by Mark Tully
One of these was Father Manuel Alphonse, a Tamil Jesuit in his late thirties working in the All India Catholic University Federation. He told me that Harijan girls found it so difficult to become nuns that a special congregation had been founded for them. This did not achieve much, however, because the priests and the other congregations despised the Dalit order and so refused to give the nuns opportunities to serve the Church. The congregation was now apparently trying to get girls from other castes to join it, to improve its status. Father Manuel said that Harijan men faced difficulties in getting ordained. Most of the Harijan candidates for holy orders were not well educated, which gave the heads of seminaries an excuse for refusing them admission. Those who did manage to pass their exams were, according to the Jesuit, regarded by their teachers as ‘irredeemably immoral’. Father Manuel went on to explain, ‘One slip by a Dalit seminarian and he will be tipped out. In the case of a high-caste young man, the head of the seminary will say, “It was just a peccadillo. We will look after him and he will reform.”’
The Jesuits are more enlightened than the bishops and the diocesan authorities. India has the second-largest Jesuit congregation in the world, and in Tamil Nadu there are about 600, of whom some fifty are Dalits. But Father Manuel said even the Jesuits had not been able to do much for Dalit Christians as a whole. ‘The diocesan bishops don't like us interfering,’ he explained. ‘In fact, most of them regard us with deep suspicion and there are some dioceses where the bishops won't allow us to work. We also have difficulties with our own Dalits in the Society. They are ashamed of being Dalits, so, when they join the Jesuits, they change their names and disguise their backgrounds. They refuse to support Dalit causes, and even avoid making friends with other Dalits. The fact is that they are afraid of being looked down on if they are identified as Harijans.’
Father Manuel believed that the conservative leadership of the Indian Church was to blame for the attitude towards Dalit Christians. He described the Indian bishops as ‘more Roman than Rome’, and went on to say, ‘Our Church has not even accepted the limited role that the Vatican now allows the laity to play. The trouble is that we have always been heavily dependent on foreign funds – especially funds from the Vatican. You can't build an indigenous movement on foreign funds – they lead to a sense of dependence, and you don't get leadership like that. In the case of America the boot is on the other foot. The Vatican relies on the American Church for funds and so it can afford to challenge even the Pope's authority.’
The Jesuits do appreciate the need for Christianity to be Indian in India and have been experimenting with Hindu symbols in their worship for many years. Much work has been done on the relationship between Hindu and Christian theology and traditions. Father Manuel believed that an Indian theology was emerging, a theology which would challenge the foundation stone of Christianity – the claim that Christ's incarnation was unique, the one and only incarnation of God on earth.
Father Manuel had already gone a long way down that road. He told me, ‘Indian theology is based on the problems of living with Hinduism. We Christians are living with a very ancient civilization, which in many ways has better answers than we do. My family has been Christian for generations, but I feel closer to being a Hindu than a Christian. A man like Krishna makes more sense to me than Christ. Our modern élite have been influenced by Christianity. That's why they can't understand this country, where Hinduism is far more important than any concept of India's It's not surprising that India's conservative bishops are wary of the Jesuits.
Paul's second friend was a Harijan parish priest in Ennore, an industrial area on the northern outskirts of Madras. St Joseph's Church stood in its own compound, set apart from the bazaar by a high yellow wall. The priest's house was at the far end of the compound. There was a small garden whose bright flowers were the first colour I had seen in the drab industrial suburb. A cage of budgerigars hung outside the door. An elderly barefooted servant told me that Father Paul Raj was out but said I could wait in his office.
Father Paul Raj got back just before the Mass was due to start. He came into his office buttoning up his white cassock and apologized that he would have to keep me waiting again while he said Mass. He offered me a cup of coffee and seemed surprised when I said I would prefer to go to the service.
