A Catholic bishop in India decried the continuous attacks on Christian Dalits because of their faith, especially in the states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.
“The government and the police should pay more attention to the suffering of Dalits, Christian Dalits and tribals,” said Bishop Sarat Chandra Nayak, head of the Disadvantaged Caste and Tribal Office of the bishops’ conference in India.
The prelate urged authorities “to protect the most vulnerable and not in fact deny the image of India as a democratic country that promotes the development of all.”
Bishop Nayak was quoted in a report on AsiaNews reacting to the death of a 14-year-old Christian Dalit boy as a result of an acid attack.
Instead of filing the appropriate charges against the attackers, the police reportedly classified the incident as a “suicide.”
“From many sources, we know that in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh there are many Christian Dalits attacked for their faith with murders, rape, assaults and intimidation,” said the bishop.
He said the Dalits, who comprise at least half of the Christian population in the region, suffer from and “increased level of violence.”
Father Devasagayaraj M. Zackarias, former national secretary of the Office for Disadvantaged Castes said religious freedom in India “is now at risk.”
He said the family of the victim of the acid-throwing incident is still under threat and needs protection.
The priest said the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party of India has failed to protect minorities and those deemed from the lower-caste rungs of Indian society.
Dalits have the lowest status in the traditional Hindu social structure and even today in most of Indian states they are seen to be so “impure” that caste Hindus consider their presence polluting.
They are forbidden to enter temples or use the same cremation grounds as used by so-called upper-caste Hindus of society.
Hindus also consider traditional Dalit occupations as tainted, such as working with leather, working with night soil and other dirty work.
There are an estimated 200 million Dalits in India, some 16 percent of the country’s population of 1.3 billion. In Uttar Pradesh, they constitute 21 percent of the total state’s population of 204 million.
