests were entered forcibly and pre-dawn arrests made throughout the region.
The village of Khairlanji has a history of caste-based discrimination. Located about 100 km (62 miles) from Nagpur, the village has about 125 houses. Most residents belong to the “other backward castes” which are considered slightly higher than Dalits. Only three Dalit families lived in the village, and the Bhotmanges moved to the village about sixteen years ago. They didn’t have a legitimate housing plot and lived in a single room hut. There was no electricity either. Mr. Bhotmange owns five acres of land.
In the midst of continuing injustices, the main victim has almost been forgotten. According to an interview and editorial in The Hindu on Nov. 17, 2006, Mr. Bhotmange said, “I am not taking any money from the government and I don’t want the job it is offering me. What I want is quick justice. I want the accused to be hanged. Will the lakhs of rupees I am being offered bring back the dead?”
Posted on: December 28, 2006
The fear of democracy of the privileged
Opinion by P. Sainath from The Hindu
The 50th death anniversary of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar is a time to remember that the larger society ignores or distorts the Dalits’ struggle for their rights at its own risk.
“GET READY for a siege.” Follow this guide “to escape possible chaos.” Even Dalits are joining the “EXODUS.” And “You thought Tuesday was bad? It will only get worse today.” There is a “nightmare” — a threat of violence. And the poor “Mumbai police will have to bear the brunt of it all.”
These were just a few of the headlines (some of them front page, first lead) in the press and on television channels. And they were about the lakhs of Dalits gathered in Mumbai to observe the 50th death anniversary of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. That is, on December 6. There were, of course, fine exceptions. But mostly, media coverage of the run-up to the event was much like the coverage of post-Khairlanji protests in Maharashtra.
This is not the first observance of the great man’s anniversary. Lakhs visit the “chaityabhoomi” 
in Mumbai each year on this day. As they did this year, too, with high discipline. And without that hell foreseen in the headlines. (After the huge build-up, the issue has faded from the news. Alas, no mayhem.) Then why the hysteria? Is it because the state saw some violence after the Khairlanji murders? Now, every issue stamped `Dalit’ gets slotted into: “Will there be disorder and ch…..read full story
Posted on: December 15, 2006
Khairlanji's shame
Opinion from The Hindu
The September 29 butchery of four Dalits in Khairlanji village of Maharashtra’s Bhandara district by fellow villagers is a heart-breaking reminder of the anti-human nature of caste prejudice. The victims, members of the Bhotmange family, were bludgeoned to death in full view of people of the village. Their mutilated bodies were dumped in a nearby canal. The `provocation’ for the bestial killings was that Bhaiyalal Bhotmange’s wife, daughter, and two sons were educated and asserted their right to a life of dignity despite their poverty. This was clearly unacceptable to the OBC-dominated village that has only two other Dalit families. When the sole surviving member of the family, Bhaiyalal, reported the crime, the police showed an unserious and even contemptuous attitude to the investigation. The post-mortems were not done in accordance with law….. Read full story by clicking here
Posted on: November 20, 2006
Stop Forced Religious Conversions!
Opinion by Udit Raj
as published in Outlook magazine, Sept. 22, 2006 (free registration required).
Has the Sangh Parivar and the Gujarat government sought prior permission of Buddhists and Jains to make them part of Hindu religion? If not, it is nothing but a case of forced conversion. The real danger to Hindu religion is from within because of its own weaknesses
The Sangh Parivar is not able to resolve the dangers looming large on the caste-based Hindu religion on its own. There is a saying that you should first try to resolve your differences on your own, and then consult your neighbours. But instead of taking recourse to either of these options, they start finding fault with Christians or Muslims — Jains and Buddhists have now become their latest targets.
On the 19th September, 2006, the Gujarat Assembly passed the Religious Freedom (Amendment) Bill stating that prior permission is required from the government before seeking conversion to any religion and as if this was not enough, Chief Minister Narendra Modi has done what has not been done anywhere else by declaring that Buddhists and Jains shall be treated as a part of Hinduism.
For certain limited purposes, in certain matters like marriages etc., Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs have been included in the ambit of Hindu religion in our Constitution — but in Articles 25 to 30 of Constitution, it has been explicitly stated that Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism are three separate religions. It is very clearly stated: ‘Every person in India, is equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right to freely to profess, practice, propagate religion.’ The Supreme Court and the Minorities Commission have also held the view that Sikhism, Jainism and Buddhism are distinct identities — and are not a part of Hindu religion.
It is interesting that using the same Article 25 (Clause 2) illogic (read in isolation), Sikhs too should have been covered by the Gujarat bill. But the bill doesn’t do so. It has not declared Sikhs as part of Hindu religion out of cowardice. About two years back, when the RSS Sarsanghchalak, K.S Sudershan had declared in a statement that Sikhs were part of Hindu religion, the Sikhs had flared up and challenged the description, letting it be known that they were fully competent of looking after their distinct religious identity. The situation had became very volatile, and perhaps BJP is aware of the sensitivities of its Shiromani Akali Dal allies and its electoral fall-out, which is why Sikhs have been kept out this time.
But just consider how these religions came into being.
Buddhism came into existence in the backdrop of rampant social evils prevailing in the society when Lord Buddha observed that there was widespread violence, untouchability and discrimination against women. Humanity was his only concern and amelioration of the miseries of human beings his ultimate goal —and he laid down certain norms for achieving this goal. “I teach one thing and one thing only: suffering and the end of suffering” In real terms, it is not a religion but dhamma which means that human beings should do such deeds which should remove others’ miseries and bring happiness to others.
Similarly with Jain Dharma, as Lord Mahavira spoke out against the social evils and violence prevailing in the society at that time, urging the people to follow the path of truth and non-violence. Gurunanak Devji also fought against discrimination and religious dogma of those times and urged the people to follow the righteous path. All these religions came into existence on a parallel basis and not as an off-shoot of Hindu religion.
Till now only Muslims and Christians were being targeted by the Sangh Parivar —but now Buddhists and Jains are also on their agenda, but through the back-door. Has the Sangh Parivar and the Gujarat government sought prior permission of Buddhists and Jains to make them part of Hindu religion? If not, it is nothing but a case of forced conversion.
The fact is that a large majority of people in India are converting to Buddhism and Christianity because of the caste-based Hindu religion. According to my information, Buddhism is spreading very fast in our country. BJP is only trying to get political mileage by treating Buddhists and Jains as Hindus. The BJP and the Sangh Parivar somehow are worried that by 2066, Hindus in India will become a minority.
