INDIA'S DALITS: A CALL FOR LIBERATION

UNTOUCHABILITY OUTLAWED...ON PAPER. Recently, Human Right Watch released a report chastising India for its continued inaction--and too frequent assault--on its dalits. Untouchability was outlawed five decades ago as part of India's dramatic Gandhi-led nonviolent movement for freedom and democracy. But due to its Hindu-based caste system--an ancient religious- and culturally-entrenched practice that stratifies people in lock-tight classes and entirely locks out "untouchables"--the laws against untouchability are primarily on paper only.AP STORY. The AP story is worth a brief read and fuller reflection.

INCREDIBLE NUMBERS. Many sociologists and serious observers estimate that India's dalits (downtroddens) make up nearly 300,000,000 people (roughly, the entire population of USA), nearly twice the conservative number stated in the AP story regarding the Human Rights Watch report.

OVERCOMING DIVISIONS. Having just ridden a bicycle 2,000 miles thru the heart of India, this situation is both clear and heartbreaking. Dalits themselves seem to be divided against each other--some accept their lot, some organize to challenge for their rights peacefully, some organize for more forceful approaches, some hope that education is their ticket out of their plight of extreme poverty if not out of their non-caste caste. But if dalits can unify their voices and votes, they have hope of changing history. Their struggle, however, may be no less epic, momentous or gut-wrenching and bloody than India's movement to oust Great Britain or the Civil Rights Movement actions in America in the 1960's.

IMPLICATIONS FOR CORPORATIONS. If India, like China, is to vie for credibility and economic prominence on a global scale, basic human rights conditions must be addressed seriously, carefully, and healingly. Transnational and Western-based--yes, American--corporations that are stumbling over themselves to take advantage of India's low wage rates and budding IT and engineering workforce could take the lead in insisting that untouchability be functionally removed and India's dalits redeemed.

IMPLICATIONS FOR AMERICAN CONSUMERS. Unfortunately, the short-term financial bottom line instead of the long-term human bottom line appears to be the interest of the folks who bring us Windows, laptops, mp3 players, video game players and a thousand and one amenities we demand be available to consumers at the lowest possible price. The low prices that drive the stock market demands and dividends of wealthy investors are exacting a high price in the lives of common laborers and dalits in India and other peoples of the world.

WATCH, PRAY & ACT. Let us pay attention to this situation and consider what we may do--or no longer do--to encourage the realization of freedom for India's dalits.

CHRISTIANITY: NONVIOLENT FOR ITS FIRST 284 YEARS

NONVIOLENT...AND ANTIMILITARISTIC. "The early Christians are the earliest known group that renounced warfare in all its forms and rejected all its institutions. This small and original group was devoted to antimilitarism, another concept, like nonviolence, that has no positive word. This antimiliarism was never expressed by Jesus , who, in fact, did not much address the issue of warfare, though he did renounce the violent overthrow of the Romans."

IGNORING THE OBVIOUS. "Warmongering Christian fundamentalists have always clung to the absence of a specific stand on warfare, ignoring the obvious, which is that the wholesale institutionalized slaughter of fellow human beings is clearly a violation of the precise and literal teachings of Jesus . In the days of the great Western debate on slavery, slave owners used a similar argument--that Jesus had not said anything about slavery. But obviously the buying and selling of human beings would not constitute treating others as you would have them treat you."

-- Mark Kurlansky in Nonviolence: Twenty-five Lessons from the History of a Dangerous Idea (Modern Library, Random House, 2006).

This book, a Christmas gift from my niece, was one of several books I read while traveling through India in January. I am enjoying it and challenged by it.

A few questions:

1. Why do you think so many Christians cling to non-biblical and unchristian justifications for war, war violence, and militarism as if they were Biblical and Christian?

2. Do you think Kurlansky is in the ballpark on his assessment that pro-war Christians have "overlooked the obvious" regarding Jesus' teaching (some would say "commands") on violence, enemies, and war?

3. Have you ever read Augustine's "Just War" justifications? If not, Google them and read them. If so, do you really think his treatment of the Scriptures on this is credible? Did he not--and later Thomas Aquinas--disregard the whole weight and thrust of Jesus' teaching on violence, enemies, war, and the Christian's relationship to the state in favor of a few misappropriated verses?

4. What do you think is a more appropriate Christian response to the violence of war and participation in military and the military-industrial complex?