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10 January 2024

8 min read

Untouchable: experiencing discrimination around the world

In America it’s in the headlines, while in India it continues to influence. Rahil Patel explores caste discrimination and finds out who helped craft constitutional protections for those affected.

Rahil Patel

Rahil is a former Hindu monk, and author of Found By Love. He is a Tutor and Speaker at the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics.

A group of protesters march behind a banner waving flags.

Supporters of the caste discrimination bill march.

Equality Labs

Cisco is a highly successful California based tech company. It has an annual revenue of $57 billion and boasts of many awards and prizes. Great Place to Work placed Cisco at number one on its 2023 list. But what has this to do with caste discrimination? Well, 33 per cent of Cisco’s 84,000 employees are of Indian origin and the company is struggling under a lawsuit currently upheld by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing. The widely reported lawsuit is for caste discrimination against a Dalit (Untouchable) employee. The engineer has claimed to be paid less than his peers due to his low caste status.

Is this common? Well, the high caste Brahmin CEO of Google, Sunder Pichai (of Indian origin) has also faced allegations, raised by California based civil rights organisation, Equality Labs, of “caste bigotry” that is “running rampant” within his company.

“You can take an Indian out of India but you can never take India out of an Indian.” This was the sorrow filled saying I heard amongst well meaning fellow Indians whilst growing up in the United Kingdom. It usually cropped up when my Indian relatives and friends were confused by the appalling attitudes of other fellow Indians and trust me, it was quite common.

In October 2023, the Governor of California, Gavin Newsom vetoed a Bill to outlaw caste-based discrimination across his state. His decision was met with anger and rage from low caste Indian Dalits and from those who are fighting alongside them to ban discrimination amidst this rigid but ancient Hindu social structure.

It may surprise us in the west that the city of Seattle in Washington State was the first city in the USA to outlaw caste discrimination followed by Fresno in California.

But is this just a moral battle against an enemy that doesn’t really exist and a lame excuse to protest away with ‘Dalit Lives Matter?’ Or is there a tiny surreptitious fire carefully kindling away underneath the blinding smoke that mustn’t go unnoticed? After all, we are in the west…right? Of course we believe in equality…right?

The Swaminarayan Movement, America’s largest and most influential Hindu tradition saw the FBI raid it's temple compound in Robbinsville, New Jersey in 2021 for illegally importing Indians from India and illegally paying them below the national wage as well as confining them to the temple compound. The FBI raid rescued 200 workers who were largely from Dalit or Tribal castes.

When I was training in India to be a Hindu monk I remember recognising the harsh reality of the caste system in one single moment. One day, after I had finished a conversation with a friend in the temple compound I turned to head back to my room when I saw a young boy waving to me far away from the temple gates. I waved back and gestured to him to come in and talk but he stayed rooted to the spot. A little confused, I walked over and asked, “why don’t you come inside the compound?”

“I can’t.” He said,

“Why?”

“I’m a Dalit…I can’t even touch you!”

Thinking back over that mind numbing moment I can’t help imagine how hard it must have been for the woman in the Bible with the issue of blood who touched the hem of Jesus’s garment within the rigid culture of the time. The difference I guess is that Jesus turned to the broken hearted woman and healed her and then called her ‘daughter’ and defined her real identity as a result.

If the Dalit boy on the other hand came into the temple compound that day the security guards would have typically hit him with a long stick to drive him out of the temple gates. If he had touched me in the meantime I would have had to immediately go for a bath with all my clothes on and ensure that I didn’t touch any other human being or even a book or a pot on the way!

PM Modi’s comment has a pernicious and curious undertone. If Dharma is first then one is obliged to follow the caste system diligently.

Bhimrao. R Ambedkar was a brilliant economist and lawyer who studied at the London School of Economics. When his genius mind was called upon to draft the new constitution for independent India he was all too aware of how Hinduism was not so compatible with democracy. The idea of equality and dignity was evidently embedded into western institutions to his mind and Ambedkar knew very well that these ideas were founded on Judeo Christian principles, primarily, that all are created in the image of God. In other words, equal. Being a Dalit himself, Bhimrao knew the pitfalls of Hinduism’s caste system and the anarchical society it would create if the institutions left behind by the British were replaced with caste based ideas. As a result he crafted a constitution based upon Christian principles ensuring that all castes were allowed the opportunities and privileges from the state and its institutions by law. Sadly, although the state provided those privileges and protections by law in 1952 when the constitution came into effect, the society in India at large until this day does not. India exports it to the west as well.

When the current Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave his speech on National Human Rights Day in India a few years ago he emphasised to the nation that Dharma needs to be held first before Human Rights… if Dharma is pursued, he insisted, Human Rights would follow. Dharma simply put, is to pursue one’s duty and righteousness as according to Hindu tradition.

