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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

6 August 2025

6 min read

Danny Kruger, Christian values, and the dangers of thin religion

Thick or thin? Christianity’s role in Britain’s cultural crossroad

Graham Tomlin

Graham is the Director of the Centre for Cultural Witness and a former Bishop of Kensington.

A backbench MP stands in an almost empty chamber and speaks

Danny Kruger addressing Parliament.

Parliament TV.

In case you hadn’t noticed, a speech given to an audience of about seven people in a sparse House of Commons recently went viral. Danny Kruger’s recent call for a Christian restoration in the UK has generated a lot of attention.

I've noticed two distinct responses in recent days. On one side, there are three (or more) cheers for Danny. He has been interviewed at Christian festivals, lauded for a brave, deeply considered and soulful appeal to the Christian heritage of the nation. He has been thinking deeply about this for some time as demonstrated in his book Covenant, sometimes seen as a manifesto for a renewed Conservatism based around the claims of family, community and nation, and summarised in this Seen & Unseen article. As one of the most prominent voices against the recent bills to permit assisted dying and the termination of full-term embryos, he is clearly reeling from the impact of these devastating recent votes in the Commons that, more than anything else, seem to demonstrate how far the nation has slipped its Christian moorings.

Yet it’s not hard to stumble across another reaction. A former Bishop of Oxford called Kruger’s claim that the UK was a Christian nation anachronistic and counter-productive. Others have pointed out that many Jews, Muslims or hardened atheists would not be delighted to be told that ‘it is your church and you are its member.’ Others question whether there can be such a thing as a 'Christian nation'.

Some have picked up on a darker side to all this. Recent riots outside hostels for immigrants in Rotherham and Norwich showed protesters carrying flags of St George, even brandishing a wooden cross. Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, aka Tommy Robinson, and Nigel Farage have recently been speaking much more openly about the ‘Christian values’ on which Britain is founded, and many on the extreme right seem to have latched onto Christianity as at the heart of what they see as a cultural, civilisational war. Kruger’s talk of the gap left by Christianity’s demise being filled by Islam and, what worries him more, a kind of ‘wokeism’ that blends ‘ancient paganism, Christian heresies and the cult of modernism’, sets up a stark opposition. He goes on: “That religion, unlike Islam, must simply be destroyed, at least as a public doctrine. It must be banished from public life.” Does that language stray a bit too close to the aggressive language of more extreme voices on the right?

Now I have some sympathy with this. I have written before of how I also fear the pagan gods are making a return. Like Danny Kruger, I too believe the recent votes in the House of Commons are a dark and dangerous turn toward death not life. Yet I can’t shake a nervous feeling that, without some careful thought, we might be summoning up shades we might not be able to control.

The signs – and the solution - lie in the past. For centuries, Christianity, like all other religions, has been used as a weapon in civilisational wars. It happened in the Crusades of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. It happened in the Balkan wars involving Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia in the 1990s and 2000. It happened in the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland, where your neighbour being Protestant or Catholic was a reason to kill them.

Theologians and sociologists sometimes talk of ‘thick’ and ‘thin’ religion. ‘Thin’ religion is simply a badge of identity. It often blends religion, politics and nationalism and serves as a motivation to unite people around a cause, such as Hindu nationalism, Muslim victimhood, or Christian supremacy. It is religion seen purely as a label, a badge of tribal identity over against other religious identities, however deeply felt. It is often nostalgic, ranged against enemies who are determined to destroy it, denigrating those who are not part of the religion as less deserving of value. It sees the Christian god as one of many gods – our god – which we must fight for against other gods, rather than, as Christian theology has always taught, the one true God who sits above all other gods, the God of the whole earth. It is paradoxically a manifestation of the kind of the kind of culture that Danny Kruger hates: “a return to the pagan belief that your value is determined by your sex, race or tribe.” Tommy Robinson’s faith seems as good an example of this as any. This is ‘thin’ religion.

I propose a simple test. If someone advocates Christian values and regularly goes to church, then they have a legitimate voice.

‘Thick’ religion, however, is different. It is not just a badge of identity, but entails a set of distinct beliefs and practises. It means submitting yourself to the disciplines of the faith. In the Christian context, it a belief in God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, that Jesus is the Son of God, that he died for the sins of the world, rose again on the third day and will return one day to judge the living and the dead. It involves a serious attempt to live the Christian life, to love your neighbour, and even your enemy, helping the poor and vulnerable, praying regularly, being consistently present at church worship and so on.

Christian hymns have always had a fair amount of militant imagery, from ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ to ‘Fight the Good Fight’, and more contemporary ones about God ‘fighting our battles’. Yet this has always meant a serious fight against enemies within – pride, greed, anger and spiritual lethargy. When it became focussed on human enemies, as it did in the Crusades, a line was crossed from ‘thick’ into ‘thin’ religion.

It's not always easy to tell the difference between those who adopt thick and thin Christianity. I propose a simple test. If someone advocates Christian values and regularly turns up at church, then they have a legitimate voice, and are worth a hearing. If they turn up weekly to hear the Bible being read, to take part in Holy Communion alongside other people, regardless of their ethnicity, wealth or background, pray regularly, then, we can assume, they are serious about it. They are submitting themselves to the discipline of learning Christian faith, seeking to love their neighbour and trying as hard as they can to love their enemies. They may fail from time to time but these are the signs of someone who has grasped the grace of God which is the heart of Christian faith. Danny Kruger passes that test. Tommy Robinson and Nigel Farage, as far as I know, don’t.

If some shout loudly about Christian values, about the danger of losing the heritage of our civilization and yet show no interest in going to church, living the Christian life, praying or even trying to love their enemies, then we should take what they say with a large pinch of salt. They have no skin in the game.

When the heart of Christianity is hollowed out, it becomes moralism. It becomes the law not the gospel, as Martin Luther would say. The cross literally becomes a stick to beat others with. Paradoxically, it is only ‘thick’ religion that ends up founding and changing cultures. Early Christianity, the kind that converted the western world, was definitely ‘thick’ religion. It was not just a badge of identity. It had a whole set of distinct beliefs and practices that marked Christians off from the pagan world around them. It did not set out to advocate for political causes in the power corridors of Rome, build a Christian civilisation, lobby Caesar for ‘Christian laws’. It set out to produce people with ‘a sincere and pure devotion to Christ’ as St Paul put it, loving God, neighbour and enemy. And they changed the world by accident.

Thin religion is a dangerous thing. It uses religion as a tool for dominance and conflict. It makes sceptics think we need less religion in public life. Thick religion is good religion. It forms good people. It builds healthy societies. It’s the kind we need more of, not less.

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