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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?

Article

Belief

Church and state

Comment

Nationalism

Politics

3 September 2025

5 min read

Sorry, Danny Kruger, a Christian nation is a bad idea

Quite simply you cannot build a nation-state on the teaching of Jesus

Sam Tomlin

Sam Tomlin is a Salvation Army officer, leading a local church in Liverpool where he lives with his wife and children.

An English flag flies on a church tower.

Different Resonance on Unsplash.

Danny Kruger has become one of my favourite politicians in recent months. His contributions in parliamentary debates on assisted suicide and abortion have endeared him to many Christians including myself as he has led the charge (along with other notable parliamentarians and thought leaders) against what has been dubbed the ‘parliament of death,’ exposing the shaky ethical foundations on which they lie.

He entrenched this reputation with many Christians with a recent speech on the ‘Christian foundations’ of England (‘out of which the United Kingdom grew’) and a passionate plea to recover such foundations. This speech went viral in Christian circles as it articulated the aspirations of many to re-establish Christianity as a national force, specifically in the physical representation of power, the House of Commons. The speech ticked all of the ‘Christian nationalist’ boxes: Christianity should be the ‘common creed’ of the country; England was founded ‘uniquely among the nations’ on ‘the basis of the Bible’; it is the ‘oldest Christian country’; ‘the story of England is the story of Christianity operating on a people.’ A remarkable set of claims to make the butterflies flutter in any Christian’s stomach, surely?

This vision of a ‘Christian nation,’ however, typically represented by Kruger is based on an understanding of Christianity which bears little resemblance to its central character: Jesus. There is much talk of ‘nationhood’ and ‘biblical values’ in such thinking, but tellingly little about Jesus himself (Kruger’s speech makes one passing reference to him). The reason is not complicated. Quite simply you cannot build a nation-state on the teaching of Jesus.

Every nation-state (including England, the ‘prototype’ of such a concept, according to Kruger) was formed though violent subjugation of rival tribes and narratives, establishing a monopoly on the means of legitimate violence to centralise power for princes to wage war and protect private property. Jesus’ commands to love one’s enemies, pray for those who persecute you, not resist evildoers and give away possessions are not simply an inconvenience to such a programme, but are profoundly impractical. Like an embarrassing and awkward family member turning up uninvited to a wedding, they stand opposed to a ‘civilisational Christianity’ which seeks to be the ‘chaplain of nations’ as Kruger suggests, resisting any attempt at baptising and polishing a version of what remains Machiavellian statecraft.

These two forms of Christianity are in fact little more than two sides of the same coin and there is a more fundamental distinction to be made.

Like a cricketer putting on extra padding to face a fast bowler, Christian ethics softens the blow of such radical expectations by suggesting that Jesus can’t really have meant what he said, especially for modern, enlightened folk today. Perhaps Jesus expected the Kingdom of God to arrive more quickly than it did and as time progressed, we needed a more practical ethic. Not wanting to abandon Jesus, his teaching is reduced to general ‘values’ like ‘love’ or ‘justice,’ the content of which in fact become the precise opposite of what Jesus taught. ‘Jesus may have said to love enemies, but we will be less safe if we do, so we had better kill them.’ ‘Jesus may have said not to love money, but our economic systems which seem quite good at alleviating poverty rely on this, so greed isn’t so bad.’

It may sound as if I am opposing Kruger’s vison for the alternative option in the culture wars. It is often suggested that there are two ‘Christianities’ at work in the West: one represented by Kruger might be called the ‘Christian right,’ which emphasises family values, patriotism and the importance of place, the other (at which Kruger takes aim in his speech), a left-wing or ‘woke’ Christianity which stresses welcoming the stranger, economic justice and identity politics.

This is a red herring, however. These two forms of Christianity are in fact little more than two sides of the same coin and there is a more fundamental distinction to be made. For while they might disagree on content, the method is remarkably similar. Left-leaning Christians may disagree with Kruger on his definition of a Christian nation but would uphold the desire for the nation-state to be founded on values they consider Christian. The common assumption is that Christianity is a ‘civilisational’ force, ideally enacted by Christians and their narrative taking hold of the levers of power and influence and dominating the ‘public square.’

If Jesus’ teaching is not supposed to be embodied by the nation-state, however, what is its purpose and does this not leave the public square to malevolent forces, as Kruger suggests? Jesus’ teaching is indeed directed at a particular body of people who are supposed to embody it publicly, and that is the community explicitly committed to follow and structure social life around the living presence of Jesus; this is the church. The New Testament even suggests the language of nationhood is appropriate for this body as a new nation is being formed around the person of Jesus who commands the allegiance that modern nation-states claim for themselves.

Kruger’s vision of the Church of England’s parish system is where ‘we are all members, we all belong, even if you never set foot in your church from one year to the next, even if you don’t believe in its teachings, it is your church, and you are its member.’ This is a million miles away from the vision of the New Testament where entry into this newly formed community implies active repentance and a collision with the ways of the world represented by mere ‘values.’ If that makes me part of ‘another eccentric denomination’ according to Kruger, then so be it.

To suggest that this alternative vision cedes the ‘public square’ to malevolent forces also betrays a lack of imagination around the public nature of the church. It is assumed that if Christians retreat from the ambition to explicitly and directly make our nation-state Christian then we relegate our religion to the realm of the ‘private’ and succumb to the worst elements of Enlightenment fears about religion in the public square. The earliest Christians had no explicit desire to ‘transform the Roman empire and make it Christian’ but simply took Jesus at his word on wealth, forgiveness, welcome of the stranger and proclamation of salvation and the life made possible by Jesus’ death and resurrection. This was their public witness and it just so happened that it utterly transformed the communities in which these followers of Jesus were situated at the same time. This vision certainly has a place for Christians engaging in politics as Kruger has in debates on assisted suicide for instance, exposing the shaky foundations of any form of life not founded on the life made possible in Jesus. This is most appropriately done, however, without reaching for language that implied the state has salvific qualities, language Christian teaching rightly reserves only for God himself.

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