The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI) has expressed concern over the recent attacks against Dalits in various parts of the country.
Dalits, formerly known as ‘untouchables’, are the lowest group in India’s caste system.
“What is happening is dangerous and frightening”, Bishop Theodore Masceranhas, secretary general of the CBCI, told The Tablet on Monday.
His remark came after 25,000 Dalits marched through the western state of Gujurat on Sunday to protest against continued attacks on their community. More than 30 Dalits have reportedly tried to take their own lives as an extreme form of protest.
The recent protests were sparked off by the public beating of four young men from a Dalit family in Gujarat. On 18 July, the four men, who were found skinning a cow, were allegedly tied to a van and whipped by a vigilante group of hardline Hindu ‘cow protectors’.
India’s Hindu community considers cows sacred, and in Gujarat it is illegal to kill them. The owner of the cow in question later admitted that it had been killed by lions.
Bishop Masceranhas’ comment follows an official statement from the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India, expressing solidarity with Dalits after upper-caste Catholic priests attacked a Dalit bishop in April. Three southern Indian priests from an upper-caste community allegedly employed a group of men to abduct and torture their Dalit prelate, Bishop Gallela Prasad.
On 22 July, Cardinal Baselios Cleemis, the CBCI’s president, condemned the attack on Bishop Prasad and expressed concern about other acts of anti-Dalit violence. As well as the public thrashing of the Dalit men, “the latest in the line-up of the events of violence”, he condemned the “deplorable” shooting of Dalit and tribal villagers on 9 July in Kandhamal district. The shooting killed at least five people, including a two-year-old.
Cardinal Cleemis said in his statement “Those who are in a responsible position should refrain from any sort of activities that constitute a breach of promise of equality and dignity of human being guaranteed by the Constitution of India.”
Dalit Catholics argued that such a statement was well overdue, and that it followed a long silence by the hierarchy of the Indian Church on anti-Dalit violence.
On 13 July, eleven Indian Christian associations, led by the South Indian Dalit Catholic Association, wrote an open letter condemning the Church’s silence on Bishop Gallela’s abduction and torture. “For God’s sake do something,” it read. “Speak out. Silence means that you are abetting the crime and encouraging the criminals.”
The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India has a dedicated Office for the empowerment of Dalits. A statement on its website reads:
“The Indian society is structured according to the hierarchical caste system that has pushed the Dalits to the lowest level down the centuries with the denial of right to education, property, development and participation. Caste is the most flagrant attempt in the history of humankind to institutionalise inequality with religious and philosophical foundations. Driven by acute poverty, unemployment and illiteracy, the vast majority of Dalits are engaged in menial jobs, undergo extreme exploitation, inhuman treatment and atrocities.”
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