By Vatican News staff writer

Christians in India observed Dalit Liberation Sunday in solidarity and closeness with Christians of Dalit origin or former untouchables, who continue to face discrimination and injustice. Since 2007, the Office for Scheduled Castes-Backward Classes of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI) and the National Council of Churches in India (NCCI), which comprises Protestant and Orthodox Churches, come together to mark the day on the second Sunday of November.

The “broken” people

The word “Dalit”, derived from Sanskrit, meaning “broken” or “downtrodden”, and refers to former “untouchables,” who are so low in ‎social status ‎that they are considered outcasts or outside the rigid 4-tier caste system of Hindu society. As a result, through centuries, Dalits have been subjected to extreme exploitation, inhuman treatment, atrocities and poverty. 

Government data shows 201 million of India’s 1.2 billion people belong to this socially deprived community. Some 60 percent of India’s 25 million Christians are of Dalit or indigenous origin.  Most of the Dalit Christians are in the southern states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

Focus on Dalit Women

The theme of the November 8 observance was “Challenging Caste: Affirming the Dignity of Dalit Women.”

“This land, where female deities are worshipped as power, knowledge and wealth, has become the most unsafe place for women. Facts show that Dalit women suffer the horrors more than Dalit men,” Bishop Sarat Chandra Nayak of Berhampur, chairman of the CBCI Office for SC/BC, said in his message.

He said that in recent months, many Dalit women have been targeted, attacked and brutally killed. “We bewail the fact that justice often eludes the Dalit survivors, while the perpetrators, backed by their political patrons, manipulate the law and move around scot-free.”

Change of mentality and heart

Violence against Dalits, Bishop Nayak pointed out, is often based on caste prejudice. The perpetrators consider Dalit women as mere objects to be used and thrown away.   Unless there is a change in mentality in the heart, discrimination and crimes against the marginalized will continue.  A change is possible only when “every family consciously and practically promotes at home the equal dignity and right of every child,” said the 63-year old bishop from the eastern state of Odisha.   

He lamented that in India, intellectuals, human rights activists, civil society members and the unprejudiced media are “strategically silenced, while others become the mouthpiece of the power of the day and slaves of the privileged class”.

Dalit Liberation Sunday is an occasion for the whole Christian community to renew its responsibility toward sisters and brothers of Dalit origin, especially Christians.

1950 Presidential Order

To ‎help the socio-economic uplift of Dalits, the ‎Indian ‎Constitution reserves for them special privileges and benefits such as quota in government jobs and educational institutions. However, the Constitution (Scheduled Caste) Order (Paragraph 3) that India’s first President Rajendra Prasad signed on August 10, 1950, initially stated that “…no person who professes a religion different from the Hindu religion shall be deemed to be a member of a Scheduled Caste.”

When Sikhs demanded these privileges, the Order was modified in 1956 to include them. Buddhists, too, were granted the benefits in 1990. But Muslims and Christians of low caste origin continue to be excluded despite their demands.

Dalit Christians and Muslims continue to demand the status of scheduled castes and observe the “Black Day” protest on August 10 each year against the Presidential Order of August 10, 1950.  Christians separately observe Dalit Liberation Sunday Day on the second Sunday of November, demanding justice and the rights and dignity of Dalit Christians.

Thrice discriminated

According to the CBCI Office for SC/BC, Dalit Christians are thrice discriminated, namely within the Church, within society and by the State. It notes that Dalits embraced Christianity seeking a better life with dignity, but unchristian and discriminatory practices continue within the Church. 

The NCCI has for decades announced zero tolerance for caste discrimination in any form. “No one can serve Christ and caste — the practice of caste is a sin and untouchability a crime,” said a November 8 statement by the NCCI.  “Practice of caste in its many manifestations despite it being rendered illegal is a blot on Indian social life and polity.”  It denounced the practice, either tacitly or openly, in social institutions, including in Churches and in politics.  (Source: UCANEWS)

By Alessandro Gisotti

“A house divided against itself cannot stand”. On June 16, 1858, Abraham Lincoln, a Senatorial candidate at the time, pronounced this sentence, inspired by the Gospel of Mark (3:25), in a speech aimed at emphasizing how the young American democracy could not endure with half of the States allowing slavery. That speech of the future president of the United States, cited countless times in the last century and a half, remains an ever-present injunction to the American people, inscribed even on its seal with the words chosen by the Founding Fathers recalling the principle of unity: E pluribus unum.

