What Has Changed for India's 'Untouchables'?

A report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media.  This week’s item is from the Poughkeepsie Journal, September 7, 2001, with the headline:  “India debates racism with little change for Untouchables,” dateline, New Delhi, India.  “At the end of a network of dusty lanes in Trilokpuri, a suburb on the outskirts of the India capital, a mother and her daughters are filthy and hungry, yet they cannot bathe nor cook with water from a tap near their home.  “That’s the tap for the upper caste; we are not allowed there,” the mother Birum says, as she sits on a dirt floor making bread on a coal burning stove.  Although water is supplied by municipal authorities, the few public taps in the shantytown of nearly 10,000 people are divided along caste lines.  Taps for the lower caste are nearly a half mile away and the water barely trickles.  Birum is a Dalit, the lowest rank in India’s 3,000 year-old caste system, a pernicious practice that discriminates against nearly a fourth of the billion-plus population. 

The caste system divides people into four main castes with some outside the system known as, “untouchables,” who now call themselves Dalits.  Though discrimination based on caste has been outlawed since India’s constitution was adopted in 1950, the practice pervades society. 

While admitting efforts to end caste discrimination have not been implemented as rigorously as they should, the government wants to keep the matter hidden.  The government sent an official delegation, including many Dalits, to the UN World Conference on Racism in Durban, South Africa. But India also worked to keep caste discrimination off the conference agenda.  Condemning the caste system would equate “casteism with racism, which makes India a racist country, which we are not,” Omar Abdullah, India’s minister of state for foreign affairs said in Durban. 

Ruth Manorama of the National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights disagrees with government assertions that the caste system does not amount to racism.  “Discrimination against the Dalits and lower castes is similar to racism, only it’s more vulgar, more horrendous,” she said.  “No one can deny that millions of Dalits suffered the worst form of discrimination.” 

Officials described castes as an internal problem that can only be cured by implementing and strengthening anti-discrimination laws.  “My mother did scavenging, I am a scavenger, I don’t see my children doing anything else, whatever the politicians may say,” Birum said. “This is our caste.”

Tom:

Dave, my understanding is that this practice, this teaching, came from the Rig Veda, and it’s a religious thing.  So now we’ve got a problem.  Does India, which is mostly Hindu, do they deny their religious teachings for the sake of their government, their laws and so on?  The analogy here between this and what’s going on with regard to Islam, that’s a big problem.

Dave:

Yeah, if you undermine this, that would undermine an awful lot because Hinduism is based upon reincarnation, that’s what these four castes are all about, the highest caste being the Brahmans, the next one to it, Kshatriyas, I think.  It’s a long time since I had even thought about this, but that all has to do with reincarnation, we are all going to evolve higher and higher and higher.  When you finally get to the Brahmans, then you can launch from there.  Your next reincarnation could be—well, you could escape time, sense and the elements and reach Moksha and so forth and you could even do that through yoga, supposedly.  So, this is a long road you’ve got to travel and—you see, if you interfere with the rights and privileges and the depravations that these people suffer, you are interfering with their karma.

Tom:

According to their beliefs.

Dave:

 That’s right.  So, you can’t break this system, I mean, this is their karma and even if you, let’s say you took them out and gave them a nice home and so forth—sorry, you have interfered with their karma—in their next life they are going to have to go right back to that place because they were there because of karma they built up in a prior life, which meant they had to suffer for it in order to break through to a higher reincarnation.  This is—it’s not true, it’s irrational, and we could explain that very quickly, but we don’t have time.  For example, just quickly, it’s immoral, it’s an immoral system.  Rather than solving the problem of evil it perpetuates evil.  If I am a husband who in this life beats my wife, I must come back in my next life as a wife beaten by her husband.  But that means that my husband who beats me in the next life must come back in his next life as a wife beaten by her husband.  The murder of someone must become then, the victim of murder, so rather than solving the problem of evil, reincarnation and karma perpetuate evil.  There is no solution to it and you can see as long as you keep this system of Hinduism and reincarnation and karma, you have kept the caste system and that’s why they can’t break it.  What they need is to come to Jesus Christ.

Tom:

Right.  That’s the problem these legislators have, they are between their beliefs—it’s not just a cultural thing—they are religious beliefs and how they can make or improve situations for their people.

Dave:

Of course.  So, Tom, when you talk about religion it’s like, as you said with Islam.  The try to break that and people become very fanatical. You will have riots, you try to give these untouchables some privileges, let them have normal human rights—wow!  You will have riots of people because this is a religious thing.

Tom:

Dave, isn’t that incredible?  Because the hearts of the people definitely want their situation bettered.  A religious belief force them to stay where they are.

Dave:

And you talk about the heart; the Bible refers to the heart.  It says, “As in water face answers to face, that is, a reflection like in a mirror.” So the heart of man reflects the heart of another man.  The Bible says we are all the same, all have sinned, [and] we are all sinners before God.  See, the problem is, they have so many false gods, they have the wrong God, but when you know who God really is, the Creator of this universe and you get in the presence of God, we are all on the same level, we are all sinners, we have all broken his laws, there is nothing we can do about it, the penalty has to be paid, and only God himself could pay it.  That’s why it’s a contrast to reincarnation.  There is no sympathy, there is no love, [and] there is no concern.  But, the God of the Bible loves us so much he became one of us through the virgin birth so that he could take our place, pay the penalty his own infinite justice required, he rose from the dead, he offers pardon, eternal life as a free gift to all who will open their hearts to him.