March 27, 2009

BANGKOK/GENEVA – Participants in a workshop at the Global Ecumenical Conference on Justice for Dalits in Bangkok, Thailand, have highlighted the close connection between caste and patriarchy. The Lutheran World Federation (LWF) and the World Council of Churches organized the 21-24 March gathering, which was hosted by the Christian Conference of Asia.

Entitled "Multiple Discriminations: Special Characteristics of the Situation of Dalit Women and Dalit Christians," the workshop uncovered the additional layers of stigma and degrading treatment Dalit women face as a result of their sex.

"The moment [a body] is a Dalit, that body becomes ‘feminized' and we need to seriously look into caste and patriarchy together," challenged Rev. Dr Evangeline Anderson-Rajkumar, chair of the Department of Women's Studies at United Theological College in Bangalore, India, an ecumenical institution of the Arcot Lutheran Church.

Caste, class and gender combine to silence and subjugate Dalit women, shared Mr. Pirbhu Satyani, advocacy officer for Thardeep Rural Development Programme in Pakistan's Sindh province. "Dalit women are treated as third-class citizens in Pakistan."

According to Bishop Dr. Vedanayagam Devasahayam of the Church of South India, Madras Diocese, caste-based discrimination often contributes to the feminization of poverty. In India, where a majority of the 1.2 million Dalits are women, Dalits are forced to do degrading, unsanitary jobs for a pittance.

The women must "clean dry latrines with the help of minimum aids, usually a pair of tin scrapers and a wicker bucket or basket, remove and carry human excreta on their heads to the dumping sites," reported Devasahayam.

Karuppaiah, a Dalit living in a slum in Chennai in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, commented, "I obviously know it is disgusting, but I have no option other than to do this work."

Church-based initiatives are taking steps to offer Dalit women alternatives to such debasing and impoverishing employment.

Through their Slum Women's Advancement Programme, the Women in Church and Society desk of the United Evangelical Lutheran Church in India provides microloans to women in the slums of Chennai to help them establish new livelihoods.

Ms. Indira Ghale, treasurer of the Nepali Feminist Dalit Organization, shared that LWF World Service Nepal strives to empower Dalit women through advocacy, income generation and capacity building.

Workshop participants-representatives of churches and church-related organizations from all over the world-agreed that such initiatives towards Dalit women's emancipation are a welcome sign but raised the question whether they can bear the desired result in the face of widespread, deep-rooted prejudice present even in the churches.

"I have no issues sharing the Eucharist with a Dalit but I will never get her married to a boy who is a Dalit," asserted a caste Christian from India, speaking about his daughter under condition of anonymity.

The participants called for the churches to recognize the current treatment of Dalit women as sinful and dehumanizing. They urged the worldwide ecumenical community to affirm that women are also created in the image of God and that any form of abuse of women distorts the divine image in each human being.

More information on the Global Ecumenical Conference on Justice for Dalits is available at http://www.lutheranworld.org/What_We_Do/OIahr/OIAHR-Dalit_Justice.html.

Lutheran World Information
A contribution by Timothy Melvyn, communication officer for the United Evangelical Lutheran Church in India.