India is a secular country. Secularism simply means that the state shall not interfere in the personal and religious affairs of a person and religion would not be used as a political tool. By framing such laws as are against religious freedom, the Gujarat government has made it clear that a person shall have to take permission from the state for pursuing a religious faith of his choice.
Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and now Gujarat have made laws which stipulate that whosoever wants to pursue a religious faith of his free choice shall have to get prior permission from the government. This means that the governments —and the Sangh Parivar at large — shall get prior information about anyone wanting to change their religion.
As most of such people wanting to change their religious identity would be Dalits and people belonging to other weaker sections, is it very difficult to figure out what the Sangh and BJP in these states wish to do? They wish to be forewarned so that they are fully prepared to adopt all the means to prevent such conversions — through intimidation or by coercion.
Let us take for example the case of a Dalit who does not have any farmland. There are so many ways to coerce or intimidate him via rich and powerful farmers: By not hiring him as a farmhand. By not allowing him to pass through land or dividers belonging to rich and powerful farmers. By instigating and creating dissensions among his other Dalit relations. And if these tactics do not work, why, then there is always the time-tested method of implicating him in false cases.
By creating all sorts of problems for people wanting to change their religion would in all probability dissuade such people from converting to another religion. Such persons wanting to convert to another religion may be forced even to make a statement to the effect that they wanted to do so under pressure from a Maulvi or a priest. Under such circumstances, the Sangh Parivar and their governments will also get a handle to harass and torture Muslim and Christian priests.
Atrocities in any case are already being committed in many districts including Jhabua, Jabbalpur, and Dang on Christians. Presently, Christians are doing a commendable job through the convent schools in the areas of education and health for Dalits and other backward classes — but they would be forced to restrict their activities to the elite. It is an irony that the elite and the prosperous sections of the society are taking maximum advantage of convent education being imparted by the Christian institutions, but when the same Christian community wants to do something for Dalits and other backward communities, it is termed as religious conversion.
After all, the colonising British were also Christians and the upper castes happily served them as landlords, bureaucrats and in other capacities. If Christians and Muslims (remember the upper-caste Hindus working with the Moghuls?) give some benefits to such people, then everything is fine otherwise everything is wrong.
The Sangh Parivar wants Buddhists and Jains to accept the suzerainty of the Vedas. Have the Jains agreed to accept the supremacy of the Vedas over the Tirthankaras? Have the Buddhists agreed to accept Hinduism’s caste-system? The Sangh Parivar also forgets one basic fact: It was Dr. Ambedkar who gave a boost to reviving Buddhism on October 14, 1956 at Nagpur by initiating lakhs of Dalits into Buddhism along with himself:
I embrace today the Bauddha Dhamma, discarding the Hindu religion which is detrimental to the emancipation of human beings and which believes in inequality and regards human beings other than Brahmins as low-born.
Buddhism and Dr Ambedkar are in fact two sides of the same coin. BJP will only stand to lose if they adopt such tactics, as whatever small minority of Dalits who have so far been neutral towards BJP will be vehemently opposed to them after this move. The All India Confederation of SC/ST Organizations and the All India Christian Council is holding World Religious Freedom Day on October 13-14 at Nagpur where activists will be coming not only from different parts of India but from all over the world and after this event, the struggle for religious freedom will be intensified not only within the country, but with the active cooperation of people from all over the world.
The Sangh Parivar have nothing to be afraid of Muslims or Christians who might be doing some conversions or spread of Buddhism at a fast speed. The real danger to Hindu religion is from within because of its own weaknesses. Thousands of instances have come to light when children from upper castes refused to take mid-day meals in schools along with Dalit children. Entry of Dalits to several Hindu temples is still prohibited. It is a great irony that there is not a single Dalit industrialist nor is there any Dalit heading an Import-Export House. According to a recent survey, out of 315 top journalists, there is not a single Dalit journalist. There are hundreds and thousands of celebrities in the country, but not even one of them is a Dalit. . Under these circumstances, the real danger to Hindu religion is from within and not outside. By remaining deprived within the fold of Hindu religion, what do they enjoy? Slavery, poverty, humiliation?
Dr. Udit Raj is Chairman, All India Confederation of SC/ST Organisations and Indian Justice Party
Posted on: September 27, 2006
Violence in India: The Link Between "The Untouchables" And Islamic Fundamental Violence
by Deborah Lynn
I actually started writing the following blog two months ago, got sidetracked and never submitted it. I thought to myself that I would submit it the next time there is news of violence in India.
Sadly, violence surely did strike. In light of Tuesday’s terrible tragedy in India, it seems all the more relevant.
For the whole blog, visit Deborah Lynn’s blog site at the Huffington Post by clicking here
Posted on: July 25, 2006
Who Benefits SC/SC Status Facilities on Whose Struggle?
by M. Madhu Chandra, Human Rights Activist, New Delhi
Introduction
Any Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe when they get the SC/ST status reservation facilities should ask this question, “Who benefits SC/ST status facilities on whose struggle?” Many of the young SC/ST generations, when they enjoy the presidential reservation facilities for underprivileged section of Indian societies, do not realize how and whose struggles, these privileges are provided. It will be very true to our north east India community from SC/ST background.
The struggle between High caste and oppressed communities of India has reached its crucial juncture. The presidential reservation facilities preserved in Indian Constitution is most precious gift given to Indian oppressed class community. This most precious gift to protect and preserve the underprivileged communities of India has been under attack again and again by high caste minority ruler of the country.
This short write up is attempted to bring awareness among the SC/ST communities, particularly to those who have benefited SC/ST status facility yet failed to realize the importance of joint effort to safe guard of the constitutional right of the provision for Dalit communities.
Who Are Dalits And Dalit-Bahujans?
Three reasons why reintroduction of Dalit is needed at this hour: First, there is strong feeling that the North East Indian Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) are different from the rest of SC/ST of the country. Secondly, there is no difference between SC/ST of North Eastern India with the rest of SC/ST communities in their definition. Thirdly, the north eastern SC/ST communities rarely know the plights of being SC/ST communities in rest of the countries.
Dalit movement has been widely known today all over India. American and European countries started to hear the plights of Dalit atrocities in India. For the first time United Nations heard the issues of Indian Dalits in 2002.
To understand clearly what the Dalit movement is all about, it will be essential to know what the word “Dalit” actually means. After knowing the definition of Dalit, we may fully understand what is happening among the SC/ST communities in Indian villages, towns, cities and forests. This will also help the SC/ST communities in north east India to understand what means to be SC/ST in India society.
