In a startling development in the Catholic Church in India, Dalits who had converted to the catholic denomination of Christianity have accused the upper caste Church clergy and officials of blatant discrimination and have threatened to form a new Church.
Dalit Catholics have demanded an end to casteism and Dalit Catholic leaders across India have threatened to start a new church if their demands are not met the UCA News reported.
It comes as a surprise for many people as the Catholic Church that preaches equality practices caste-based discrimination. As per Christian tenet, all humans are children of God but the Dalits in the Catholic Church feel that they are children of a lesser God.
The Dalit Christians held a virtual meeting on September 5 attended by 150 participants. The meeting was organised by six Dalit Christian organizations from the southern state of Tamil Nadu.
“If the Vatican does not immediately remove the discriminatory process of bishop selection that neglects qualified Dalit priests, we could announce our own Indian Dalit Catholic Church or the Indian Dalit Catholic Rite,” Franklin Caesar Thomas, coordinator of the National Council of Dalit Christians (NCDC), was quoted saying in the UCA News.
“The new church will separate Dalit Catholic Christians from the Indian Catholic Church’s casteist leadership.”, it observed.
Vincent Manoharan who is the national convener of National Dalit Christian Watch (NDCW), was quoted saying in the UCA News that years of protests by the Dalit Christians had not yielded any positive changes and said, “Dalit Christians are fighting for their respective place in the Church as well as fighting in the Supreme Court for their scheduled caste status in society,”.
“From now onwards we will have national and international conventions to press our demand to end casteism and discrimination against Dalits in the Catholic Church. Unfortunately, our brethren are suffering in both the Church and society.
“We are also planning to send our representative to the Vatican, the United Nations and the European Union so that we can build a pressure group at the international level.”
The embattled Dalit Catholics who constantly face discrimination appealed to the Catholic Church, the apostolic nuncio to India and Pope Francis and asked them to end this circle of humiliation and the overt and covert practice untouchability that is applied when it comes to the selection of bishops.
The Dalit Catholic leadership said that none of India’s four cardinals and 31 archbishops has a Dalit background and out of 188 bishops, only 11 are from the Dalit community.
Tamil Nadu, an epicenter of Christian evangelists who go about converting vulnerable pagan religion followers saying that their native religion is what makes them face untouchability, has only one Dalit bishop of the 18 bishops.
Of the 25 million Christians in India, 60 per cent of them are Dalit or of tribal origin and are discriminated by never getting proper representation within the Church which boasts of equality.