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India
The Dalits total 250 million of India’s total population of 1 billion. (Dalits are also found in Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and possibly elsewhere in South Asia.). They are probably descendants of India’s indigenous peoples, and like indigenous peoples throughout the world, they are ‘a nation within a nation’. But their ‘nationhood’ is characterised by entrenched poverty and wicked exploitation and in India the plight of the Dalits is the direct consequence of the caste system, a social order peculiar to India.
The Indian caste system is very complex and has been in place for at least 2500 years. The whole of society is divided into four castes – and the Dalits. They are outcasts – outside the caste system. Because a person is born into a caste which cannot be changed, the discrimination against the Dalits remains.
India’s Constitution and successive laws have banned discrimination on the grounds of caste, but very little has changed and certainly not in India’s vast rural areas.
The word “Dalit” comes from the Sanskrit, an ancient language of India, and means “crushed” and “downtrodden”. Dalits are known as the “untouchables”or “unclean” by the castes (in spite of Mahatma Gandhi renaming them Harijans – children of God) and they live on the edges of towns and villages, and indeed on the edge of Indian society. Their touch, and even their shadow, is considered polluting. They are deliberately excluded from access to education, medical facilities, use of public wells, and often places of worship. Traditionally, Dalits have the worst jobs: street cleaners, cleaners of public toilets, digging graves, agricultural work.They have the poorest housing and own very little.
The Dalits’ stigmatised untouchable identity means that they are constantly despised and excluded. This is hardly surprising, as the caste system is perpetuated through religious myths. So Dalits believe and internalise the imposed identities, and suffer from low selfesteem, shame and subservient behaviour. And it is Dalit women who are arguably the most oppressed of all Dalit people. They are there to bear children (preferably sons—and as many as possible), to work inside the home and outside on building construction sites, in brick kilns, laying roads. In addition they are bonded, abused and sexually exploited. Dalit children, with few exceptions, follow in the footsteps of their oppressed parents with all that that entails …and so the cycle continues.
Over the last 25 years, there has been a growing consciousness of the predicament of Dalits. overseas churches and International agencies like Christian Aid and Oxfam have enabled the articulation of this consciousness through various educational and social welfare programmes. Not unexpectedly, the mainstream churches in India have been painfully slow in confronting this terrible evil in their midst.
Those who call themselves Dalit (and there are many who don’t – “why bring more suffering on ourselves?”) have taken the trouble to understand the causes that underlie their oppression. They are patiently angry and committed to a struggle for a just and humane social order. St Augustine would be proud of them. It was this North African Saint who said HOPE had two beautiful daughters. One is anger – at the way things are; and the other is courage ie, the resolve to change things. The Dalit movement is a movement of hope.
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