Dalit is the very term that Indian SC/ST communities named themselves sometimes in 1960s when SC/ST of Maharashtra protested to leave Hinduism to get liberated from Hindus Caste system. It is derived from Sanskrit word “Dal” meaning for “Oppressed,” “Crushed,” or “Defiled.” Dalits are not included in Hindu’s four Castes – Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, and Shudras developed by Brahmin forces ever since Aryans invented in Indian soils in 1500 BC.
All SC/ST communities in India including the SC/ST communities in north east India are known as Dalit Communities by definition in the way how SC/ST communities are oppressed by Indian’s upper caste communities. To define it in larger term by including Others Backward Classes (OBC), whole low caste and back class communities are politically termed as Dalit-Bahujans (Bahujan means majority) which represent 85% of Indian population.
Brahmins dominated whole Indian society by placing them on top of all castes that also enjoy and control all Temple power and temple economic. The education is designed only for Brahmin societies. Kshatriyas placed in second row of Hindu caste system designated to enjoy and control over authorities and enjoy tax economic collected from whole society under the influences of Brahmins. Vaishyas placed in third caste row designated to control and enjoy trade economic and power under the influences of their superior Brahmins and Kshatriyas. Shudras placed in fourth caste row designated to serve their three superior Brahmins, Kshatriyas and Shudras. They performed lowest works such as removing the human night waste from upper caste homes. The first three castes are known as UPPER HINDU CASTE and the fourth as low caste.
Where the Dalit communities do falls within Hindu caste structure? Dalits actually does not fall within any of Hindu’s four caste system! Dalits are casteless people because they are not counted as fellow human beings. They are defiled communities. Their shadow on upper caste is considered even defiled. To eras their footsteps they were forced to tight a broom on their backs. Dalits are not to learn Sanskrit, if they happen to hear a Sanskrit phrase, theirs ears are to be poured melted tines. If they happen to remember a Sanskrit phrase, their tongues are supposed to be cut off.
People hearing the plights of being Dalits will not accept it in twenty first century but it is still happening in far and near corners of Indian societies. In 2002 five Dalits were skinned alive for skinning a death cow. It proved that a death cow is more worth than five Dalits. In 2005, fifty Dalits homes were burnt down in the presence of police forces and district authorities in Gohana 70 km away from Indian capital city – Delhi. In 2006 March, a Dalit man’s both the hands and leg amputated in Punjab by upper caste when he fought back the gang rapists of his minor daughter. The story like this never cease in daily print and electronic media. Many went unreported injustice.
What Are The SC/SC Status Benefits?
SC/ST known today as Dalit communities in India was known as “Depressed Class” and “Untouchable” by British before independent. In 1937, for first time, the British termed “Depressed Class” or “Untouchable” as Scheduled Caste and Tribe. Special consideration for their social, economical and educational uplift was considered even before the independent of India.
After Independent, in framing of Indian constitution through initiatives of Dr. Bim Rao Ambedkar gave special provision for SC/ST communities and the Presidential Order of SC/ST was listed in 1950.
Majority of SC/ST communities of North East India see SC/ST status facilities in the terms of employment and educational reservation privileges. The SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Acts 1989 amended in 1995 seem to be not fully understood by SC/ST communities of north east Indian which is much beyond educational and employment provisions. Special Acts under SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Acts 1995 has been provided to prevent atrocities against SC/ST communities anywhere of the country. The provision given to any SC/ST communities includes some of the followings:
Special provision of employment in Central and state sectors, educational provisions by seat reservation and monetary helps, SC/ST land protections, Atrocity prevention Acts and remedies to the victimized SC/ST communities such as legal punishments, compensations etc. (SC/ST Prevention of Atrocity Acts 1995 is available in concern offices)
Who Struggles For SC/ST And Who Benefits It?
Many SC/ST communities take the SC/ST Status beneficiaries for granted that it naturally came itself to be included in Indian Constitution. It is included in Indian Constitution not without somebody struggling for that. Dr. Bim Rao Ambedkar was one of many who struggle for SC/ST communities in India and many others after him. For the service Ambedkar has done for Indian SC/ST society, he could have been equally given the father of Nation as it is given to Mahatma Gandhi.
Therefore in this short write up, a question is being asked “Who benefits SC/ST status facilities provided in Indian Constitution on who have struggled?” Those who get the SC/ST status benefits must realize the need of helping those who are involved in the struggle to ensure SC/ST cause.
Differences between Being SC and ST!
Scheduled Caste communities are at the receiving end of Hindu caste system. They are considered to be part of Hindu Caste system but upper caste did not allow them to worship their gods in the same temples, they are considered defiled. They are socially, economically, educationally, politically oppressed. The freedom to choose their faith and religions is denied. The movement they convert to any other faiths and religions different from Hinduism, Sikhism and Buddhism, they are denied all the Presidential Order of SC status facilities.
But Scheduled Tribes are little bit different in the nature they are oppressed. They are mostly oppressed in the form of Education and Economic dental to them for being geographically far away in forests. ST communities are not oppressed like SC when they change their faiths and religions. They are given the SC/ST status benefits even if they convert to other religions different from Hinduism, Sikhism and Buddhism.
Scheduled Caste origins converted to other faith and religions different from Hinduism, Sikhism and Buddhism are fighting for their birth, fundamental and constitutional rights to enjoy SC status even after conversion. ST communities will need to realize that their same brothers and sisters of SC communities, who are oppressed under the same stigma of Hindu caste system, need the constitutional rights to be included in presidential order list of SC/ST 1950 even after their conversion to any of their choice.
What is the SC/ST Situation in India?
There is huge lye against SC/ST from general and upper caste communities that reservation provided to SC/ST communities has not done any good to them. It is open fact that without SC/ST status provision provided in Indian Constitution and reservation facilities, SC/ST communities could never have come up to what they are today. If the reservation facility provided to SC/ST today are denied then they will pushed back to what it was before.
The debate by Sangh Parivar (basically upper caste) on reframing of Indian constitution is the greatest challenge to all SC/ST, OBC and minorities. The content of Indian constitution has been charged an anti Hindu thus they want to change it by removing all the facilities and provision given to SC/ST and non-Hindus. The constitution of India is biggest gift to every SC/ST, OBC, Minorities and every citizen of India. It should be preserved and protected from all communal forces.
Mushrooming of Private sectors is another great challenge for SC/ST because once all the governmental sectors converted into Private Sectors, they will not be any post left for SC/ST communities because, the Private Sectors do not have the reservation system in employment. Mushrooming of Private sectors may not be able to stop from it’s ever growth. However there can be one possible hope for SC/ST that legally and politically challenges the private sectors to provide reservation for SC/ST communities, which is deadly protested by Private Sector owners.