At a quick glance here one is reminded of what Alexander Solzhenitsyn said during his Harvard Commencement Speech in 1978. He told his audience that it was time that the west upheld human obligation more than human rights. He had a valid point to state in a significantly individualistic culture which still prevails in the west but PM Modi’s comment has a pernicious and curious undertone. If Dharma is first then one is obliged to follow the caste system diligently.

It has taken an incredibly long time to carve away at the negatives of the caste system in India but it is nowhere near the end.

Krishna who is the most widely revered incarnation of God in the Hindu world told his disciple Arjuna to fight and kill his cousins and teachers on the battlefield of Kurukshetra as it was his Dharma to do so. As a Kshatriya warrior caste Arjuna was not meant to meditate in the forest but fight and kill, as is laid out quite clearly in the beginning chapter of the Bhagvad Gita scripture.

Although the Gita scripture is quite a complex context to unravel here, in today’s India and in large parts of the west placing Human Rights behind Dharma can be quite dangerous. It somewhat validates the violence towards those of other faiths and endorses a dislike to those of a lower caste.

The need for individual freedom from caste based social structures in India was introduced to the British Parliament by William Wilberforce and Charles Grant in 1793. Interestingly, it was the same year that the cobbler-turned missionary William Carey snuck into India against the rules of the British East India Company. The company knew that if missionaries entered the country they would battle against the unfair social order and upset the high caste Brahmins. And that would hinder their lucrative trade.

Wilberforce and Grant along with other devout Christians fought in Parliament for 20 years until in 1813 a law was passed to allow missionaries passage into India. These men and women of God began to transform the subcontinent and provide education and health care for all castes. Teaching and training the Indian mind that God created male and female first (in his image) and they then created a social order as per God’s guidance whilst cautiously deconstructing the idea of God creating a social order first and male and female after.

It has taken an incredibly long time to carve away at the negatives of the caste system in India but it is nowhere near the end.

Sadly, the caste hierarchy has infiltrated parts of the Christian faith in India too. Dalit Christians who are made in the image of God cannot enter certain churches.

What fascinates me however, is when a Dalit leaves India, in most cases, a lot of India leaves them! They are quite successful. In a society like India one is made to believe (in large part by the communities) that past life karma has destined the individual to be a Dalit and so one must continue to clean the gutters and carry away dead dogs. But when a Dalit enters into a land like the USA or the UK where notions of equality and freedom are based upon Christian values the thinking of that individual changes drastically. A Dalit engineer filing a case against his seniors is inconceivable in large parts of the Indian community in India.

But the issue of caste is not the domain of Hinduism alone. Buddhism in Sri Lanka and Myanmar is very much entrenched in a caste based order which is quite an irony as abuse of this social order was one of the main reasons Gautam Buddha established the faith.

Sadly, the caste hierarchy has infiltrated parts of the Christian faith in India too. Dalit Christians who are made in the image of God cannot enter certain churches and where they can in some parts they are not allowed to sit in the pews but on the floor, at the back.

Author E.M Forster lovingly did say that India is both a mystery and a muddle.

The late Christian and author John Stott wrote in his book The Cross that Jesus was facing the most excruciating pain in the garden of Gethsemane not because of the cross and its horrific nails but because Christ was about to be touched by sin. God readily touches us even though we are untouchable.

The relentless work by William Carey, Wilberforce, Grant and other Indian reformers began to change the Indian mindset primarily by introducing the notion of love and freedom at every level of Indian society. Do we have the will to continue respectfully that fight?

Review

Art

Community

Culture

12 March 2025

5 min read

Ceremony's superpower is on show at Berwick Parade

Reinventing historic touchpoints between faith and community.

Susan Gray

Susan is a writer specialising in visual arts and contributes to Art Quarterly, The Tablet, Church Times and Discover Britain.

A projected image of a person dressed as a mermaid being pushed on a trolley falls on the wall and windows of an old barracks.

The Maltings (Berwick) Trust, Jennifer Charlton Photography.

Watch the parade

Ceremony is beating a retreat. Although wheeled out for major life events: naming newborns, marriage and bidding last goodbyes, and for grand state and civic occasions, standing on ceremony is frowned upon in day-to-day life. Ritual is treated warily, in case it creates an ‘us and them’ chasm between participants, seen as elite, and spectators, presumed to be condemned to disempowering passivity.

But what if, far from alienating people, the power of ritual, ceremony and spectacle could be a force for engagement? The church and military both have a history of creating, reinventing and refreshing rituals to meet changing social needs. The army chaplaincy is an invention of the late eighteeneeth century, responding to the move towards more settled communities of soldiers, requiring spiritual support. Drumhead altars, a centrepiece of November’s Festival of Remembrance, have origins going back into the mists of time, but quite how far back it is hard to say with certainty.

Processions and festivities for holy days are more apparent in Catholic countries, with Seville’s Semana Santa parades springing to mind, but well -dressing, May Queens, harvest festivals and Remembrance Sunday reveal a continued desire for entwining of church and community rituals, across faith traditions.