‘Functional’ would be the only way to describe St Joseph's Church. It was an L-shaped, flat-roofed, yellow concrete hall. There were no pews or chairs, just red coir matting on the floor in front of the altar. There were some low benches in the extension built to the right of the altar, but they seemed to be reserved for nuns. Although it was a weekday – and a weekday which did not commemorate any red-letter saint or festival – there was a congregation of about fifty, as many men as women. An old woman hobbled past me to the front of the congregation, leaning heavily on a thick bamboo stick which served as a crutch. I noticed that another woman's ankle was swollen and disfigured by elephantiasis, which is now rare except among the very poor, but most of the congregation seemed relatively prosperous. A few mothers had brought their children. Most of the 350 families Father Paul ministered to worked in the factories of Ennore. The priest's house was built on to the back of the church and so he entered through a door behind the altar. He was wearing violet vestments, the liturgical colour for Lent, and was accompanied by two young servers wearing scarlet cassocks. The Mass was said in Tamil. I discovered how uncomfortable that red coir carpet was when I knelt for the consecration.
After Mass, Father Paul sorted out a few problems with his parishioners and then took me back to his office. He was a young man, in his early thirties but already a little on the stout side. He had black wavy hair and a dark complexion. His mother was a Harijan, but his father was a caste Christian. He told me that he had almost always ‘stood first’ during the eleven years he had studied to become a priest, and that was why the priests in the seminary had not been able to prevent his ordination.
We spoke for nearly two hours about the problems of Harijan Catholics and the difficulties he faced as a Harijan priest. When he was first ordained, he had believed in fighting for the Dalit cause. He had called the Dalit Liberation Educational Trust into the country parish to which he had been appointed, and they had explained to his Dalit parishioners the ways in which the Church was exploiting them and had, as he put it, ‘Fired them up with zeal to do something about it.’ Regrettably for Father Paul, the zeal backfired.
His parishioners were very angry about the previous priest, who was not a Harijan. They believed that he had been a dishonest steward and were particularly upset that he had left the collection of rents from Church lands in the hands of local nuns, not to Father Paul, who had promised to use the rent to help them. The former priest wanted to return to collect the rent from the nuns, but news of the parishioners’ new-found militancy had reached him, and so he kept away until there was a visit by the archbishop. Surely, he thought, the Harijans would not dare to make trouble in the presence of such an august dignitary. But he was wrong. Angry parishioners gathered outside the house where the archbishop was staying and shouted, ‘Down with corrupt priests’ and other slogans in a similar vein. The priest and a burly colleague he had brought in case there was any trouble were waiting there to see the archbishop. Fearing that he might hear the slogans, they tried to push their way through the crowd and escape. One of them was knocked over and badly bruised. The parishioners, who had never intended to lay hands on a priest, fell back in fear and the two men rushed into the house to complain to the archbishop. They told him that Father Paul had made false allegations about corruption and had incited his parishioners to attack them. Although Father Paul was not present when the priests were surrounded, the archbishop found in favour of the caste clergy and transferred the Harijan to Ennore, which was not a Dalit Christian parish. There, the archbishop reckoned, Father Paul would not find many takers for his Dalit liberation theology.
Father Paul had clearly learnt his lesson and was now resigned to p
reaching the gospel according to high-caste catholics. He said to me, ‘I have learnt the hard way. There is nothing I can do by entering the struggle for the Dalit Christians because the caste clergy have captured all the important posts in the Church – the bishops, the provincials and all the rest of them. They will just say I'm doing it because I'm a Dalit and that I'm bringing caste into the Church – as if it wasn't there already.’
When I told Paul Panneereselvan that his friend was no longer fighting the fight with all his might, he said, ‘I know. You really can't blame him. There is no point in our waiting for the Church to come to our rescue. We will have to fight our own battles.’ He suggested that I should go with him to see how he was training the troops.
We went to a village where Paul was holding a meeting. It was near the town of Kanchipuram, famous for its temples and its silk. Paul was accompanied by a young woman called Maria Francina, who was a singer. As we entered the village of Arasankuppam, children ran up to our car chanting ‘Dalit girl, Dalit girl, you will wipe away the tears of our community’ – the words of a song she had sung when they had last been there.