Conclusion
Although SC/ST communities do not realize who struggled for very benefits of SC/ST, there is a group of people like Dr. Bim Rao Ambedkar and his followers who still struggle to ensure SC/ST status benefits. Educated and empowered SC/ST often forgets their SC/ST brothers and sisters who are still in the need of help for their total liberation from caste oppression.
SC/ST status beneficiaries must be guarded even after mushrooming of private sector. It is high call from SC communities to ST communities to stand united especially constitutional denial of SC status facilities when they are converted to other faiths and religions different from Hinduism, Sikhism and Buddhism.
Posted on: July 10, 2006
Knowledge Commission fails to deliver
The resignation of two members — Andre Beteille and Pratap Bhanu Mehta — from the Knowledge Commission protesting against the 27 per cent reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBC) in Central educational institutions did not come as a surprise. We also learnt from the media that except for Jayati Ghosh and GS Bhargava, all other members of the Commission opposed the government’s reservation policy.
As soon as Union HRD Minister Arjun Singh mooted the idea, Knowledge Commission chairman Sam Pitroda, who hardly lives in India, said publicly that the minister should have consulted the Commission before making that announcement. The nation should be happy that the Commission did not demand that its approval be sought before the Constitutional Amendment Bill was sent to Parliament.
But the moot question is: Who are these Commission members to advise the government about the constitutional rights of vast masses of people? Why are they silent about the fact that all Central universities, IITs, IIMs, medical schools and Navodaya schools are run in English medium even though the Centre has declared Hindi as the national language?
The Knowledge Commission is not worried about this, since English ensures that the upper classes get easy access to the globalised markets. We have never heard the Knowledge Commission say all children should be given equal access to English medium education.
But whenever emerges an issue pertaining to the welfare of the Dalit-Bahujan masses, some intellectuals in Delhi and the Central institutes jump into the discourse with the theory that caste-based mechanism does not do any good for the nation. They warn that such government agendas will divide society on the basis of caste. Don’t they know that Indian society has been divided on the basis of caste for centuries? Do they have any ideological formula for the abolition of caste?
When there was a proposal to take caste to the United Nations conference held in Durban in 2001, these same intellectuals warned that caste was an internal problem and we should search for national solutions.
They indirectly supported the NDA government’s decision not to allow the issue to be discussed at the UN meet.
Posted on: July 5, 2006
Book Review: Castes Cannot be Annihilated by Dalits Alone
by Dr. Joseph D’souza
Originally published on Dr. D’souza’s blog, on June 13, 2006.
A great book review. Have a look.
Castes Cannot be Annihilated by Dalits Alone
book review by Balmurli Natrajan
Review of “Anti-Imperialism and Annihilation of Castes” by Anand Teltumbde, Ramai Prakashan, Thane; 2005.
In the spirit of Marx’s praxis, which requires us to understand the world in order to change it, Dr. Teltumbde highlights the major reason to study caste and imperialism – to eradicate both! Ambitious in scope, yet moving easily between the desirable and the possible, this book provides both intellectuals and activists with a roadmap (albeit a rough one) to attempt this task.
The book starts by interrogating a problem – the lack of a strong and widespread anti-imperialist consciousness in India. The answer advanced is that this problem is largely due to the acceptance of the caste system, which makes the “average Indian’s social consciousness” his or her caste consciousness (87). This is not left to remain as a question of false consciousness of Indians. Instead, Teltumbde offers a complex argument for how caste is an imperialist institution working internally in India sharing similarities with the more conventionally accepted external imperialism of the multinational corporations. Both these forms of imperialism work through comprador elites in political, economic and social lives of India. Consequently, he argues for viewing the anti-caste consciousness expressed by Dalit proletarians (who form the bulk of all Dalits and the largest single social group among India’s proletariat) as an expression of anti-imperialist consciousness. Throughout, Teltumbde locates his analysis of the current situation in India within historical and global contexts. The statistical evidence and analytical arguments that he marshals for this book make it invaluable for any serious discussion of the impacts of colonialism and imperialist globalization today.
Teltumbde speaks about the need for the annihilation of caste as an integral (not secondary) part of the anti-imperialist struggle. This means that the anti-imperialist struggle, which is the struggle for democracy and freedom of all people, must be worked through addressing the problem of caste in India – intellectually (to gain understanding of the context for imperialism in India) and organizationally (to unite all victims of imperialism in the struggle against it). Annihilation of caste then means the struggle against an economic structure and its attendant sociocultural superstructure (205) which primarily manifests itself through caste atrocities, caste discrimination and caste deprivation.
There is every likelihood that the ideological Left will dismiss Teltumbde’s call to acknowledge caste as a part of class and consequently caste struggle as an integral part of class struggle. They may also be uncomfortable with the idea of taking caste as an imperialist institution. On the other hand, Dalit organizations too may dismiss him primarily because his entire analysis is very much Marxist, although a pleasantly heterodox and non-dogmatic one, and hence not appeal to them, and secondarily, since he characterizes much of their leadership as pursuing petty-bourgeois politics. Arguing that the Left movement and the Dalit movement have made historical errors in understanding Indian history, economy and society, Teltumbde is nevertheless able to foreground the need for their convergence, since in his analysis the Left and Dalit movement are both against imperialism – external and internal to the nation.
This is a carefully argued book. For example, Teltumbde does not simply view castes as mere vestiges of feudalism as Eurocentric Left analyses commonly make it out to be. Instead, he notes how Indian feudalism differs from classic accounts and how caste played a determining role within it. Here he echoes recent Marxist writers who argue that castes are a self-regulating exploitative system which operate as part of both, the base (infrastructure) and superstructure of society (40). Further, he shows how castes do change but still continue to organize production and politics in India today. It is especially noteworthy to see how Teltumbde shows how the Indian economy is embedded within society, a path that has a tradition in the scholarly literature deriving from Karl Polanyi in economic sociology and anthropology. This understanding is important to get away from an economistic reading of class in India. Arguing that India is primarily a semi-feudal and semi-colonial economy with different classes being positioned in different (and mixed) modes of production, Teltumbde asks us to view Dalit struggles against the caste system as indeed class struggles corresponding to the pre-capitalist modes (107).
The brief discussion on reservations is very sharp and usefully identifies the flaw in the anti-reservation argument that bases itself on “economic needs.” Instead, as Teltumbde painfully points out, reservations are primarily a countervailing measure against societal disability or socially-produced disability, and not any intrinsic Dalit disability. This is a salutary move that prevents a naturalization of the social on the Dalit body. Put simply, Teltumbde argues that it is because of casteism in society that caste based reservations are needed. His book draws attention to how caste-based humiliation and discrimination does not go away with class mobility for Dalits (242).
