Last month we enjoyed a visit from our Indian friend Johnson Roosevelt Petta. Most Christian Indians (28 million strong) avoiding everything Hindu, have biblical names, but Johnson’s family obviously had great affection for two American presidents.
I was amazed to learn that Johnson was a Dalit, now the politically correct name for “untouchable.” Mahatma Gandhi preferred to call them “Harijan” meaning “children of God.” Gandhi believed that “caste is a social evil, and that untouchability is a soul-destroying sin.”
In Gandhi’s ashrams everyone (including Gandhi’s once protesting wife) was expected to share in the dirty work that Dalits (200 million strong) still do in India’s caste-bound towns and villages. In 1995, an Indian train was held up for hours because railway workers could not find any Dalits to remove a dead cow from the tracks. Only a Dalit may touch a dead body.
The Indian Constitution, written by a Dalit who converted to Buddhism to avoid the caste system, contains strict probations against caste discrimination. Johnson’s father, who served in the air force, and his paternal grandfather, who worked in the postal service, were protected at work because of their government employment.
In the private sphere, federal laws are flagrantly violated. The evil of caste exclusion is dramatically portrayed in a story that Johnson tells about his Dalit maternal grandfather. After he converted to Christianity, his Hindu neighbors had an additional reason to hate and harass him. For many Hindus, leaving the faith is a grievous sin.
Another strike against the maternal grandfather was that he had saved enough money to buy a plot of farmland. One day as he was taking his rice crop to market, he was ambushed by some Hindu miscreants. They beat him up and rolled his oxcart over the back of his thighs. The family shame was so great that, as a young boy, Johnson said that he was never told why “Grandpa walked so funny.”
In 2014 alone, there were 17,000 cases of violence against Dalits in the state of Bihar and only about 10% have come to trial. A 15-year-old Dalit goatherd named Sai Ram was burned alive after one of his goats strayed onto a high-caste Hindu’s property. Dalit women are routinely gang raped, and Dalit families are frequently forced out of their homes on the slightest of pretenses.
Since the arrival of British missionaries in the early 19th century, millions of Dalits converted to Christianity hoping to escape the caste system. Some converts were higher-caste Hindus, and they naturally became leaders in the native churches. Tragically, they reintroduced caste discrimination in many congregations.
I had the opportunity to visit the church that Johnson attended in Hyderabad. A heavy dark curtain hung down the center and there were separate entrances and toilets for Dalit worshippers. Every Sunday the high-caste minister led “integrated” services.
Dalits who have immigrated to the U.S. continue to face discrimination by their high-caste compatriots. A 2018 survey of 1,200 individuals of South Asian descent found “that 26 percent said they had experienced a physical assault because of their caste, while 59 percent reported caste-based derogatory jokes or remarks directed at them.”
Despite the incredible obstacles many Dalits have faced, they have made progress in the professions. Johnson’s father became an attorney and now pastors his own church in Hyderabad. In 2002, I sponsored Johnson’s studies at the University of Denver where he won a dissertation prize for a thesis on Dalit pastoral theology. Johnson’s niece recently graduated in mechanical engineering, and she was offered a job in a prestigious Indian corporation. One of India’s top young chemists, now a postdoc at the University of Idaho, is a Dalit Christian.
These days those who talk of oppressors and those who are oppressed are called “Marxists.” Karl Marx was correct to condemn the oppressive conditions of 19th century capitalism, but those who agree with him are not communists for acknowledging those horrendous working environments.
The grim facts of those Africans enslaved by Southern racists are not alleviated by, for example, Florida high school lesson plans that point out that most slaves learned skills such as carpentry, iron smithing and laundering. They also learned to live in fear of beatings, police dogs and lynching.
As we prepare to celebrate Martin Luther King Day on Jan. 20, let us promote his principle that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
Gier is a long-time member of the Latah County Human Rights Task Force. He invites you to attend the Task Force’s annual breakfast on Jan. 25. Sign up at www.humanrightslatah.org. Email Gier at ngier006@gmail.com.
