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10 January 2024

8 min read

Untouchable: experiencing discrimination around the world

In America it’s in the headlines, while in India it continues to influence. Rahil Patel explores caste discrimination and finds out who helped craft constitutional protections for those affected.

Rahil Patel

Rahil is a former Hindu monk, and author of Found By Love. He is a Tutor and Speaker at the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics.

A group of protesters march behind a banner waving flags.

Supporters of the caste discrimination bill march.

Equality Labs

Cisco is a highly successful California based tech company. It has an annual revenue of $57 billion and boasts of many awards and prizes. Great Place to Work placed Cisco at number one on its 2023 list. But what has this to do with caste discrimination? Well, 33 per cent of Cisco’s 84,000 employees are of Indian origin and the company is struggling under a lawsuit currently upheld by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing. The widely reported lawsuit is for caste discrimination against a Dalit (Untouchable) employee. The engineer has claimed to be paid less than his peers due to his low caste status.

Is this common? Well, the high caste Brahmin CEO of Google, Sunder Pichai (of Indian origin) has also faced allegations, raised by California based civil rights organisation, Equality Labs, of “caste bigotry” that is “running rampant” within his company.

“You can take an Indian out of India but you can never take India out of an Indian.” This was the sorrow filled saying I heard amongst well meaning fellow Indians whilst growing up in the United Kingdom. It usually cropped up when my Indian relatives and friends were confused by the appalling attitudes of other fellow Indians and trust me, it was quite common.

In October 2023, the Governor of California, Gavin Newsom vetoed a Bill to outlaw caste-based discrimination across his state. His decision was met with anger and rage from low caste Indian Dalits and from those who are fighting alongside them to ban discrimination amidst this rigid but ancient Hindu social structure.

It may surprise us in the west that the city of Seattle in Washington State was the first city in the USA to outlaw caste discrimination followed by Fresno in California.

But is this just a moral battle against an enemy that doesn’t really exist and a lame excuse to protest away with ‘Dalit Lives Matter?’ Or is there a tiny surreptitious fire carefully kindling away underneath the blinding smoke that mustn’t go unnoticed? After all, we are in the west…right? Of course we believe in equality…right?

The Swaminarayan Movement, America’s largest and most influential Hindu tradition saw the FBI raid it's temple compound in Robbinsville, New Jersey in 2021 for illegally importing Indians from India and illegally paying them below the national wage as well as confining them to the temple compound. The FBI raid rescued 200 workers who were largely from Dalit or Tribal castes.

When I was training in India to be a Hindu monk I remember recognising the harsh reality of the caste system in one single moment. One day, after I had finished a conversation with a friend in the temple compound I turned to head back to my room when I saw a young boy waving to me far away from the temple gates. I waved back and gestured to him to come in and talk but he stayed rooted to the spot. A little confused, I walked over and asked, “why don’t you come inside the compound?”

“I can’t.” He said,

“Why?”

“I’m a Dalit…I can’t even touch you!”

Thinking back over that mind numbing moment I can’t help imagine how hard it must have been for the woman in the Bible with the issue of blood who touched the hem of Jesus’s garment within the rigid culture of the time. The difference I guess is that Jesus turned to the broken hearted woman and healed her and then called her ‘daughter’ and defined her real identity as a result.

If the Dalit boy on the other hand came into the temple compound that day the security guards would have typically hit him with a long stick to drive him out of the temple gates. If he had touched me in the meantime I would have had to immediately go for a bath with all my clothes on and ensure that I didn’t touch any other human being or even a book or a pot on the way!

PM Modi’s comment has a pernicious and curious undertone. If Dharma is first then one is obliged to follow the caste system diligently.

Bhimrao. R Ambedkar was a brilliant economist and lawyer who studied at the London School of Economics. When his genius mind was called upon to draft the new constitution for independent India he was all too aware of how Hinduism was not so compatible with democracy. The idea of equality and dignity was evidently embedded into western institutions to his mind and Ambedkar knew very well that these ideas were founded on Judeo Christian principles, primarily, that all are created in the image of God. In other words, equal. Being a Dalit himself, Bhimrao knew the pitfalls of Hinduism’s caste system and the anarchical society it would create if the institutions left behind by the British were replaced with caste based ideas. As a result he crafted a constitution based upon Christian principles ensuring that all castes were allowed the opportunities and privileges from the state and its institutions by law. Sadly, although the state provided those privileges and protections by law in 1952 when the constitution came into effect, the society in India at large until this day does not. India exports it to the west as well.

When the current Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave his speech on National Human Rights Day in India a few years ago he emphasised to the nation that Dharma needs to be held first before Human Rights… if Dharma is pursued, he insisted, Human Rights would follow. Dharma simply put, is to pursue one’s duty and righteousness as according to Hindu tradition.

At a quick glance here one is reminded of what Alexander Solzhenitsyn said during his Harvard Commencement Speech in 1978. He told his audience that it was time that the west upheld human obligation more than human rights. He had a valid point to state in a significantly individualistic culture which still prevails in the west but PM Modi’s comment has a pernicious and curious undertone. If Dharma is first then one is obliged to follow the caste system diligently.