Teltumbde is most provocative when he argues that the primary caste contradiction is between Dalits and all non-Dalits or savarnas (111) and not between dwija and not-dwija. He also shows how one can and needs to perform a class analysis to show contradictions between castes (215). For example he boldly highlights Dalit and OBC class contradictions by showing how the dwija vs. non-dwija categories which place the large population of OBCs as allies of all Dalits, hide the real class contradictions between them. Thus, Teltumbde is not satisfied with opportunistic attempts to put together electoral formations of “bahujan” since these do not represent the “ground reality” of Dalits (218). Nonetheless, he is also careful to argue that each of these legalistic caste categories itself contains a heterogeneous class population. As OBC groups emerge as new economically powerful classes in the countryside, and also enter positions of power in the state machinery in urban centers (as bureaucrats and politicians), the caste-class analysis too must reflect this. This means that we also need theories to show how forms of alliance and collusion are built between intermediary powerful castes (OBCs) and upper castes who are now increasingly in charge of more urban, private and modern machineries of coercion, capital and ideology. In this context, Teltumbde’s reminder that “class analysis should embed caste realities not in a salutary terms but in order to make caste struggle as an integral part of the class struggle-for the latter, taking principle contradiction as between dalits vs non-dalits” is timely and crucial.
Perhaps the most underdeveloped area in the book is an engagement with the question of caste-based identities and the question of how to annihilate caste identities that have acquired a real basis in Indian politics and social struggles. While three material manifestations of caste are addressed in the book – caste atrocities, caste discrimination, and caste deprivation, these are only the most visible and strong manifestations of caste and need to be surely annihilated. Yet, caste also exists in non-dramatic ways for creating caste-based identities through caste-based marriage alliances, in celebrations of caste as cultural difference, and in creations of social or network capital that is caste-based (e.g., old boys network). We are not given any indication how to engage with these manifestations of caste and whether this needs to happen at all. Perhaps Teltumbde thinks that class struggle (involving dalits and non-dalits as a class) against the hegemonic caste manifestations will go a long way in dampening caste identities, so that whatever remains of them would be inconsequential for a class struggle like many other identities such as those based on region and language.
Nevertheless, it will be useful to note that these non-dramatic signs of caste are key for reproducing caste as patriarchy because arranged marriage inevitably means control over women’s sexuality, cultural displays always operate through control over women’s bodies and actions which are supposed to maintain “caste traditions,” and caste networks typically means women’s exclusion. Here Teltumbde’s insistence on keeping caste distinct from other non-class forces while salutary for caste does not do justice to the growing literature on how gender and patriarchy are at the heart of caste.
This silence also extends to the possibility of inter-caste marriages as having the potential to annihilate caste consciousness. Of course, entering such a marriage does not automatically lead to the end of caste consciousness. This is made possible only through constant vigilance against casteism and caste-based thinking by those who enter such marriages. Are such marriages not seen anymore as a powerful ally of anti-caste struggles as Ambedkar himself viewed it not too long ago? Not engaging with this issue prevents the book from raising a more interesting question: Can there be castes (social groups of identity, i.e., communities) without casteism (atrocity, discrimination, deprivation)? It seems highly unlikely given that castes usually enter into a relationship of hierarchy via difference. Caste identities therefore also need to be annihilated in addition to caste discrimination and atrocity (sociopolitical) and deprivation (economic).
Raising the question of the annihilation of caste identities will however surely produce the most vitriolic objections from all castes and their so-called leadership – all of whom are invested in continuation of caste as identity-marker (in hierarchical and non-hierarchical ways). The phrase “annihilation of caste” has gone out of fashion nowadays, either suspected of being an upper-caste response to caste (seeking to wish it away rather than address its roots which lie in the economy as much as in the sociocultural relations of everyday life) or of being an impossibility (presumably by those who know what is possible and what is not). It remains unclear how to best address this issue since community consciousness is also used by those fighting oppression.
Teltumbde’s book is a useful intervention that needs to be defended by all progressives. He is very clear that ”...castes cannot be annihilated by Dalits alone” and calls for the active participation of all castes, especially upper castes (213). In this context, the critique of Dange (and the problems of the social consciousness, more than the social origins) of upper castes in the anti-imperialist/anti-caste struggles is very useful to foreground for progressive Left anti-imperialists. To speak of the annihilation of race in the USA is today not viewed as progressive, since the current consciousness and political-economy of race has made it possible to fight against racism but not against racial identity. I believe, however, that the possibility of annihilating caste still exists in India. This book shows us how to think of annihilation without making familiar mistakes. Every once in a while we see a work of intellectual power that pushes debates forward with clarity and courage. This is a book of that kind.
Click here to go to Joseph D’souza’s blog site
Posted on: June 14, 2006
Survey Says... India's 'National' Media Lacks Social Diversity
by Joseph D’souza
Originally published on Dr. D’souza’s blog, on June 11, 2006.
No wonder that in the case of reservations/affirmative action for Other Backward Castes (OBCs) and Dalits there has been this major media bias. Pro-reservation rallies and gatherings have not been carried by the media. Audiences in the TV talk show rooms are heavily biased toward the upper castes and even when an interview is taken from Bihar or some interior part of India, the person interviewed more often than not is an upper caste representative.
I have maintained that the Indian reality has been interpreted to the West by the upper caste media and spokespersons. This is the reality the West knows and understands. The Indian reality according to the majority oppressed and downtrodden is not known in the West.
Now here is an important piece of actual research of the heavy upper caste domination of the media in New Delhi carried by some serious researchers. Read it for yourself and look at the tabulations and come to your own conclusions as to the reality of who holds power and influence in India. Is it wrong therefore for the majority to ask for proportional representation in all walks of Indian life?
India’s ‘national’ media lacks social diversity, it does not reflect the country’s social profile.
Survey designed and executed by Anil Chamadia, Feelance Journalist; Jitendra Kumar, Independent Researcher from Media Study Group; and Yogendra Yadav, Senior Fellow, CSDS.
- Hindu upper caste men dominate the media. They are about 8 % of India’s population but among the key decision makers of the national media their share is as high as 71 %.
- Gender bias rules: only 17 % of the key decision makers are women. Their representation is better in the English Electronic media (32 %)
- Media’s caste profile is equally unrepresentative. ‘Twice born’ Hindus (dwijas comprising Brahmins, Kayasthas, Rajputs, Vaishyas and Khatris) are about 16 % of India’s population, but they are about 86 % among the key media decision makers in this survey. Brahmins (including Bhumihars and Tyagis) alone constitute 49% of the key media personnel.
