As a foreigner with no loocal knowledge of the language and no connection with local community , i hav still to come across caste discrimation directly but this article from the BBC certainly asserts that it exists .
"...Many higher castes Hindus in parts of India's Tamil Nadu state still not share with the Dalits, formerly known as untouchables? They insist on separate glasses for drinking tea and they do not allow the untouchables to go to the same barber shops. They ban them from temples, cremation grounds and river bathing points, among other examples. Studies have found at least 45 different forms of "untouchability" being practised by upper caste Hindus against the Dalits in Tamil Nadu.
A wall segregating local higher caste Hindus residents from their Dalit counterparts in Uthapuram village in Madurai district barely 600km (350 miles) from the state capital Madras (Chennai) didn't exactly come as a surprise. The wall kept Dalit people out of the main parts of the village. The authorities demolished part of the wall following an order from the state government to allow Dalits to go where they wanted in the village. About 800 higher caste Hindus decided to leave the village and seek refuge on a nearby hillock in protest against the decision.
Dalits or the Scheduled Castes, the official name for the lowest castes, constitute roughly 19% of the Tamil Nadu's 62.4 million people. More than 60% of Christians in Tamil Nadu are Dalits - most converted hoping to find more freedom. But they still have very little voice and are largely shunned in the church. They again find themselves humiliated, with separate pews, services, churches, corteges, enclosures in cemeteries and so on. A tentative effort was made in a village called Erayur to integrate the Dalits in all the services. But a group of Christians protested and threatened to go back to Hinduism if the Catholic church went ahead with its initiatives.
The diocese had to back down.
Until class politics grow to dominate and caste allegiences are rejected , the capitalist class will continue to control through divide and rule . Capitalist driven urbanisation and industrialisation have helped to break down caste barriers to some extent as people moved out of traditional occupations .In the meatime , for the pro-capitalist political parties , caste is about calculated bargaining for greater electoral spoils .
Showing posts with label christianity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label christianity. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Religion and bondage in India
A report from the BBC
Hundreds of families in a remote region of the eastern Indian state of Orissa remain homeless and without support after a wave of violence swept the region last month. After the initial attacks on church institutions and the shops and homes of Christian families, Christian mobs responded in kind.
The minority Christian community in Kandhamal district, many of whom are forest tribal people and low-caste Dalit converts from Hinduism to to Christianity, say they've been targeted by radical Hindu nationalist organisations seeking to put an end to the church and its activities in the region.
Hindu activists accuse the local Christian community of stirring up trouble by making "unreasonable" demands - a reference to their attempts to be granted the same preferential access to jobs and education given to low-caste Hindus and tribal communities.
Churches were ransacked, entire villages razed and their inhabitants forced to flee into the forests. The violence, which began on Christmas Eve, has now largely abated, but the plight of the people has not. Many are now living in the shells of their burned out homes, all their possessions lost. The conflict has pitted Hindu against Christian, tribal against non-tribal. Years of relatively peaceful co-existence of these communities, living a fragile rural existence, has been shattered.
"This conflict is fought in the name of religion," says NGO worker Kailash Chandra Dandpath, "but the real motives are economic and political. The business community here, with its links to the Hindu nationalist organisations, were once in complete control here. They'd lend money to the tribals and the Dalits at incredibly high rates of interest, up to 120% per year, and then the debtor would have to sell his farm produce to the lender at a price controlled by the businessmen."
Mr Dandpath is describing the system still widely practiced in India, of bonded exploitation, where a family might well be indebted to the lender for generations.
"What's happening now", says Mr Dandpath, "is that the farmers, the most marginalised of whom are from tribal and Christian communities, are being linked by the NGOs to local banks, lending at perhaps 10% interest a year - ten times less. This is clearly a threat to the businessmen. And they are trying to break this link, using religion as an excuse... in India, the easiest method of politics is to take religion to divide and rule."
There are always economic and social divisions within society to be exploited by those more rich and powerful, particularly when the existing order is threatened.
This report more or less confirms the Socialist Party of Great Britain's argument that :-
"Religious perceptions in any class-divided society are not neutral, but a tool in the hands of the dominant class in its struggle to maintain its control over economic surplus. Religious and all manner of spurious ideological theories are contrived by the ruling class or its representatives in the intellectual community and church organisations to keep the downtrodden perpetually entrapped in the vicious circle of exploitation."
Hundreds of families in a remote region of the eastern Indian state of Orissa remain homeless and without support after a wave of violence swept the region last month. After the initial attacks on church institutions and the shops and homes of Christian families, Christian mobs responded in kind.
The minority Christian community in Kandhamal district, many of whom are forest tribal people and low-caste Dalit converts from Hinduism to to Christianity, say they've been targeted by radical Hindu nationalist organisations seeking to put an end to the church and its activities in the region.
Hindu activists accuse the local Christian community of stirring up trouble by making "unreasonable" demands - a reference to their attempts to be granted the same preferential access to jobs and education given to low-caste Hindus and tribal communities.
Churches were ransacked, entire villages razed and their inhabitants forced to flee into the forests. The violence, which began on Christmas Eve, has now largely abated, but the plight of the people has not. Many are now living in the shells of their burned out homes, all their possessions lost. The conflict has pitted Hindu against Christian, tribal against non-tribal. Years of relatively peaceful co-existence of these communities, living a fragile rural existence, has been shattered.
"This conflict is fought in the name of religion," says NGO worker Kailash Chandra Dandpath, "but the real motives are economic and political. The business community here, with its links to the Hindu nationalist organisations, were once in complete control here. They'd lend money to the tribals and the Dalits at incredibly high rates of interest, up to 120% per year, and then the debtor would have to sell his farm produce to the lender at a price controlled by the businessmen."
Mr Dandpath is describing the system still widely practiced in India, of bonded exploitation, where a family might well be indebted to the lender for generations.
"What's happening now", says Mr Dandpath, "is that the farmers, the most marginalised of whom are from tribal and Christian communities, are being linked by the NGOs to local banks, lending at perhaps 10% interest a year - ten times less. This is clearly a threat to the businessmen. And they are trying to break this link, using religion as an excuse... in India, the easiest method of politics is to take religion to divide and rule."
There are always economic and social divisions within society to be exploited by those more rich and powerful, particularly when the existing order is threatened.
This report more or less confirms the Socialist Party of Great Britain's argument that :-
"Religious perceptions in any class-divided society are not neutral, but a tool in the hands of the dominant class in its struggle to maintain its control over economic surplus. Religious and all manner of spurious ideological theories are contrived by the ruling class or its representatives in the intellectual community and church organisations to keep the downtrodden perpetually entrapped in the vicious circle of exploitation."
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