Despite accelerated economic growth in India, inequality between rich and poor—including within caste groups—has grown
and Tushar Singh have a few things in common. They are 19 and 18 years old respectively and live within a couple of hours’ drive of Delhi, albeit in opposite directions. They both happen to be Dalits, from the bottom ranks of India’s voluminous caste register. And they have also both been in the news lately, though for very different reasons.
Dalits’ circumstances have indeed improved. The rigid, ritual shunning of them has largely faded. Three generations of quotas in legislative bodies, in state schools and in government service have created a lower-caste bourgeoisie, such that mid-ranked castes began lobbying for, and eventually won their own “reservations”. Caste-based parties have sprung up to agitate for more government help, and won power in many states.
The persistence of discrimination is not limited to Hindus. An estimated 65% of India’s 20m Catholics are former Dalits whose forebears converted in part to escape caste oppression. Yet according to the Indian church’s most recent published record, out of 27,000 priests only 5% were of Dalit origin, and not a single one of its six cardinals and 30 archbishops.
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