It is precisely unity, which “is greater than conflict” as Evangelii Gaudium puts it, that is strongly evoked at this moment after the most divisive and polarizing American presidential elections in the country’s recent history. “Now is the time for our leaders to come together in a spirit of national unity”, said the president of the U.S. bishops, the Archbishop of Los Angeles José H. Gomez, in a message of congratulations to President-elect Joe Biden and Vice-president-elect Kamala Harris. Moreover, the American media, almost unanimously, put the theme of national reconciliation as the most urgent challenge (together with Covid-19 and the consequent economic crisis) that, as of next January 20, the next resident of the White House will face.

Significantly, last June 30, Pope Francis focused on the issue of unity in a message to the Catholic Press Association, to which Catholic communications organizations in North America belong. “E pluribus unum, the ideal of unity amid diversity, reflected in the motto of the United States”, observed the Pontiff, “must also inspire the service you offer to the common good. How urgently is this needed today, in an age marked by conflicts and polarization from which the Catholic community itself is not immune. We need media capable of building bridges, defending life and breaking down the walls, visible and invisible, that prevent sincere dialogue and truthful communication between individuals and communities”. Words addressed to the media, but also applicable to other areas of American society.

Certainly, unity for the Pope does not mean uniformity. Even in this particular context, we are aided by the image of the polyhedron which, in Francis’ vision, “reflects the convergence of all its parts, each of which preserves its distinctiveness”. This model is all the more valid for a nation that from its birth presents itself as plural: multi-ethnic, multicultural and multi-religious. This search for unity – corroborated by social friendship to echo Fratelli tutti – is not, however, an end in itself, but tends toward the promotion of the good of the person and the community. The two were at the heart of Francis’ speech before the United States Congress (a first for a Pope on Capitol Hill), which took place on September 24, 2015.

“If politics must truly be at the service of the human person,” was his exhortation on that occasion, “it follows that it cannot be a slave to the economy and finance. Politics is, instead, an expression of our compelling need to live as one, in order to build as one the greatest common good: that of a community which sacrifices particular interests in order to share, in justice and peace, its goods, its interests, its social life”. Addressing himself directly to the members of U.S. congress, the Pope said: “I do not underestimate the difficulty that this involves, but I encourage you in this effort”. An exhortation that today, in such a delicate moment in the history of the United States, echoes even more strongly.

Vatican News

Ethiopian Prime Minster Abiy Ahmed is pressing ahead with a military campaign he announced on Wednesday against the northern region of Tigray.  The International community is calling for dialogue between the Federal Government of Ethiopia and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). 

On Friday the Prime Minister vowed air strikes in Tigray would continue. The initial strikes targeted arms depots and military sites. 

Humanitarian support disrupted

About 600,000 people in Tigray depend on food aid to survive, while another 1 million receive other forms of support, all of which have been disrupted, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a report released Saturday.

Clashes between federal troops and Tigrayan forces had broken out in eight locations in the region, according to the report.

Six combatants were killed and more than 60 wounded in fighting near the border between the Tigray and Amhara regions, a humanitarian source told Reuters on Sunday. Both sides suffered casualties and some of the wounded were brought to hospitals in and near the town of Gondar, the source said.

Efforts to combat a locust infestation also jeopardised

A desert locust infestation in East Africa has hit Tigray particularly hard and efforts to combat the insect swarms are feared to have stopped because of the conflict, risking further damage to crops, the U.N. report read.

Abiy said on Twitter on Saturday that his military campaign “aims to end the impunity that has prevailed for far too long,” he said.

Animosity between Abiy and his former allies has grown steadily since 2018. Tigrayans complain of persecution under Abiy, an ethnic Oromo, who ordered the arrest of dozens of former senior military and political officials from the TPLF in a crackdown on corruption. Last year, Abiy reorganised the ruling coalition into a single party that the TPLF refused to join.

Mediation offers

Experts and diplomats are sounding alarms of a potential civil war that could destabilise the country of 110 million people in the strategic Horn of Africa region.

The federal military’s biggest command, and the majority of its heavy weapons, are stationed in Tigray. One of the biggest risks is that the army could plit along ethnic lines, with Tigrayans defecting to their region’s own force. 

Tigrayan forces number up to 250,000 men and have their own significant stocks of military hardware, experts say.

“The fragmentation of Ethiopia would be the largest state collapse in modern history,” a group of former United States diplomats said in a statement published by the U.S. Institute of Peace on Thursday. The escalation of the conflict would also kill remaining hope for the democratic reforms Abiy has promised, the statement read.

Abiy spoke on Saturday with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who “offered his good offices.” The U.N. chief also spoke on Saturday to the African Union’s Commission Chairperson, Moussa Faki Mahamat and to Sudanese Primes Minster Abdalla Hamdok in his capacity as chair of the regional Africa group IGAD,.

(Reuters)