- Dalits and adivasis are conspicuous by their absence among the decision makers. Not even one of the 315 key decision makers belonged to the Scheduled Castes or the Scheduled Tribes.
- The proportion of OBCs is abysmally low among the key decision makers in the national media: they are only 4 % compared to their population of around 43% in the country.
- Muslims are severely under-represented in the national media: they are only 3 % among the key decision makers, compared to 13.4% in the country’s population.
- Christians are proportionately represented in the media (mainly in the English media): their share is about 4 per cent compared to their population share of 2.3 %
- Social groups that suffer ‘double disadvantage’ are also nearly absent among the key decision makers: there are no women among the few OBC decision makers and negligible backwards among the Muslims and Christians.
- These findings are based on a survey of the social background of 315 key decision makers from 37 ‘national’ media organizations (up to 10 key decision makers from each organisation) based in Delhi. The survey was carried out by volunteers of Media Study Group between 30 May and 3 June 2006.
Click here to go to Joseph D’souza’s blog site
Posted on: June 12, 2006
Who made India Illiterate and Poor? (A Critique at Medicos' Anti-Reservation Protest Juncture)
By M. Madhu Chandra
Thought of questioning “who made India illiterate and poor?” came some times ago when I started looking into Indian sociological aspect but ample of desire to write it down became heavier when anti quota protest by medicos, IIT, and IIM students at Delhi and else where in India mounted up.
When somebody alleges someone who made him/her illiterate and poor, the world will mock at them but question on who made India illiterate and poor will have different answer.
Union Human Resource Development minister – Mr. Arjun Singh’s proposal to hike up 27% reservation for Others Backward Classes (OBC) in professional central educational institutions remained silent for first one week. The resistance from Medicos, IIT and IIM students generated by medico students of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi sparked when Indian Medias who holds the Brahmin IDs, went from college to colleges provoked the senses of upper caste medical students. The present coverage of anti quota movement in print and electronic Medias are clear visible of one sidedness.
The intensity of anti quota movement led by medicos spread to every corners has some thing connected to the question “who made India illiterate and poor!”
Indian Caste System holds the responsibility for making India illiterate.
“One cannot understand India without understanding the complete nature and scope of the caste system in Indian life. Caste considerations dominate people’s lives from birth to death. This understanding of the caste system and how it controls and regulates social, economic, political and religious life is absolutely essential to interpreting the Indian reality.” Dr. Joseph D’souza says.
India is literate country but made illiterate by upper caste literates. Indus civilization is known of its high intellectual among the world community but they are made illiterate after Aryan invention. Ramayana is famous known episode but written by Balmiki Ratnakar Dalit Hindu devote. But today majority of Balmiki communities are illiterate and do lowest activities like cleaning of human night waste from upper caste homes. “How the very pen once used to be in the hands of Balmiki became brooms?” will only remain amaze. Was it some thing done by upper caste on caste card?
Ever since Aryan invention to Indian soil around 1500 BC, Indian societies have been divided into four castes (color) – Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras. Apart from the four castes, there is a fifth caste, known generally untouchables or Dalits; different names are given like Harijan (children of temple prostitutes), Balmiki, Chamar, Megs, and Lois Mashuhars etc.
Brahmins, Kshatriyas, and Vaishyas constitute upper caste while Shudras and untouchables categorized as low caste and untouchables. Upper caste represents only 15% of Indian population while Shudras and Dalits represent 85% of Indian population.
Well articulated jobs descriptions are assigned accordingly to each caste. The educational beneficiaries are assigned only to Brahmins. Brahmins alone were to be educated and acquired all knowledge banks through all available educational systems. Educations are religiously, socially, politically denied to lower caste section of Indian societies.
Kshatriyas are assigned the post of authoritarian rulers of the nation under influence and instructive of Brahmins. Vaishyas are assigned to take hold of the market shares under the instructive of ruling caste of Kshatriyas with influences of Brahmin who generate knowledge from education. Shudras and untouchable Dalits are assigned to serve the upper caste in most degraded inhuman manners.
The denial of education to Dalits Bahujan (Dalit Majority) may not be true in 21st century but the manipulation of education crystal clear particularly scheduled tribes (Dalits). Denial of education to Dalits-Bahujans in past has affected the educational and economical condition of Dalit-Bahujan today. One days’ lost in education effect a week’s education, a weeks’ lost effects a month, a month’s lost effect a year, a year’s lost effect a carrier of a life, a carrier’s lost effect one generation. The same has happened to Dalit-Bahujan today.
Majority of Indian societies represent by Dalit-Bahujans remain illiterate is intentionally done to keep Indian majority illiterate by upper caste community. Deadness of medicos’ anti quota movement is another attempt to keep Indian Dalit-Bahujan illiterate forever and ever.
Enough charges have been given to Mr. Arjun Singh from left and right as attempt to divide Indian youth. There is no question of re-dividing the divided Indian society which Brahmins have setup. Quota proposed by Mr. Arjun will level the divided nations by providing special provision of reservation for weaker section of India society.
Indian Caste System holds the responsibility for making India poor.
Education denied by Brahmincal caste system to Dalit-Bahujan has affected today’s economical condition of Dalit-Bahujans. Education and Economic are two sides of the same coin. Economic generates education but it starts with education.
India is rich nation but made poor by rich upper caste desperately poor by accessing exceedingly assets. India in Brahmincal order has produced world’s recorded upper caste richest sons and daughters.
Caste system description to Vaishyas to hold of trade activities has denied Dalit-Bahujan’s economical development. Brahmincal caste system did not allow Dalit-Bahujan to hold trade as the trade was assigned only to Vaishyas. The earnings of Vaishyas benefited by Kshatriyas as tax returned back to them and Brahmin as they hold the temple treasuries. But Dalit-Bahujan remained only to be victims of caste discrimination at the hands of three upper castes.
Deadness of anti quota to OBC forces by upper caste medicos, IIT and IIM students is attempted once more to cease the possibility for Dalit-Bahujan to boost their intellectual and economical status.
Illiterate and Poor Indian Majority have only unused Power to meet their demand
While education and economic development of Dalit-Bahujan communities seems to be only means to ensure their future. But the education and economic are at monopoly hands of upper caste.
When, education and economic have been snatched away, only one possible mean to ensure the future of Dalit-Bahujans comes to every Indian Dalit-Bahujans during suffrage every fifth years.
Endnote:
Centuries old caste discrimination stories existed in India, which has directly or indirectly made Indian illiterate and poor has been kept hidden by Indian elites. Global communities have started asking why it has taken so long to hear India’s most discriminated inhuman episode. Globalizing Indian Dalit problem, although heavily accused by upper caste elites, will gain global sympathy.