Art’s ability to step into the ceremonial space and create moments of communion, as well as giving voice to underrepresented groups, has been evident since Surrealism. British Surrealist Eileen Agar’s crustacean strewn ‘Ceremonial Hat for Eating Bouillabaisse’, 1936, attracted collective gasps when she wore it in London. In Sao Paolo in 1931, Brazilian modernist Flavio de Carvalho had to be rescued by police when he walked, hatless, in the opposite direction of a Corpus Christi procession, and the crowd wanted to beat him up.

Artists can also create spectacles of togetherness and joy.

Berwick Barracks is a challenging site for community arts. The massive walls and monumental stone-grey interior of Britian’s first purpose-built barracks is reminiscent of eighteenth century experiments in prison design. Even the windows on the living quarters, confirming it is not a prison, are tiny-paned and meanly spaced, like an afterthought dotted reluctantly on the overbearing grey expanse.

But over the weekend of Berwick Parade, the barracks’ forbidding walls turned into a living portrait of the border town. Under a piercingly brilliant starlit sky – it was the night of the six planet alignment – an audience gathered in the middle of the parade ground to watch themselves, neighbours, friends and family members move across the barrack walls. Artist Matthew Rossier’s projection at X10 magnification transformed the townspeople into giants, and the forbidding military structure of Berwick Barracks into a canvas for joy and creativity.

Berwick Parade shows you can draw community from a stone, forbidding, large grey stones at that. Paraders and audience were dazzled and dignified, seeing themselves anew.

The dancing, riding and processing images were soundscaped by music from the repertoire of the Kings Own Scottish Borderers, who have their ceremonial base, and museum, at the barracks, accompanied by the Melrose and District Pipes and Drums. Positioned by the main gate, the musicians set the expectation of spectacle with the rousing music associated with marching bands, as Scotland the Brave gave way to Mairi’s Wedding, and then a medley of upbeat, om-papa outdoors tunes.

Over 30 minutes, topped by veterans of the Kings Own Scottish Borderers and tailed by hi -vis vest wearing Berwick Parade production staff carrying metal barriers, a parade including processing clergy and the Bishop of Berwick, conga-ing medics in scrubs from Berwick Hospital, brownies, boys’ and girls' football teams, civic leaders in mayoral regalia, Morris, Highland and flamenco dancers, and midlife wild swimmers, shimmied across the walls. Berwick Riders Association were filmed on small ponies, so the magnified projection would not crop the riders into headless torsos. A wheelchair user crossed the expanse of barracks wall wearing a mermaid’s tail. Everybody involved was simultaneously true to life and larger than life.

Consisting of 850 characters, some of Berwick’s residents played more than one role. “Ooh there’s Cheryl again” commented a spectator next to me, as another pageant of figures travelled across barracks’ perimeter.

Speaking to Rossier the following morning, he revealed Parade participants had been filmed in the barracks, travelling across a10 metre stage. Magnification made these sequences large enough to cover one wall of the rectangular parade ground. Editing and projection created the appearance of participants entering at one corner and disappearing around the next.

Movement filmed across short distances opened up participation in the Parade to people with mobility and health issues, in a way that physically journeying around the whole parade ground, repeated over three nights, never could.

Filmed over six bitterly cold days, choreographer Chloe Sayers had to keep participants’ spirits and energy up as they devised ways of travelling across 10 metres that represented their personality, role and creativity. Sayers specialises with creating events with the public rather than professional dancers, and says that enabling people to express themselves through movement in spaces not always thought of as welcoming, breaks down barriers and creates a sense of ownership.

Some of the funniest moments in Berwick Parade were rare breeds sheep hogging the limelight like divas, and children clowning around with policemen’s helmets and clipboards. Rossier says primary school years are a sweet spot for performance. ”I love the energy kids bring. We had all age groups, but the six- to 10-year-olds bring so much energy. They just bounce. They have no inhibitions but are good at following instructions. At 12 or 13 heads start to drop and they become more self-aware.”

Rossier drew on his Irish Catholic mother’s tradition of ceremony and celebration with food and drinking, whether for a wedding or a funeral, to make Berwick Parade a fun place to hang out - food stalls included - beyond the performance. “I want people to have a nice time and not be subservient to the thing they have come to watch.”

Berwick Parade shows you can draw community from a stone, forbidding, large grey stones at that. Paraders and audience were dazzled and dignified, seeing themselves anew.

At King Charles’ coronation, the church’s ceremonial superpower was on display to the world. And as artists demonstrate, ceremony does not have to be confined to great occasions. Churches in all traditions can draw on their legacy of historic touchpoints between faith and community, to reinvent, reinstate and refresh rituals to engage with people’s contemporary concerns and hope.

Community groups taking part in Berwick Parade.

A projection of a horse and rider against a barracks wall.

Clergy process as they are filmed for a projecton.

A projection of a parade of young people dressed theatrically against a barracks wall.

A projection of soldiers marching and carrying flags.

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