Kerala

I'm in a new place since I wrote last.  I'm down in Kerala state, in the city of Trivandrum.  This is the area where St. Thomas landed and started his ministry.  It's very tropical - there are coconut trees everywhere (Kerala means land of coconuts) and bananas, and even elephants walking down the road.  It's humid, but not very hot this time of year.  It's actually very comfortable.  I've spent the last couple of days doing some interesting things.  The first day I got here I mostly chilled out.  The next, I familiarized myself with the ministry at the organization I'm staying with - they primarily do research on evangelism.  The director found out I was a computer expert (his words, I just nodded) and asked me to spend some time teaching his staff how to use MS Word and stuff.  They already knew the basics, so I just covered some points on technical writing for an hour.  I don't know how helpful it was, but they were nice about it, and there might've been one or two useful things.  It was nice for me to have something to do.

Yesterday I left here for a school about an hour and a half away, where I spent the night.  The director, Bishop Moses, and I spoke for a while.  I got to meet his family, and tour the school, and even share and pray briefly this morning with the students.  They're doing something very interesting there.  It's a long explanation, but I'll embark on it nonetheless, and try to keep it on the brief side.

Hinduism is very much a cultural fixture in India.  Among other things, the Hindu religion provides some simple definitions for organizing society, which form the roots of the caste system.  To put it simply, castes are organized by what part of the god Brahma that they originate from (head, torso, thighs, feet) with the lowest group being the untouchables, who do not come from any part of Brahma at all.  As Hinduism teaches that the world is an illusion, and that only the gods are reality, this means that the untouchables don't even have a stake in the reality of the universe.  They are, by definition, inconsequential.  The different tribes and people groups that compose this untouchable class are also called dhalits.

When the British left India, they required India to draft a constitution.  The constitution was supposed to provide equality for everyone, and to that end, the dhalits where given basic constitutional rights, like land ownership, along with guaranteed representation in various parts of society - political offices, schools, universities, and the like.  These are actually reserved seats, or vacancies, that are required by law to be filled by dhalits.

Now, there was a clash in values between the Hindu culture and the requirements of India's constitution.  Christianity comes into play here.  Dhalits began to embrace the faith in huge numbers, mostly because the gospel of Christianity espouses that everyone is equal before God, and that Jesus came for every person from every caste. For the dhalits, Christianity represented the first system under which they actually had inherent value as individuals.  It freed them from the oppression, both cultural and physical, that they had been under for centuries.

The Brahmins and other high castes, who had considerable influence in Indian government, were practically concerned about these mass conversions.  The reason India never had a flourishing slave trade, or needed one, is because the dhalits have supplied that slavery for years.  Dhalit conversions threatened to undermine the status quo. So, the Brahmins put pressure on the government, and in 1950 managed to (illegally) amend the constitution by presidential order so that the basic rights described earlier were only available to dhalits (called "Scheduled Classes" in India's constitution) who are of Hindu religion.

That's a little silly, if you think about it.  Only dhalits who are Hindus are entitled to constitutional rights, and only dhalits who are Hindus are forced to the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder by their own religion.  Effectively, that means that the dhalits are back where they started.  Over the years, Sikhs and Buddhists have been able to secure rights for themselves as well, but only to the end that the constitution now provides the aforementioned rights to dhalits who are of the Hindu, Sikh, or Buddhist religions.

As a point of clarification, every Indian's caste and religion is a matter of public record.  If we did that in the States, imagine those things being stamped on your driver's license.

Christian influence in India has been around for a long time, and some of the results of that influence are good systems for education and healthcare in Christian communites.  Christians dhalits, on the whole, tend to be much better educated and qualified than their Hindu counterparts.  It's as much an issue of mindset as anything else; the Christians practice an enabling religion that isn't self-oppressive.  Now, there are all these vacancies reserved for dhalits in universities and government organizations, but they can't be filled by Christians, because that would be unconstitutional, and they can't be filled by other dhalits, because there aren't any who are qualified.

You see the difficulty of this cycle.

Bishop Moses' school has more than 700 students, about 80% of whom are dhalits.  The school is run by dhalits for dhalits, because these children have little or no educational opportunities elsewhere, and no means of bettering themselves or their communities.  The school is mostly run by donations, because members of these communities really can't afford to send their children to other schools.  The school is run on an international medium to enable students, when they graduate, to be competitive with students not only from India, but from anywhere in the world.  Logistics aside, this is one of the only means in the world for dhalits to raise themselves out of the oppressive society in which they live.

I'm a cynic.  I usually don't like 'projects.'  I'm generally pretty critical and pretty skeptical.  But I was deeply moved by being able to visit the school and understand what an incredible work of transformation people are doing there.  It was pretty amazing.  I'm often of the opinion that Christians cause as much trouble as anybody else (we're all people, after all, and people suck a lot of the time), and it was nice to see something very positive.

If I messed up my facts, feel free to correct.  I am only a "computer expert", not a guru (ha!  India joke!) when it comes to religious and social structures.