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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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Art

Culture

Trauma

War & peace

23 June 2025

5 min read

Forgotten soldiers and new narratives are shaping how we mark our wars

Writing our history of conflict is as much a war of images as of words.

Susan Gray

Susan is a writer specialising in visual arts and contributes to Art Quarterly, The Tablet, Church Times and Discover Britain.

An actor reads a speech at a commemoration

Timothy Spall recites Churchill.

Sky News.

Heading into an intense summer of World War Two remembrance, with May’s commemoration of the 80th anniversary of VE Day followed by marking the end of war in the Far East in August, it is remarkable how well the essentially Edwardian model of honouring the war dead has stood the test of time.

In The Edwardians Age of Elegance exhibition, at the King Gallery’s, a room is devoted to the passing of the extravagant turn-of-the-century era into the sombre age of war memorialisation, following World War One. George V commissioned traditional English artist Frank O Sullivan to paint the inaugural service for the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey. The long canvas, with a domed frame at the centre to accommodate Edwin Lutyens’ freshly unveiled, lofty Cenotaph, captures the solitary King walking behind a flag draped coffin, mounted on a gun garage, as the parade passes the war memorial. Initially a temporary wood and plaster structure, Lutyens’ Portland stone monument commemorated over a million soldiers lost in the Great War, some buried near the battlefields near where they fell, and nameless others whose remains had been obliterated by mechanised warfare.

Attended by widows, ex-servicemen and armed forces personnel, the 1920 Armistice Day ceremony marked a shift away from solely glorifying commanders and officers, placing the sacrifice of ordinary combatants centre stage. The monarch symbolised his gratitude to his people, rather the other way around.

Ceremonial Great War gun carriages featured in the London VE Day parade on 5th May. And the King’s Troop, Royal Horse Artillery provides gun carriages and teams of six black horses for state funerals. Following World War Two, and complete mechanisation of artillery, George VI instituted a troop of horse artillery for ceremonial occasions, enshrining the continuation of practices from a previous era’s warfare.

Layering memorialisation upon memorialisation was also evident in the 5th May ceremonies when actor Timothy Spall read an extract of Churchill’s Whitehall speech, given to the crowds when European hostilities ended.

“In the long years to come, not only will the people of this isle, but of the world wherever the bird of freedom chirps in human hearts, will look back on what we have done and they will say do not despair, do not yield to violence and tyranny, march straight forward and if needs be, die unconquered.”

Narratives around the present and recent past are codified with a focus on forecasting how future generations will view events when looking back.

While Europe celebrated in early May 1945, the one million troops of the Fourteenth Army continued fighting the Japanese Army through Burma and the Pacific. Dubbed the Forgotten Army and the Forgotten War, their campaigns were underplayed in the Allies’ wartime narrative. Singapore’s fall to Japanese forces in February 1942 was seen as a shameful defeat. Remoteness from London of the Far East campaign, and the vastness of the theatre of war, made it near impossible to report on by radio and print journalists. Letters to and from the Fourteenth Army took months to reach their destinations. Soldiers and civilians held as prisoners of war by Japanese forces were forbidden to make images or create records of their captivity, making contemporaneous images of their incarceration rare. But drawings of camps and hospitals by Jack Chalker hidden in hollowed out bamboo sticks, acted as preparatory works the artist to later make paintings such as his painting Medical Inspection, Chungkai Hospital Camp 1943, created in 1946, and now held by the Royal Army Museum.

As traditions of commemorating the war dead evolve, new grey areas come to light, demanding space in the official narrative

Contrasting the paucity of images of the war in the Far East, with the array of works depicting the Blitz in London - created with American audiences in mind, in the hope of winning support for the Allied cause - together with photographic images of North African and Middle East operations, it is little wonder the Forgotten War struggles to be remembered. Veterans of the Far East campaign and POWs were far more likely to join ex services organisations such as the British Legion and Burma Star, than those who served in Europe. Marginalised from victory and peacetimes narratives, the Forgotten Army chose to remember together.

Before Victory over Japan’s 80th anniversary is commemorated on 15 August, with the famous cover photo of an American sailor dramatically embracing a woman in a white dress showing on repeat, the 80 years since the dropping of atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki will have to be faced. Mainly civilians died as a result of impact and sickness from the bombing of Hiroshima on 6 August and Nagasaki on 9 August, with estimates of between150,000 -246,000 deaths. Whether the only use of nuclear weapons in warfare was justified, as it prevented loss of life from not having to wage a military campaign to occupy mainland Japan, or the horrific sacrifice of so many civilians was a war crime, remains a morally grey area.

As traditions of commemorating the war dead evolve, new grey areas come to light, demanding space in the official narrative. Actress Sheila Hancock wrote recently about the trauma and fear of being an evacuee, sent away from her London family as a small child, to an emotionally neglectful home in the ‘safer’ countryside. Forced adoption of children born to lone mothers, and the stigmatising treatment expectant women received at the hands of Christian denomination- ran mother and baby homes, is a wartime and postwar story now demanding to be heard.

Lesser documented stories of marginalised civilians, and combatants in faraway places take time to emerge, fighting to be heard above familiar images of plucky cockneys in bombed out buildings and amorously celebratory sailors. Shaping a multifaceted history of conflict is as much a war of images as of words. And as families become more transnational, the search for a shared narrative can replace clinging to the right or official story.

The idea of army chaplain, the Reverend David Railton, to commemorate an Unknown Warrior with honour, still resonates over a century later. Railton’s battlefield altar cloth, known as the Padre’s or Ypres Flag, covered the coffin on its journey from Boulogne to Westminster Abbey.

Stretching and fraying to include the stories of groups previously overlooked, the Edwardian fabric of military remembrance is proving remarkably strong.

The Edwardians: Age of Elegance, the King’s Gallery, until 23 November.

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