It has taken an incredibly long time to carve away at the negatives of the caste system in India but it is nowhere near the end.

Krishna who is the most widely revered incarnation of God in the Hindu world told his disciple Arjuna to fight and kill his cousins and teachers on the battlefield of Kurukshetra as it was his Dharma to do so. As a Kshatriya warrior caste Arjuna was not meant to meditate in the forest but fight and kill, as is laid out quite clearly in the beginning chapter of the Bhagvad Gita scripture.

Although the Gita scripture is quite a complex context to unravel here, in today’s India and in large parts of the west placing Human Rights behind Dharma can be quite dangerous. It somewhat validates the violence towards those of other faiths and endorses a dislike to those of a lower caste.

The need for individual freedom from caste based social structures in India was introduced to the British Parliament by William Wilberforce and Charles Grant in 1793. Interestingly, it was the same year that the cobbler-turned missionary William Carey snuck into India against the rules of the British East India Company. The company knew that if missionaries entered the country they would battle against the unfair social order and upset the high caste Brahmins. And that would hinder their lucrative trade.

Wilberforce and Grant along with other devout Christians fought in Parliament for 20 years until in 1813 a law was passed to allow missionaries passage into India. These men and women of God began to transform the subcontinent and provide education and health care for all castes. Teaching and training the Indian mind that God created male and female first (in his image) and they then created a social order as per God’s guidance whilst cautiously deconstructing the idea of God creating a social order first and male and female after.

It has taken an incredibly long time to carve away at the negatives of the caste system in India but it is nowhere near the end.

Sadly, the caste hierarchy has infiltrated parts of the Christian faith in India too. Dalit Christians who are made in the image of God cannot enter certain churches.

What fascinates me however, is when a Dalit leaves India, in most cases, a lot of India leaves them! They are quite successful. In a society like India one is made to believe (in large part by the communities) that past life karma has destined the individual to be a Dalit and so one must continue to clean the gutters and carry away dead dogs. But when a Dalit enters into a land like the USA or the UK where notions of equality and freedom are based upon Christian values the thinking of that individual changes drastically. A Dalit engineer filing a case against his seniors is inconceivable in large parts of the Indian community in India.

But the issue of caste is not the domain of Hinduism alone. Buddhism in Sri Lanka and Myanmar is very much entrenched in a caste based order which is quite an irony as abuse of this social order was one of the main reasons Gautam Buddha established the faith.

Sadly, the caste hierarchy has infiltrated parts of the Christian faith in India too. Dalit Christians who are made in the image of God cannot enter certain churches and where they can in some parts they are not allowed to sit in the pews but on the floor, at the back.

Author E.M Forster lovingly did say that India is both a mystery and a muddle.

The late Christian and author John Stott wrote in his book The Cross that Jesus was facing the most excruciating pain in the garden of Gethsemane not because of the cross and its horrific nails but because Christ was about to be touched by sin. God readily touches us even though we are untouchable.

The relentless work by William Carey, Wilberforce, Grant and other Indian reformers began to change the Indian mindset primarily by introducing the notion of love and freedom at every level of Indian society. Do we have the will to continue respectfully that fight?

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Truth and Trust

13 November 2025

6 min read

The BBC and the Church of England: two giants, one crisis of trust

Will honourable resignations save the BBC—or anyone?

Tim Wyatt

Tim Wyatt is a journalist, and editor of The Critical Friend Substack.

TIm Davie, sits in an interview in front of screens showing facts about the BBC

Tim Davie, former BBC boss.

BBC.

Sometimes it seems like the BBC is never out of its own headlines. Just as one crisis is finally overcome, another erupts. This year alone we’ve seen outcry over a documentary on Gaza and the Glastonbury fiasco. Now, the broadcaster’s director general Tim Davie and head of news Deborah Turness have resigned over the latest scandal. A leaked internal dossier concluded a Panorama documentary on Donald Trump had misleadingly edited a speech he made on 6 January (it also raised questions over the BBC’s LGBT coverage and its Arabic language service).

Both Davie and Turness have insisted that the corporation is not biased in its coverage, even if mistakes had been made by its journalists and editors. But both found the pressure too much to bear. Speaking outside the BBC’s London HQ, Turness said:

“I stepped down over the weekend because the buck stops with me. But I'd like to make one thing very clear, BBC News is not institutionally biased. That's why it's the world's most trusted news provider."

She was right to identify trust as key. Can we trust the BBC to tell us what is going on in the world fairly and accurately, if it makes mistakes like these? Can we trust the individuals within the broadcaster to report the news impartially, regardless of their personal views? Indeed, can we trust those currently condemning the BBC to be acting in good faith, and not motivated by political hostility or commercial rivalry?

According to research by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, the BBC is the most trusted news brand in Britain, with 60 per cent of people saying they have faith in its output. Some of its newspaper antagonists can muster barely a third of that trust score. An Ofcom survey from 2019 found an impressive 83 per cent of viewers of the BBC’s TV news output trusted it to be accurate.

