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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

Assisted dying

Care

Comment

Politics

9 June 2025

5 min read

Suicide prevention groups are abdicating their responsibility on assisted dying

Not speaking out is a dereliction of duty to vulnerable people

Jamie Gillies

Jamie Gillies is a commentator on politics and culture.

Three posters with suicide prevention messages.

Samaritans adverts.

On Friday, Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide bill will return to the Commons for a second day of report stage proceedings – when MPs consider amendments. Third reading, when the House votes on the bill itself, is expected to take place the following Friday. Opponents of this controversial bill will be hoping that enough MPs feel uneasy about it to say ‘this far and no further’. They will need around 30 MPs to have changed their minds since a vote last year in order for a defeat of the legislation to be assured.

As politicians have weighed this issue, there’s been a conspicuous silence from one constituency you’d expect to have been outspoken: suicide prevention organisations. People might be surprised to know that Samaritans, perhaps the best-known suicide prevention charity in the UK, a cornerstone of prevention efforts since the 1950s, did not submit evidence on the bill before Westminster or a separate bill at Holyrood. Other groups like Suicide Prevention UK (SPUK) and Papyrus have also been silent. One has to wonder why, given the bearing a law change would have on their work.

Suicide prevention charities and their volunteer counsellors do incredible work. Over the years, millions of people in desperate circumstances have received life-changing support. Today, every person contacting a suicide prevention helpline is told that their life has value, and that there is hope in the bleakest of circumstances. Every caller without exception is also told not to harm themselves. But this couldn’t continue under an assisted dying law. A two-track approach would have to be devised, depending on a caller’s circumstances. A scenario helps to illustrate this point:

Caller: “I am thinking about ending my life”.

Adviser: “Please know that there is hope. I’m here to listen and I can offer support, so you don’t have to make that choice.”

Caller: “Well, I have terminal cancer you see…”

Adviser: “Oh, sorry, I need to put you through to a colleague. Your situation is a bit more, err, complex. You need to know your legal rights”.

Some proponents of assisted dying are quick to dismiss concerns about suicide prevention, arguing that assisted dying and suicide are wholly separate categories. However, this argument doesn’t hold water. Whilst campaigners use euphemistic terminology and employ Orwellian rhetoric about ‘exercising choice at the end of life’, and people ‘shortening their deaths’, it is clear that the bills they promote would permit suicide with the enablement of the state.

An assisted dying law would see doctors prescribing lethal drugs to certain patients which they can take to end their own lives. The dictionary definition of suicide — “the act of killing yourself intentionally” — has not changed. Neither has legislation giving expression to this idea. Logically and legally then, assisted dying involves suicide.

Samaritans is clear on this. A ‘policy brief’ on assisted dying published in November — the most recent statement on the issue by the organisation — begins by saying that it usually applies to terminally ill people and involves “assisting the person who is terminally ill to hasten their own death”, adding: “The act that kills them is performed by the person themselves”. Their death is a suicide, in other words.

You might assume an organisation that says, “every suicide is one too many”, whose stated aim is to see “fewer people die by suicide”, would be opposed to assisted dying - or at the very least concerned about it. However, Samaritans goes on to say that it does not “take a position on whether assisted dying is right or wrong, or on what the law should be on this matter”. Why? Because it “would involve making a range of judgements” that could compromise people’s “perception of our ability to provide non-judgemental emotional support”.

Samaritans and other suicide prevention organisations should be intensely interested in what the law says. The introduction of assisted dying in any part of the UK would mean suicides being condoned and enabled in healthcare settings for the first time — a radical departure from the existing approach. Professionals always counsel against suicide, no matter a person’s motivation for wanting to end their life. Every citizen is precious, and every life worth saving.

Prevention organisations must also realise that a change of this gravity will have a wider impact on culture. Research shows a rise in non-assisted suicides in countries that have introduced the practice. Sending a message that some suicides are permissible might make their prevention work harder. Organisations saying nothing in the face of all this is astonishing.

As noted above, assisted dying poses practical questions as well as philosophical ones. If the law changes, organisations will no longer be able to adopt a universal approach to suicide prevention. A call to a suicide prevention helpline from a terminally ill person will have to be handled differently to a call from a person who is not terminally ill. For some, suicide would be a healthcare ‘right’. How will organisations navigate this? Doesn’t it concern them?

There has been some advocacy from individuals engaged in suicide prevention, if not from organisations. In February 2024 psychiatrists wrote to The Times to warn that the Westminster assisted dying Bill would “undermine daily efforts to prevent suicide”, particularly among the elderly. Louis Appleby, the UK Government’s suicide prevention adviser has also spoken against a change in the law, arguing that it would harm efforts to drive down suicides.

Appleby explained, “once the principle behind suicide prevention has been set aside, once any part of the ground has been ceded — not only to allow suicide but to assist it — we have lost something we may not get back. There are countless causes of irremediable hardship, many reasons people may want to make despairing choices. Could they become exceptions to suicide prevention too?” This principled position is exactly what you’d expect from someone whose job is protecting hurting people, no matter their personal situations.

I’m loath to criticise suicide prevention groups as I deeply appreciate their work. However, by not contributing to the debate on assisted dying, they are abdicating their responsibility to shape a policy that would impact their mission, and the people they serve. A policy that would lead to state-sanctioned suicides and impact culture in profound ways. It’s terribly sad to see groups that fight to end suicides failing to stand against a policy that would harm their work. Failure to speak today may be viewed as a dereliction of duty in years to come.

With a final vote on Kim Leadbeater’s Bill days away, and the decisive vote on Scottish plans not due for months, there is still time for suicide prevention groups to enter the fray. I pray that they will.

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