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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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Comment

Freedom of Belief

Middle East

Politics

19 January 2025

6 min read

Bring on the noise: what Trump can do to help the persecuted in Iran and China

Dealing with the dictators in Iran and China needs noisy advocates.

Steve Dew-Jones

Steve is news director of Article 18, a human rights organisation documenting Christian persecution in Iran.

A fisheye view of a large debating chamber in the round.

The Human Rights Council meets in Geneva.

Pope Francis hosted a delegation from the Islamic Republic of Iran late last year for an event purportedly related to “interfaith dialogue”.

It wasn’t the first meeting of its kind, and on the face of it at least, there isn’t a lot wrong with the idea. While Iran’s relationship with most Western nations could be described as “strained” at best, the Holy See has taken a different approach, maintaining diplomatic relations with Iran for the past 70 years, including the 45 years since the establishment of the Islamic Republic.

And it has borne some fruit, helping to secure the release of a few prisoners of conscience, such as Rev Mehdi Dibaj, a Christian convert who once faced the death sentence for his “apostasy”.

But it has also opened up the Church to accusations of kowtowing to dictators and enabling regimes such as the ayatollahs’ to present themselves in a more favourable light through the high-profile photo opportunities presented by events such as the recent “dialogue” in Rome.

And it is an opportunity you can be sure the Islamic Republic was not going to pass up, with its state media unsurprisingly happy to misquote the Pope by claiming he had “stressed how Christian minorities in Iran are allowed to freely meet together and worship in churches across the country, without restriction”.

In actual fact, what the Pope really said was that “freedom of religion [is not] limited to the expression of worship; it also entails complete freedom in the matter of one’s own beliefs and religious practice”.

So, slightly different. But, no matter, you can be sure that the vast majority of the over 90,000 viewers of Press TV’s account of the event won’t have been bothered to check the accuracy of the claim, and therefore may reasonably have gone away believing that Christians truly are entirely free to worship in Iran.

Another organisation representing Christians, The World Evangelical Alliance (WEA), faced similar criticism last year when it accepted the invitation to take part in a Human Rights Council event organised by the Islamic Republic of Iran, under the deliberately misleading title, “The Role of Religions in Promoting Human Rights”.

The WEA was accused of “legitimising” Iran and even “seeming to support its propaganda as a purported defender of human rights”.

Iran will send another delegation to the Human Rights Council next week for its Universal Periodic Review (UPR), an occasion that has the potential, at least, to be quite significant, being the only UN mechanism with which the regime truly engages.

Unlike the mandates of fact-finding mission and Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran, which Iran and its allies regularly decry as “politicised” and “selective”, the UPR is lauded even by Iran as the true and proper place for constructive criticism, as every single country undergoes the review - not only pariahs.

Several side events will be put on in conjunction with Iran’s UPR, on various themes including the situation of Iran’s Christian minority. But while the WEA last year hosted a similar event on the margins of the Human Rights Council, on this occasion it has declined the opportunity, preferring the path of “quiet diplomacy” and “dialogue” over public criticism.

Which, again, at least on the face of it, seems reasonable enough. As has been seen with the Vatican, such an approach can undoubtedly bear fruit. But it is not guaranteed.

On the other side of the debate, you have the human rights organisations who publicly call out Iran for each violation, highlighting individual cases with the hope of embarrassing Iran into change. For as much as Iran is a pariah, it still attaches some importance to its reputation on the world stage.

And again, such an approach has at times proved successful, as was seen in September with the early release from prison of two Iranian Christians who had been serving 10-year sentences due to their participation in house-churches, and whose cases had been included in a joint submission ahead of Iran's UPR.

But even this approach is not without its pitfalls. While there may be relief from accusations of kowtowing to dictators, there is also the distinct possibility that the pariah state in question may just stick its fingers in its ears and do what it wants anyway, such as in October when the Islamic Republic executed a German-Iranian political prisoner, Jamshid Sharmahd, despite years of vocal advocacy.

Advocacy certainly isn’t an exact science, at least when the experiment in question involves an unpredictable regime like the one in Tehran. Both quiet diplomacy and noisy advocacy can clearly work, but in neither case can it be guaranteed when the individual tasked with selecting their response to the advocacy is the Supreme Leader of Iran.

Surely the only way to ensure real change would be to make it too costly for the dictators to deal with their persecuted minorities in such a brutal fashion.

Western nations have a similar quandary to religious or human rights organisations. To what degree, if any, should Western governments prioritise human rights concerns over economic or political gains?

It has been suggested many times that Western nations are more concerned with oil or gas supplies, or other economic incentives, than truly seeking justice for victims of rights abuses.

When, for example, Keir Starmer speaks of wanting to have a “respectful” relationship with China, while engaging “honestly and frankly” on human rights concerns, what does that actually mean in practice?

The reality is that a behind-closed-doors discussion about a human rights infringement is unlikely to hold much sway if the violator does not share the belief that any violation has been committed, or even believes the victim to have been deserving of the treatment they received.

Whether it’s China’s targeting of the Uyghurs, or Iran’s crackdown on the Baha’is or Christian converts, one can be fairly certain that neither the Chinese nor Iranian regime feels the slightest remorse about its chosen approach.

Perhaps little could demonstrate this more than the mistreatment that continued to be handed out to Rev Mehdi Dibaj after the advocacy win of his release from prison. Just five months later, he was murdered anyway, one of three church leaders killed extrajudicially in the months after his release had been secured, including Rev Dibaj’s friend and chief advocate, Haik Hovsepian.

So is it really realistic to expect that just because we say we are concerned about the Uyghurs, the Baha’is, or the Christians, there will be any change in approach?

Surely the only way to ensure real change would be to make it too costly for the dictators to deal with their persecuted minorities in such a brutal fashion.

As ever, actions really do speak louder than words. And this is why many Iranians are hopeful that with the return of the much-maligned Donald Trump, the “maximum pressure” policy towards the Islamic Republic will also return and, through it, real change may actually be achieved.

There are many reasons, of course, to find fault with the incoming president, but when it comes to dealing with the dictators, at least, it could be argued that Trump has shown himself to have more common sense than most. The hope, as with the other approaches, is that it actually makes a tangible difference.

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