Medicos, IIT and IIM students’ agitation against quota on the basis of equality and merit are clearly seen caste identity. Merit can/should not be only at the hands of upper caste, if should be shared with backward communities so that equality among upper and lower caste community will contribute toward making India shining.
—Posted by Madhu Chandra to Watch Tower at 5/25/2006 02:12:00 AM**Please note: DFN partners only with All India Christian Council (AICC) members who are actively involved in the transformation and emancipation of the Dalit-Bahujan people, not with the AICC as a whole.
Posted on: May 30, 2006
The Shame of Upper Caste India and the Furor over OBC Reservation in Institutes of Higher Learning
by Dr. Joseph D’souza
Originally published on Dr. D’souza’s blog, on April 27, 2006.For the last couple of days I have watched with huge embarrassment the upper caste-led English media TV talk shows in India react to the proposal of India’s Union Ministry for Human Resources to give the Other Backward Castes (OBCs) reservation in the Central Government-aided institutions of higher learning such as the IITs, IIMs and other central universities.
I am deeply ashamed at the blindness of upper caste India as demonstrated by the talk show hosts and the majority upper caste studio audience members who seem to be completely out of touch with the realities of the social injustices and inequities meted out to the majority Dalit-Bahujan people by the oppressive and degrading caste system. Above all there seems to be a complete lack of the history of modern India vis-à-vis the caste system and a total ignorance of the works of Ambedkar, Phule and Periyar. It seems upper caste India wants to be socially ignorant, comfortable, secure and content in their modern, globalized, English-speaking enclave and let the rest of the caste-oppressed Indians be condemned in their own struggle for existence.
One Indian talk show host described the television audience within the studio as a representative sample of “middle class Indians”. But when pushed into the corner to mark out the identity of those English-speaking Indians in the studio, it was clear to those of us who were watching the show across the nation that the studio audience was 90% upper caste.
In another show, the OBC/Dalit minority audience in the studio staged a walk out because of the farce of the so-called “impartial middle class” India in the studio and the agenda of the show itself which heavily favored the majority audience in the studio.
What is English-speaking, middle class India if not a mainly upper caste India who are there because of opportunity, economics, power and freedom enjoyed by upper caste Indians for 3,000 years? The truth is that upper caste India has enjoyed a perverse system of reservation for 3,000 years through the enforcement of the caste system. The minority upper castes who make up just 17% of the population have usurped over 90% of all economic, educational, political, spiritual and social power in India for 3,000 years. Why not discuss that issue for five minutes in the talk shows? Or is it threatening to the very system that runs India? It is only now in a democratic India that some attempt is being made to redress this horrendous injustice.
Talk of meritocracy in this context is highly hypocritical. Meritocracy works where there has been a consistent level playing field for all over a consistent period. Do most of the Dalits and OBCs have the same level playing field and opportunities? How many Dalits and OBCs in the past 50 years have had access to the highly expensive private English-medium school education?
Why is upper caste India not bearing its shame in what has been done to the oppressed castes in India down through the centuries? Without this sharing of guilt and shame there will be no healing and reconciliation in India. The caste system will bitterly divide and bleed our India.
Why is upper caste India so blind? How can we walk the streets of India and fail to notice what our oppressive caste system has done to the country and her majority people? How can we ignore the oppression and poverty of our people? Is just economics the primary reason for this or is social injustice meted out by a degrading social system? Just look at the conditions of most Dalits whatever their religious affiliation. Are we not ashamed at all for the part we have played in their deplorable condition?
How can we deny that we are faced with two Indias? President Bush may cause us revel in an “India Shining”, but what about the “India in Darkness” which is present in our streets, slums, towns, villages and forests – the India of the vast majority?
And do we think that a mere 50 years of reservation has resolved the Dalit problem and that the OBC reservation of the past two decades has resolved the problems of the Backward Castes?
Upper caste India has to carry its historic shame and guilt and lead the struggle to abolish the caste system permanently in India. Upper caste India must develop a social conscience that intentionally includes the Dalits and the OBCs in all spheres of power – economics, education, politics, science and spirituality – this will mean proportional representation. Upper caste India must embrace and entwine their lives, future and their bloodline with Dalit-Bahujan India for the sake of their own children’s future.
Our politicians will not deliver. We the citizens of India must deliver emancipation to the Dalits and the oppressed backward castes – now and forever.
**Please note: DFN partners only with All India Christian Council (AICC) members who are actively involved in the transformation and emancipation of the Dalit-Bahujan people, not with the AICC as a whole.
Click here to go to Joseph D’souza’s blog site
Posted on: May 4, 2006
Give Ambedkar His Due
By Kancha Ilaiah
Orginally published in the Deccan Herald, March 16, 2006.President Bush in his recent trip to India mentioned Gandhi, Tagore and Nehru in that order as thinkers who shaped the destiny of India. These three names indicate a certain mode of representative ideology of the Indian establishment and also the politics of ideological representation. A few years ago the University Grants Commission of India recognized Gautama Buddha, Gandhi, Ambedkar and Nehru as the epoch making thinkers of India.
It also directed the Indian universities to institute special chairs and research centres in their names. Evidently these names are a product of intensive deliberations. In these four names one can see the globally known positive system built by Buddha, who established an alternative Sangha system, that gradually emerged as the Buddhist religion in ancient India. As against the names of Kautilya and Manu, Buddha alone was seen as a thinker to be recognized as the epoch making thinker of that period.
In the modern period, Gandhi undoubtedly is credited as one of the epoch making thinkers. Even though one may not agree with many of his ideological positions one does not dispute his role as an epoch maker. Ambedkar occupies the second place in the modern period as an epoch maker because he played a political, ideological and philosophical role to abolish caste- slavery and untouchability in India, a role that is comparable to that of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King. Both Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King are seen as epoch makers in American history.
Nehru is recognized as an epoch making thinker because he steered the Indian administrative set-up through a colonial phase into an independent one with administrative acumen. Thus, Gandhi, Ambedkar and Nehru are identified as epoch making thinkers of modern India. How does Rabindranath Tagore figure in President Bush’s speech and how is Ambedkar ignored ?
In Delhi the Bengal lobby is quite strong. It influences the central Government’s culture in many ways and Tagore was the tallest figure of Bengal.
Bengali writers projectTagore as the tallest individual of India and deliberately avoid Ambedkar as a significant figure of modern India, leave alone as an epoch making thinker.
The most visible and recent example of such Bengali intellectual tradition is Amartya Sen’s international best seller—-The Argumentative Indian. In this book Gandhi, Tagore and Nehru figure as the thinkers who shaped modern India. In Sen’s scheme in ancient India it was Ashoka, but not Buddha who figures as an epoch making thinker. In early modern India, Akbar is projected as a thinker of unmatched intellect.
