Recounting stories such as the alleged forced poisoning of a young couple, speakers at the Global Ecumenical Conference on Justice for Dalits gave a face to the 3,500-year-old system of caste-based discrimination, detailing practices many would consider unthinkable in the 21st century.
Shortly after their wedding on 5 May 2003, S Murugesan (25), and D Kannagi (22), both college graduates from Puthukkooraippetti village in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, were allegedly forced to drink poisonous liquid in the presence of scores of people, who witnessed the couple's agony. The bodies were burnt, leaving no evidence of the gruesome incident.
This real-life Romeo and Juliet story happened because Murugesan was a Dalit while Kannagi was a Vanniyar with low caste status.
Under Hindu doctrine, Dalits are considered "polluted" and "polluting" and hence, "untouchable." Not even included in the bottom tier of the caste system, they cannot intermarry, even with those from the lowest caste.
In another case, the five-year-old girl D. Dhanam lost her vision in one eye after being beaten by a school teacher in Kattinaicken village in Tamil Nadu's Salem district. Her mistake: she had taken water from a tumbler kept exclusively for upper-caste children.
These were two of many examples Bishop Dr Vedanayagam Devasahayam of the Church of South India, Madras Diocese, cited from detailed accounts of "systemic violence" against Dalits compiled by Indian journalist Soumya Viswanathan.
The stories helped to give "theological and missiological bases" upon which 95 representatives and leaders of various churches and organisations worldwide could affirm their solidarity with the Dalits during the 21-24 March conference in Bangkok, Thailand.
Organised by the World Council of Churches (WCC) and the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) in partnership with the Christian Conference of Asia, the conference aimed to reiterate the solidarity of the global ecumenical movement with the national and international movements and initiatives for the Dalits' cause.
International solidarity
Rev Dr Ishmael Noko, LWF general secretary, expressed his empathy with the long suffering of the Dalits, recalling how the majority of people in his own region of southern Africa had suffered institutionalised discrimination.
"I can imagine a little of how it is to be born a Dalit and to be the subject of entrenched discrimination based on descent and traditional occupation," Noko wrote in a statement read out on his behalf at the conference. "As a Zimbabwean, I also know what it is like for promises and hopes of justice and a better life to be unfulfilled or betrayed."
Noting how Dalit communities continue to suffer "despite many noble words in constitutional guarantees and legislative provisions", Noko strongly criticised perpetrators and accomplices of discrimination.
"Governments that exclude a whole section of [their] own citizens – or allow them to be so treated – are incompetent to govern," he said. "And members of the international community that know but ignore the issue are accomplices to the systemic violations of human rights resulting from this unjust system."
