The Shackles of Caste

Guruammal, 26, was a member of India’s despised Dalits (formerly known as untouchables). As such, she possessed fewer rights than almost anyone on earth. Working the fields, she earned the equivalent of 44 cents a day. But Guruammal and her husband were glad for the work. She was four months pregnant, and the family would need every bit they could scrape together.

One day in December, the police raided her village. The superintendent called Guruammal a pallachi, a caste name for a prostitute, and unzipped his pants in a sign of utter disrespect. Later that morning, Guruammal complained to another official about the superintendent.

The next morning, the police were back, and they were looking for revenge. Guruammal’s husband hid under the bed. The police broke down all the doors of the villagers’ homes and arrested 53 men, but the superintendent was looking for Guruammal. Finding her in her nightclothes, the police called her a pallachi again and began beating her. The superintendent dragged her, naked, for 100 feet. A 60-year-old neighbor woman asked the officers to stop, and the police beat her, too, fracturing her hands. One of the village men gave Guruammal his wrap so she could cover up.

At the jail, Guruammal asked the officers for help, saying she was pregnant. They simply mocked her for the previous day’s boldness and locked her up. After 10 days, she miscarried the baby. Fifteen days later, they let her go. No charges were filed against the officers.

Prisoners of the Hindu caste system, India’s 250 million Dalits face such indignities on a daily basis. According to Human Rights Watch, nearly 100,000 crimes of hate were committed against Dalits between 1994 and 1996 nationwide—including many cases of murder, rape, and assault as well as lesser crimes. Many more incidents were not reported. Observers believe that with the rise of rightwing Hindu fundamentalists in India, such attacks are increasing in frequency. And apart from physical assault, Dalits face systematic social, economic, and religious exploitation. India’s pernicious caste system dwarfs South African apartheid, both in scale and in effect. Apartheid is gone, but caste remains.

A new book, Dalit Freedom—Now and Forever, chronicles the Dalits’ ages-long plight. Written by an Indian Christian and supplemented by commentary from notable Dalit leaders, it issues a ringing call not only for political liberation but also for spiritual liberation. And it makes the case that these two freedoms go together.

The Aryans, who invaded India more than 3,500 years ago, divided the society into four groups, or castes. Asserting that different groups came from different parts of the body of Purusha (the supreme personification of the god Vishnu), they made themselves the priestly class (Brahmin), followed, in order of dignity, by the warriors and protectors of Hinduism (Kshatriya), the business class (Vaishya), and workers who support the first three castes (Sudra). Outside the caste system are the Dalits, who are thus called outcastes. Hindu religion, enforced by the Brahmins (who constitute about 5 percent of India’s people), makes these distinctions immutable. Education and achievement do not allow a person to escape one’s caste.

The caste system is Jim Crow on steroids. While human-rights activists have campaigned against apartheid in South Africa and genocide in Rwanda, Sudan, and Serbia, they have had surprisingly little to say about caste in India. If divestment was the right approach in freeing blacks in Africa, why is it not in freeing Dalits in India, which is increasingly tied to the global economy? The upper castes reap almost all the benefits of globalization and thus would have to pay attention if economic sanctions over caste became an issue.

Members of the four castes consider the Dalits of less worth than animals. Dalits are despised as socially polluted and are given the jobs no one else wants: sweeping streets, cleaning latrines, and skinning cows, for example. According to Hindu tradition, they were not allowed even to touch those of other castes (hence the name “untouchables”).

This relentless oppression undermines India’s claim to be the world’s largest democracy, just as the persistence of systematic racial discrimination in the United States long after the abolition of slavery flagrantly contradicted America’s democratic ideals. After India won independence from Britain in 1947, several attempts were made at reform. Mahatma Gandhi, a member of the business caste, treated Dalits with respect and successfully argued that India’s new Constitution should ban the practice of untouchability, but he did not seek the eradication of caste itself.

A contemporary of Gandhi, B.R. Ambedkar, was a Dalit who received a law degree in the United States. Ambedkar discovered upon his return to India that his credentials and experience could not shield him from the old caste discrimination. He was instrumental, with Gandhi, in seeing that the country’s charter banned untouchability. Ambedkar also fought for quotas for Dalit positions in the government. As a result, 5 million Dalits have dignified jobs today.

But Ambedkar concluded that his people could never truly be free if they remained Hindus. The Brahmins had too much to lose, he believed, to endorse a thorough reformation of the caste system. Ambedkar said, “I was born a Hindu, but I will not die a Hindu.” Near the end of his life, he converted to Buddhism, in part because he appreciated its rejection of caste and polytheism and its embrace of equality.

Why did Ambedkar reject Christianity, which has been in India since the second century? After all, he was familiar with Christianity’s teachings about the God-given dignity of human beings and how it laid the groundwork for political and economic freedom in the West. (Dalit Freedom‘s strongest chapter may be the one comparing the caste system to the Pharisees’ religious system during New Testament times. The book shows how utterly attractive Christ can be to weary and heavy-laden Dalits.)

First, of course, Christianity was associated with colonialism. Second, the Indian churches were rife with caste, although in a milder form than in Hinduism. Unfortunately, although the church in India—less than 3 percent of the national population—is mostly of Dalit background, caste is still a major factor of church life.

Joseph D’souza is attempting to change that tragic reality. An upper-caste Christian from Mangalore, D’souza condemns and has apologized for caste in the Indian church. More than that, D’souza, as president of the All India Christian Council, is standing publicly with the Dalits. The aicc is an interdenominational group that supports Dalit freedom and the rights of religious minorities. (A related group, the Dalit Freedom Network, www.dalitnetwork.org, published this book.)

D’souza does more than write books. He’s out on the front lines. On November 4, 2001, Dalit leader Udit Raj organized a mass conversion event in New Delhi. About 50,000 Dalits who made it to the rally—many more were turned back by police—converted to Buddhism. In a land where interreligious tensions quickly surface, D’souza and other Christian leaders were on hand to encourage Dalits in their quest for freedom, but not to proselytize.1

“Our love for the Dalit people is like the love of Christ for them—unconditional,” D’souza writes. “We love people whether or not they choose to follow Jesus.”

Such sensitivity is no doubt needed in India. As Dalit political consciousness has grown, rightwing Hindu fanaticism—aimed at both the outcastes and at religious minorities, including Christians and Muslims—has grown with it. Violence against those who oppose the complete Hinduization of India has accompanied the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party as the national ruling party (unexpectedly overturned in 2004 in parliamentary elections). Unfounded charges of bribery-induced conversions continue to dog Christian ministries. Hundreds of Christians have been attacked and killed over the last decade, so the biblical command to be as wise as serpents and as harmless as doves makes sense.

Yet the Bible also commands believers to make disciples. Courageous ones such as Joseph D’souza are clearly leaving the church doors open for any Dalits who want to experience Christ’s promise, “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36, ESV). With Dalits increasingly looking to break the shackles of caste, Christians in India have the opportunity to offer them real hope—both for now and for eternity. If the Indian church can throw off its own ugly shackles of caste, it may indeed model Christ-centered freedom in a way that could transform that great nation.

Stan Guthrie is a senior associate editor at Christianity Today magazine and author of Missions in the Third Millennium, recently published in a second edition by Paternoster. His website is www.stanguthrie.com.

1. Manpreet Singh, “50,000 Dalits Renounce Hinduism,” Christianity Today, January 7, 2002, p. 25.