50,000 to Gather in National Rally Calling for Dalit Christian Rights in India

The All India Christian Council, a partner of Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), has announced that it will be holding a National Rally for Dalit Christian reservation in Hyderabad, India on Nov. 26th, 2005.

|TOP|Approximately 50,000 Dalit Christians from all over India are expected to gather, and all the leaders of India’s political parties and human rights groups have been invited to participate.

The rally has been organised with the aim to reveal the vast support for the legal challenge to discrimination against Dalits that embrace both Christianity and Islam.

Currently the discrimination has been challenged at the country’s Supreme Court by the Centre for Public Interest Litigation. The next meeting regarding this will take place on Nov. 28.

Christian Solidarity Worldwide has revealed that about 17 percent of India’s population, which equates to a huge 180 million people, are Dalits (formerly referred to as “untouchables”). In addition, it is believed that 60 percent of India’s estimated 25million Christians are in fact Dalits.

CSW has joined the All India Christian Council in its campaign to raise awareness of the Dalits’ plight, which has seen them face centuries of oppression in the Indian caste system.

|QUOTE|Dalits have been forced throughout the history to perform the most menial of tasks, and very often some of the most hazardous jobs in India. It has also been highlighted that Dalit women have even been sold into prostitution as part of their oppression.

Many restaurants keep separate drinking vessels for Dalit use, and Dalits often live downstream of the higher castes, as they are considered a polluting influence.

CSW point out that this segregation even extended to the relief camps set up in south-east India following the 2004 tsunami.

Previously the Indian government, in 1950, attempted to address some of the abuse that the Dalit community was facing, and it introduced the bestowed ‘Scheduled Caste’ status on the Dalits.

This has led to Dalits being given some benefits such as quotas of reserved places in the government, employment, education, housing and the distribution of agricultural land – a system known as ‘reservation’.

|AD|However, despite its appearance, the 1950 also carried with it, the proviso that if Dalits converted from Hinduism to any other religion then this would result in them losing their Scheduled Caste status.

CSW explains that this law “has been altered once in 1956 to include Sikhs, and again in 1990 to include Buddhists, but Christian and Muslim Dalits are still denied equal rights even with other Dalits.”

Christian leaders are calling for the socio-economic status of Dalits not to automatically improve by their simple adoption of a new religion.

The International President of the Dalit Freedom Network and President of the All India Christian Council, Joseph D'Souza said, “The fact is that Dalit Christians are indeed Dalits and suffer the same humiliation, discrimination, ostracism and poverty experienced by Dalits of other faiths. To deny Dalit Christians benefits because of their religious affiliation is to discriminate against them on the basis of religion and deny them fundamental constitutional rights.”

In addition, a stark warning was given to the Indian Church, D’Souza said, “The All India Christian Council's leadership deplores the caste system within the Indian Church and has given an open call for the Indian Church to reform itself or become redundant in the ongoing vision, struggle and emergence of an equality-, freedom- and justice-based Indian society that does not discriminate against fellow Indians on the basis of one's birth (caste), occupation (caste-based), gender or religion.”

The National Director of CSW, Stuart Windsor said, “CSW wholly supports this drive to give equal rights to India's Dalit Christians and Muslims. The injustice of the current Scheduled Caste legislation has been an offence to India's democracy for far too long. CSW has been campaigning with the AICC on this issue for a number of months and trusts the Government of India will take the opportunity to address this shameful injustice.”