The meeting was held in the village school, a one-roomed building furnished with two blackboards, one table and a few chairs – most of which were broken. It was a concrete box, with no trees to provide shade – a typical product of the public works department. The Indian government spends millions of rupees urging all and sundry to ‘plant more trees’, but it can't persuade its own public works department to set an example. Inside the school there were about a dozen young Dalits sitting on the floor.
The meeting started with songs by Maria Francina, whose peach-coloured chiffon sari embroidered with flowers – the dress of a smart town girl – contrasted with the simple checked cotton lungis and well-washed shirts of the village Dalits. The villagers were given songbooks and joined in enthusiastically. Other young Dalit men came in as the singing continued, and by the time Paul started the hard sell there were about forty sitting in front of him.
He first asked the young Dalits whether they were being oppressed by the caste Hindus. One reported that he had been forced to wash up his own teacup when a tea-stall owner had found he was a Harijan; another said there was a nearby village where Dalits were not served tea at the tea stall. There were complaints that caste Hindus refused to employ Harijans on their land, and one young Dalit said priests in a local temple were still not allowing Dalits to worship there. There were several complaints about caste Hindus not paying proper respect to Dalits. One young man said that, in his village, even a Harijan who had achieved the lofty status of a bank official was not shown respect. Another complained that his community always went to offer condolences to the mudaliar caste when a leader of that caste died, but that they did not reciprocate by commiserating with the Harijans on the death of one of their leaders.
Periodic attempts were made to keep the village children out of the schoolroom, but they proved futile. I wasn't quite sure why the attempts were made at all, because the children listened just as attentively as the young men, until their midday meal was ready. When he was chief minister, the film star M. G. Ramachandran had introduced free midday meals for all children. I was impressed that even on a Sunday a meal had been prepared in a remote village like Arasankuppam. I was less impressed with the meal itself – rice and a ladleful of spicy water with three or four very thin slices of carrot.
While the children were eating their lunch, Paul started the direct motivation of the Dalits. He asked the young men to stand up one by one and say who they were. One said, ‘a Harijan’; another, ‘a scheduled caste – that is, I come from a depressed community’; and one even said, ‘I am an untouchable.’ Paul told them, ‘All those are labels. You must not accept them. They have been given to you by Brahmins and they mean “You are my servant, you are not my equal.” ’ He then mimicked a conversation between a Dalit and a high-caste Hindu. Folding his hands and wagging his bowed head from side to side, he said, ‘Yes sir, yes sir, yes sir, I will do any work you ask me to. Please sir, yes sir, of course I will sir.’ The audience laughed. Paul then went on to tell the Dalits, ‘You are Dravidians – the original Indians who were here long before the Aryan Brahmins came along. You should be proud of your ancestry, not call yourself by names you are ashamed of. We Dalits have allowed ourselves to be oppressed because we did not use our brains.’ He then went on to tell a story to illustrate his point. ‘There was an exhibition in Madras of brains. A Brahmin's brain cost five rupees, the brain of a mudaliar ten rupees and the brain of a Dalit fifty. When a customer asked, “How come a Dalit brain costs so much?” he was told, “Because it's fresh – it hasn't been used.” Scientists have shown that all people have the same brains and the same blood. If you are blood group A you can donate for a Brahmin of group A.’
Paul then changed gear. After writing three words on the blackboard – self-recognition, self-respect and self-reliance – he said, ‘Come on. Some of you must have been standing up for yourself and your community – tell me what you have done.’ The only graduate from Arasankuppam stood up and said he was running a night school for Dalits. The audience clapped enthusiastically. Another had helped widows to get the certificates they needed for government loans. There was more applause. The only other graduate in the audience said he had arranged for a candidate to stand in elections for the village council, but the upper castes had bribed the Dalits so they didn't vote for him. The graduate went on to say, ‘The trouble in my village is that the young people say they prefer their own life of slavery and labour rather than change.’ Another Dalit stood up and said, ‘We will go from this village to your village and we will work among your young people so that they change their attitude.’ Paul and the whole audience applauded loudly.
