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[Editor’s Note: The following letter is in response to A Religious Upheaval in India: What It Means for Catholicism.]
Dear Tom,
The article you sent to me resonates with my family's background. I would like to share my family's experiences to throw more light on the issue of India's caste system.
My family is an example to the practice of the caste system. My father is from the Kshatriyas caste. However, my family does not practice the caste system because of my grandfather's association and fight for India's freedom and against untouchability along with Mahatma Gandhi. However, many Roman Catholics still practice the caste system. Sad to state, even today the caste system is followed in some form or the other in the Roman Catholic Church in India.
My father, Bala, was a pioneer in initiating the caste based reform within our church. My father was ostracized by his relatives for initiating such reforms. The following incident was narrated to me by my father and has played a very vital part in my proactive involvement in the Church. In the village from where my father hails, there are three wings in the church and during the celebration of the Eucharist each wing was occupied by a particular group of caste members. The left wing by upper caste members, the middle wing by the other caste members and the right wing by the untouchables, that is, the Dalits. During communion the priest would start giving the communion from the Upper Caste left side and end with the Dalits. Noticing that this practice was not right according to Christ's teachings, Bala, along with his friends, started attending the Eucharistic celebration from the Dalit's right wing. This caused a big rift within my father's family for which he and his friends were penalized.
After becoming an attorney in India, my father fell in love and married my mom. The bad part of the matrimony, according to my father's relatives, was that my mother was from outside his caste and to top it all from a mixed lower caste. Most of my father's relatives excommunicated him from their society because he married a girl from a lower caste. They did this even when my mother was a staunch Roman Catholic. I still remember the times when none of my father's relatives visited us, but today they try to recognize my family as their own because of my father's rise in public life.
All said and done, the Dalits are looking for the true path and I know our faith is the only true path. The early Roman Catholic Church in India converted many Dalits, but slowly the Dalits are losing their faith as the Church in India still practices the caste system. This causes the Dalits to move to other Christian and non-Christian denominations like Latter Day Saints and Pentecostals. Even Hindu Dalits are opting for other Christian denominations than Catholicism, and more are becoming Muslims or Buddhists. This fact was highlighted by my father during his talk at the September 2005 St. Thomas More meeting. If only we could bring the true Christ and Catholic teachings to the Dalits and the Indian population, I am sure we would have a big upheaval and harvest in the growth of our Catholic Church. FYI, 16% or more than 160 million people in India are Dalits. It looks like a daunting task, but I strongly believe that with God and the Holy Spirit by our side anything is possible.
My father always emphasized to me the fact that, “I am not a Catholic by accident, but a Catholic by conviction.” My father's faith made my family to be closely associated with Dalit education and liberation. In fact my father was involved with the first case regarding Christian Dalit rights that went all the way to the Supreme Court of India.
Seeing the need for constant thrust to reform the caste system my father constantly writes forwards and reviews on books and laws that are published in India on Dalit rights and their persecution in India. I hear from him constantly his struggles as chairman of the Human Rights Lawyers Forum that coordinates efforts to enlighten the Dalits on their rights as a citizen. My father has been fighting the government on draconian laws that harm Dalits and the Christian-Catholic life, you can read an interview that was published.
There is so much to be done in India. In his address to the Sixth Plenary Assembly of the Federation of Asian Bishops' Conferences Pope John Paul II said that “[w]ith the whole Church I pray to the Lord to send many more committed laborers to reap the harvest of souls [in Asia] which I see as ready and plentiful.” We are the Church's laborers and with our labor I see a great harvest in Asia especially India.
Thank you.
In Vino Veritas