Theory for liberation
The fact that Ambedkar does not merit mention even though he constructed a theory for the liberation of the most exploited underdog of India and sought to liberate that untouchable underdog is a travesty of intellectual representation. Ambedkar’s name is mentioned by Sen on only four times and that too for his position as the chairman of the drafting committee of the constitution—but not as a visionary.
Tagore is a poet, but not a thinker with a liberative ideology. No one has any objection if he is recognized as a great poet of modern India. Let us not forget the fact that Bush had to mention Martin Luther King even in his speeches, who has played a similar role like that of Ambedkar in India.
Any nation would have a respectable representation of intellectual tradition if the national psyche recognizes those intellectuals who represented the most oppressed people of a given society.
Why do Americans think that Abraham Lincoln was their greatest president and Martin Luther King was their greatest civil libertarian? Both of them got that national and international stature because they stood for abolition of slavery and racial discrimination. Ambedkar should have got a similar stature if the national elite were to develop any sense of shame of the institution of caste and untouchability which have worse characteristics than the racism of America and Europe. But that was not to be so.
Tagore’s greatest poem is Gitanjali. What liberational message does it have for the oppressed Dalit-Bahujans? A philosophically aesthetic poem like the Gitanjali must have got India the first Nobel prize. But that in itself did not re-shape India.
The millions of suppressed and exploited masses of India do not revere him. If he does not figure in school text books his name would not have been known among the masses at all.
Ambedkar’s name has a different value. That value did not come to him because his name was pushed through the officially written school text books. He is seen as a thinker who keeps on liberating the oppressed masses on a continuous basis.
The projection of this kind of a liberative thinker among the intellectual internationally and socio-political circles would have given an impression that this country has an open mind and principled value for human freedom.
If India does not abolish caste and untouchability using all the ideological tools that Ambedkar had handed down to this country what does freedom that Bush is talking from Purana Qila mean to these oppressed masses?
Posted on: March 18, 2006
The National Resolve
By Kancha Ilaiah
Originally published in the Deccan Herald, Jan. 3, 2006India as a nation has not yet declared its resolve on the question of abolition of caste. The half hearted efforts to improve the social life of Dalits, tribals and the Other Backward Castes is not going to make any significant change in national life. The abolition of caste is not just a political question. It cannot be abolished by constitutional means. The attempt of the chairman of the SC, ST commission, Suraj Bhan, to abolish this through constitutional means is putting the cart before the horse. It can be abolished only through spiritual means. It was constructed and nurtured and maintained only through Hindu spiritual means. If Hinduism does not abolish caste it cannot abolish untouchability. It will walk into the trap of its own death. As of now it does not seem to have any history of abolition of caste on its own. The Hindu spiritual punditry is too rigid and archaic.
Construction or destruction of a religious culture does not depend on the national constitution. Religious cultures are global in nature. Hinduism as a religion developed a similar caste system in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh regions, as they were part of the so called Akhand Bharat. It was caste that pushed the Chandala (modern Dalits) , tribal and Sudra masses of those regions into Islam creating new Islamic states. The Hindu priests and the so called Acharyas and the Hindutva political forces never realised that the expansion of Islam in present Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh took place because of caste and violence that the Hindu caste system inflicted on the Untouchables, Tribals and Sudras in their pre-Islamic life.
No human being tolerates spiritual humiliation. When human beings are treated much less than animals by those who are handling the religious institutions no Karma theory can contain them within the fold of that religion. The suppressed people, who walked into Islam, became riotous after they got out of the fold of that religion. The social base of violent Islam in Afghanistan and Pakistan may be read into its transitional phase of the caste-tribal groups into an advanced homogenised Islamic social force. Some amount of violence is bound to be generated, when the groups that were living unequally begin to become equal. That is an inevitable evil. Societies may have to pass through that phase. Even the European Christian societies that were spiritually egalitarian had to go through that process of violent formations of nations in the late medieval periods. The historical caste societies might produce more violence, because caste itself survives through violent means.
Examples of divisive demands
Once the religious composition of the social mass changes the demand for separate nationhood becomes inevitable. We have had two such examples. Pakistan along with Bangladesh became independent in 1947 because by then the social mass in those regions had already become Islamic. Assuming that the lower caste masses of that region were happy Hindus as some Brahminical intellectuals are claiming, such vast social mass would not have become Islamic. No forceful conversion can change such a vast social mass into another religion. Having become Islamic the masses were also convinced that they cannot co-exist with the Hindu nation which did not have any respect for spiritual equality. It was because of this process that the two nation theory came into vogue.
One of the reasons for such a demand for separate nationhood was that all the lower castes, who became Muslims, did not want to do anything with the Hindu caste system and its practices. Islam changed their relation to caste both in the name and form. That is the reason why the Indian Muslims today are asking for reservations as a religious group but not as caste groups. There are no such markedly identifiable castes within Islam. This was the reason why Islam became more attractive to the suppressed castes and more of them moved into that religion.
The second example is that of Kashmir. By 1947 the estimate was that in Kashmir about 40 per cent population was non-Muslim, of which a small percentage was that of Brahmins—called Pundits. But by the end of the twentieth century almost all the Non-Muslims had embraced Islam. The exodus of Kashmiri lower castes into Islam was gradual. Only the Pundits were left within the fold of Hinduism by 1990. Today the whole of Kashmir has become Islamic. The Pundits have been forced out of that region because religious exclusivism and religious inclusivism cannot co-exist. Co-existence of two or more religions at one place becomes possible if the social mass living in those religions is totally content with their spiritual life. With the kind of spiritual discontentment among the SC, ST and OBCs and with the kind of spiritual control that Brahminism has over Hinduism, there is always a fear that the discontented social mass would go into some other religion.
As the religious identity is central to nationhood the change of the religious composition would bring in a demand for separate nationhood in every region. Three Northeastern states, who have become predominantly Christian, are already in that mood. Banning of cow slaughter nationwide would force such states for greater autonomy and gradually ask for the right to nationhood. The Kashmiri Islamic nationhood became a possible proposition within our life time. The state of the first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, a Kashmiri Pundit, has become Islamic under the nose of its own family administration within a very short span.
The Hindu pundits who have been preaching tolerance in Hinduism must realise that the very existence of caste in the religion is an indication of its intolerance. And that very caste system drives Hinduism into a death trap. The choice before Hinduism is between allowing people to become totally spiritually egalitarian or go into oblivion as happened in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh and Kashmir.
Posted on: January 5, 2006
