Institutionalized Hindu Bigotry

At the dregs of the Hindu caste system is the social class known as Dalit, or sometimes called the “Untouchables” (because people of upper castes cannot even touch them without becoming defiled themselves). Considered untouchable by the remainder of society, the Dalits are unclean and incapable of becoming clean. They are regarded as impure and are prohibited from participating in any sort of religious experience as their mere presence would utterly defile the rite. This soul-stench and the very system of caste segregation itself are propagated and endorsed by Indian society’s religious staple, Hinduism. They are excluded from education and prohibited from seeking other means of self improvement. They are societal slaves, broken peoples, large segments of the population who have traditionally had no rights. These Dalits make up a little less than 20 percent of India’s population.

The Dalits are not a racial, ethnic, or religious minority, rather they are of the same race as any other Indian. Their discrimination and cultural inferiority is merely a product of their ancestry. The Dalit have been the bottom feeders of Indian society for several thousand years.

Institutionalized discrimination against the Dalits has been largely eliminated from the books but the caste still suffers from extreme and violent persecution at the hands of other societal entities. Much like the African American population following the American Civil War, the discrimination of Dalits has been banned in the code of law but it carries on in every sector of society, with the official exception of governmentally affiliated elements such as education, public services, etc. Of course this is only on paper. The official doctrine of discrimination is no longer there but the minds of people are difficult to change.

Crime against Dalits goes largely unpunished. Officially only 2 percent of all crimes against Dalits is prosecuted to the full extent. Rarely is a perpetrator punished. In all, 50,000 to 100,000 heinous and violent crimes against Dalits are reported every year including murder, violence against families, rape of women, burning of Dalit homes and neighborhoods, child labor and slavery, and kidnapping and trafficking of girls and women, generally for sex trade purposes and prostitution. The culture and society of the caste system has been thousands of years in the making and the mindset of the people of India is steeped in thousands of years of entrenched and impermeable tradition.

The persecution persists. The lower level castes in Indian society (castes including Dalit but not exclusive to it) make up 67 percent of India’s population and are fighting for representation and their rightful share in government. Their numbers are troubling and intimidating to the elite and those lower castes are beginning to feel their strength in numbers. Upper castes have lobbied government officials and branches of government with money and power to institutionalize the caste system and to insure the perpetuation of their place in society. This discrimination and institutionalization has been compared to Apartheid in South Africa. The international community and many various NGOs have and are fighting against the introduction of laws institutionalizing discrimination.

Although discrimination and broad ranging persecution of majority peoples in many parts of the world has largely departed public awareness, it persists and festers in densely populated areas where vast shares of the world’s population reside. A simple awareness of the prosperous circumstances which exist in the West resides, as compared to the rest of the world, would go a long way to waking up the West as to how good they really have it and alleviating such far reaching human tragedy.