NEW DELHI — The Catholic Bishops Conference of India (CBCI) opposes the move of India’s federal government, led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), to appoint a new commission to study the “social status” of converts of low caste origins,.
The bishops publicly oppose the new commission on the grounds that it’s merely a stalling tactic by the government to avoid addressing the discrimination converts to Christianity continue to experience.
“This is just delaying tactics and weakens our demand,” Father Bijoy Kumar Nayak, executive secretary of the CBCI’s Commission for Dalits, told the Register Oct. 25.
“What is the need for setting up another commission, after several commissions including one led by the former chief justice of India, have brought out the discrimination Christian converts face?” asked Father Nayak, former provincial of the Congregation of Missions based in eastern Odisha state.
Father Nayak’s remarks followed a press statement by the CBCI Commission opposing the Oct. 7 establishment of the new commission into the status of Dalit converts, to determine whether Scheduled Caste status should extend to them.
“Dalit” literally meaning “trampled upon” and refers to low caste social communities that historically have been treated as “untouchables” in India’s caste-ridden society. Often, they eke out a living by carrying out menial jobs like scavenging while living in segregation from upper castes in rural areas.
In 1950, the federal government enacted special legislation that laid the constitutional foundation for the subsequent discrimination against Dalit Christians. This legislation listed Hindu Dalits as “Scheduled Caste,” and made them eligible for free education and a 15% quota in government jobs and legislatures to improve their social status.
Although these statutory Scheduled Caste privileges were extended to Sikh Dalits in 1956 and Buddhist Dalits in 1990, they have continued to be denied to Muslim and Christian Dalits. Christian Dalits account for approximately two-thirds of India’s population of more than 30 million Christians.
“The [federal] governments of past and present have failed to amend the Constitution Order 1950 … which discriminates against them solely on the basis of religion,” the CBCI Dalit commission said in its press statement.
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In 2004, Catholic Dalit activists demanded that the Supreme Court end this undeclared apartheid with the CBCI Dalit Commission being included among the petitioners. The case continues to drag on without resolution 18 years later, with successive national governments refusing to accommodate Christian concerns and raising technical objections that have delayed a verdict.
Several previous judicial commissions, including the one appointed in 2004 and led by former chief Justice Ranganath Mishra, have endorsed the demand to extend the Scheduled Caste reservation quota to Dalit converts to Islam or Christianity.
This story was originally published in ncregister.com . Read the full story here