But trust in the media overall is slipping away in Britain. A decade ago, 51 per cent of people told the Reuters Institute they trusted the news in general; a Brexit referendum, Covid pandemic and ten years of political turmoil later, that figure is just 35 per cent.

Trust in the BBC is one of its most precious commodities, part of what helps it stand out both in Britain and globally. This is why Davie and Turness decided to fall on their swords, despite nobody suggesting they had personally done much wrong. It has to preserve the trust of its audience at all costs and the price to pay has historically been that when someone messes up, the people at the top resign. We saw the same back in 2012 when the then director general George Entwhistle quit after just 54 days in the role after the BBC got sucked into the Jimmy Savile abuse scandal. In 2004, both the director general and chair of the BBC’s board had to resign in the wake of the suicide of Iraq War whistleblower David Kelly.

This – the regular spectacle of the ‘honourable’ resignation – is an increasing rarity in other parts of public life. In our post-truth post-shame political environment, it is more common for politicians to brazen out scandal and disgrace, and rarer for their party institutions to insist leaders fall on their swords. We lost count of how many scandals Boris Johnson survived as prime minister before he was finally felled by Partygate in 2022. Across the pond, Donald Trump has effectively rendered himself uncancellable by capturing the Republican Party and much of the US media ecosystem, despite corruption and growing authoritarianism. As the Guardian columnist Marina Hyde put it, “The BBC is the last place anyone still resigns from.”

And yet. There is an interesting counter-example from another storied British public institution battling to maintain relevance in the 21st century and wracked by scandal and division: the Church of England. Just a year ago it too suffered the ignominy of seeing its leader resign in disgrace. Justin Welby was forced to quit as Archbishop of Canterbury after he was criticised in an official review over John Smyth, one of the most prolific abusers in the church’s history.

Welby painted his resignation in similar terms: an honourable act of falling on his sword to take responsibility for the institution’s broader failings. In his cloth-eared valedictory speech in the House of Lords, the outgoing Archbishop told his fellow peers that “there comes a time, if you are technically leading a particular institution, when the shame of what has gone wrong, whether one is personally responsible or not, must require a head to roll.” And in this particular case, there was only “one head that rolls well enough”, Welby added; his own.

But did this supposedly principled act of resignation rebuild trust? Not really. In fact, it may have done the opposite and further damaged the public’s trust in its national church. Welby initially hesitated and refused to resign after the damning Smyth report was first published, only agreeing to go after a weekend of simmering outrage. The vibe was less 'honourable man falling on his sword' and more 'leader convinced they’d done little wrong reluctantly forced out against their will'.

And yet with the passing of time, his resignation has become mired in regret. Growing numbers of both bishops and others in the church have questioned just how liable he really was for the failure to stop Smyth’s abuse, and how robust the Makin report’s conclusions are. There is an increasing sense Welby was forced out in a rush to find a scapegoat, any scapegoat, to stem the bleeding and show that the church was taking it seriously.

His successful defenestration has radicalised the more hardline elements of the abuse survivor movement, encouraging them to try to topple their other despised enemies within the church hierarchy. Bishops now fear they will be next on the chopping block, regardless of their culpability; unsurprisingly this does not engender greater trust. In fact, many observers would suggest trust between the bishops and those in the pulpits and pews has never been lower in modern times. The tortured attempt to introduce blessings for gay couples has poisoned the well further, contributing to the system for appointing new bishops to begin to break down. Somehow, both the liberal and the conservative wings of the Church feel equally betrayed by the bishops’ actions during the gay blessings saga.

Trust is slowly earned, and quick to drain away. Even doing the honourable thing and resigning is no longer a surefire route to restore trust in our public institutions. Just as with Welby, it is likely these BBC resignations will not rebuild confidence in our national broadcaster. Instead, they may well further encourage the right-wing press and demagogues like Trump to scream “fake news” and hector impartial news outlets further. The resignations also tell the ordinary viewer and listener the accusations of bias must be true – otherwise why would these bigwigs have to stand down?

There are no easy lessons to read across from the Church of England’s battle to regain trust to the BBC. For years now bishops have been urging clergy and lay people to try to trust them once more, to put aside defensiveness and hostility and work together in vulnerable collaboration. And things have mostly only got worse. Trust cannot be willed back into existence, nor will it return through the bloodletting of high-profile ‘honourable’ resignations.

In fact, there’s a deeper problem which goes much further than the BBC or the Church of England. A deeper crisis of trust in society at large. For 25 years the Edelman Trust Barometer has been measuring societies around the world, and of 28 nations polled last year the UK’s average trust score was rock bottom: just 39 per cent of people on average said they trusted businesses, the government, or the media. In fact, almost everywhere people are running low on trust. Fears that government leaders and media elites purposely lie to us are at an all-time high. Until we can find ways to rebuild the ties that bind us, as individuals and communities, it is hard to see how the large institutions that used to shape British civic life – whether that is the BBC, the Church or parliament – can regain the public’s trust, resignations or no resignations.

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