More young Dalits spoke of their efforts to inspire self-respect in their community, and then Paul again asked them individually, ‘Who are you?’ Some said, ‘I am a Dravidian one of the original community.’ Others said, ‘I am a son of the soil,’ or simply, ‘I am a man.’
To end the session, we all stood in a circle holding hands, with Paul in the middle. He recited, ‘Now we are united together to develop our people. We must bring ourselves from the bondage of the system. We must stand by our pledge of unity to make ours and our fellows' lives better. We are no longer slaves to anybody. From henceforth we are human beings. Raise your hands and keep silence for one minute. Think of your commitment.’ We all raised our hands, without breaking the chain, and shut our eyes as if in prayer. Paul broke the silence by shouting ‘Jai Bhim’. The Dalits responded ‘Jai Bhim’ – ‘Bhim’ is the name Dalits have given to B. R. Ambedkar, the Harijan who drafted the Indian constitution. It reminded me of a meeting of evangelical Christians renewing their commitment to Christ, but Paul was calling on his congregation to come to their own rescue and not to rely on any god – least of all a god who apparently showed no respect for Dalits.
After the meeting I spoke to some of the Dalits. One of the biggest problems they faced was unemployment. Young men who had been educated up to pre-university level were still working as casual labourers. The government minimum wage was sixteen rupees a day, but one Dalit said, ‘When we ask farmers for sixteen rupees, we are told “Are you mental?”’ One of the two graduates said Dalits found it very hard to get clerical jobs, because they could not speak English. When I asked him about jobs reserved by the government for Dalits, he replied, ‘They go to the Dalits brought up in cities. There it's much easier to learn English, because people are talking it all the time. In the villages you never hear English, so all you can learn is from a book.’
We walked back through the village. The Dalits lived in lines of low mud huts with steep, coconut-thatch roofs. They had no courtyards, so their animals were tethered in the lanes dividing the lines of huts. There was a small temple, and a shop selling liquor – the Dalits have always been encouraged to drink as one of the most effective ways of keeping them in their place. But things were ch
anging in Arasankuppam. Older Dalits told me that until about ten years ago they had not even been able to grow moustaches, wear shoes or fold their lungis above their knees. If they did, the high castes said, ‘Who does that untouchable think he is, trying to look smart like us.’ They couldn't sit on bullock carts but had to walk beside them. They had no access to wells but took drinking-water from canals, and they received food from their employers in the same vessels used for carrying dung. Unlike the young Dalits who attended Paul's meeting, the community elders had not taken advantage of the new-found freedom of dress – they seemed quite happy with their torn vests and thin, white cotton lungis. But they were pleased with their other freedoms. A woman who was asked what changes had come into her life cackled, pointed to her husband and said, ‘Ten years ago he didn't even know that he was a man. Now he does.’
Driving back to Kanchipuram I asked Paul what had brought about the changes. ‘Awareness,’ he said. ‘The Dalit community in Tamil Nadu has always been one of the most oppressed. That meant it took more time for them to realize that things had changed, that they no longer had to put up with the indignity of being untouchable. But you can see from that meeting that there is still discrimination. We have a lot of fighting still to do. It's ironic that much of the fighting has to be done with the leaders of the Church which came from your countries to teach us all about the dignity of man, brotherly love, equality and lifting up the poor. The trouble is that you in the West thought you were vastly superior to us. You despised us. The Indians now controlling the Church learnt from you. They despise the poor and the ignorant - especially the Dalits.’
The West obviously still thinks it's superior to India. Just before leaving Madras I was shown a poster produced by the United States Information Service to publicize an exhibition by an American sculptor, Henry Schiowitz, who had also been working in Mahabalipuram. Schiowitz dominated the poster, dressed in a white lungi. His bare chest was garlanded with marigolds and he held a cobra in his raised hand. At the bottom of the poster were Indian carvers, pygmy-sized compared with the great American, working outside their mean huts – the victims of cultural imperialism.