Interfaith Relations

Belated posting of my fifth report from India:

http://tinyurl.com/ydb6rph

Overcoming Violence in India

I am posting a link to a "sound bite" podcast I've put together following India.

http://tinyurl.com/ygb2eyr

It's called "Overcoming Violence in India" and it's dated October 16, 2009 (at the moment it is at the top of the page, but it will drop down the page over time).

The MP3 recorder I took with me was faulty. I didn't realise this until I was back in the UK. This has resulted in the loss of two of the six interviews I recorded (one of them with Bezwada Wilson, national convenor of Safai Karmachari Andolan - a movement for the elimination of manual scavenging). Three of the surviving interviews were only partially recorded and only one came out intact. So, I've just had to work around what was left and salvage all I could. This is why my voice comes in so abruptly at the "end" of three of the interviews (because the machine cut out half way through). Anyhow, maybe you wouldn't have even noticed all these problems if I hadn't pointed them out...

I reckon if I smoked 40 a day I could work up a sexy, deep radio voice. As it is, I am not exactly Charlotte Green...

Manual Scavenging

Here is the forth piece I wrote following the India trip:

http://tinyurl.com/yzd8l38

I interviewed Bezwada Wilson in the dark on the balcony of a Delhi appartment. He suggested it would be quieter there then the living room where hosts and guests were socialising and tucking into food. I was so eager to interview him that I completely forgot I didn't have any insect repellent on and I was wearing open-toed shoes (er, with no socks). The mosquitoes were digging their fangs into our flesh and I started hopping from one foot to another, trying to ignore them. They got me twice on the same foot.

Women, Violence and The Law In India

Third news story on India: http://tinyurl.com/yhvmlby

Orissa - A Year After The Persecution

Here is the second news story on Orissa:

http://tinyurl.com/ycn5p86

Living Letters

Here is a link to the first report on a meeting I attended in Delhi:

http://tinyurl.com/ybd64m7

It has attracted a robust critique by P.N. Benjamin, coordinator for Bangalore Initiative for Religious Dialogue (BIRD). For the record, the Living Letters team did not stay in anything you could call a five star hotel. However, Mr Benjamin appears to agree with the Church leaders’ call: “they must turn their attention the discrimination faced by Dalit converts within the Indian churches.”

(FYI - Before editing, the first paragraph originally read: "Indian Christian leaders have called on the Church to confess that the caste system is still being practised in churches.")

(In fact, here is the report as I orginally wrote it:

Indian Church leaders call for an end to caste discrimination inside and outside the Church

Indian Christian leaders have called on the Church to confess that the caste system is still being practised in churches.

The call came as senior representatives of the National Council of Churches in India (NCCI) met to discuss the Church response to poverty and exclusion on the International Day of Prayer for Peace (September 21).

An ecumenical Living Letters team representing the World Council of Churches was also present at the debate held at the YMCA Conference Hall in New Delhi. The ecumenical group expressed its solidarity with the NCCI in overcoming violence in all its forms – from poverty and neglect to discrimination and murder.

Bishop Taranath S. Sagar, President of NCCI, said: “There are millions of people who are subject to poverty and discrimination by the caste system in India. This is equal to racism. The outcast Dalits are being treated as Untouchables, not having access to dignified human lives and subjected to all kinds of humiliation.

“The Church should always be 100 percent sensitive to pain in society. Jesus was always sensitive to people’s suffering. He would go up to people and touch them. How sensitive are we to understanding the tears that the Dalits are shedding every day? Women are being raped, children are under nourished, food is not available to everyone and natural resources are not being distributed equally. Although the Constitution has laws to protect these people, in practise it is not happening.”

The Indian Constitution first outlawed discrimination on the basis of caste in 1955 with the introduction of the Anti-Untouchability Act, later renamed the Civil Right Act in 1979. Further protection for the outcast Dalits and tribal Adivasi people came with the Prevention of Atrocities Act in 1989. However, according to Church leaders and social activists in India, the implementation of these laws has been almost non existent.

Bishop Dr D.K. Sahu, General Secretary of NCCI, said: “People need to look at violence in all its forms. According to statistics, about 300 million people in India are in need of food. What else do you call that if not violence which makes people suffer hunger on a daily basis? India has cultures of a caste system and a culture of patriarchy. There are 2.7 million Christians in India and they are predominantly Dalit and predominantly poor.

“I think the Indian Church has to make a confession first. If you are alienated in society and you become a Christian, you are alienated again. We tell them, ‘if you become Christian then there is no discrimination’, but once they become Christian they are looked down upon by Christians of higher castes. A higher caste Christian will never marry a Dalit Christian, yet we say we are all one.”

Following questions put by the Living Letters team, Church leaders also explained what initiatives they were supporting in order to end caste discrimination. The NCCI is backing public interest litigation in the Supreme Court, making the case that Dalits and tribal people of Christian and Muslim identity are not covered by the Prevention of Atrocities Act. During Lent, the NCCI called on Christians to fast for justice in the name of Dalit liberation. NCCI members are involved in ecumenical dialogue about how the Church can be just and inclusive. A number of non governmental organisational campaigns also have the backing of the NCCI, such as Safai Karmachari Andolan - a campaign to end manual scavenging led by Bezwada Wilson.

Revd Dr P.B.M. Basaiawmoit, Vice President of NCCI, said: “In India, there is apartheid. The Dalit issue is a racist issue. Dalits are not seen as human beings. Tribals are less than Dalits.

“If the Church removes its own exclusiveness then we can begin to talk about inclusion of others. We have to work for inclusion in the Church.”

Ends.)

Here is a link to a few pictures: http://tinyurl.com/yapdn8w

Glorious India

I have been accused of showcasing the poverty of India on my blog and not showing much by way of its glory. This really wasn't my intention.

Also, when I wrote that I believe passionately that social justice falls within the ambit of religion what I really meant was that religion falls within the ambit of social justice. Religion doesn't own social justice.

Kandhamal, Orissa, India

A short video of Kandho tribals and Pano Dalits dancing and singing on the site of their recently, legally demarcated land in Kandhamal, Orissa, India. September 2009. Filmed on a Blackberry.

These people lost their homes in the violence that swept through Orissa last August following the death of the Hindu hardliner, Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati. While I was there, a van turned up and a couple of men started unloading asbestos sheets to be used for roofing.... Asbestos! Rama Hansraj from Catholic Relief Services told me that people were aware of the health hazards of asbestos. Apparently, it is slowly being phased out in India. But after this, I started seeing it all over the place. Adverts for asbestos down a high street in Hyderabad, for example!

Anyhow, on a more optimistic note, I can tell you that I was told by community workers that Christian and Hindu children are playing with each other once again in some Kandhamal villages.

Hyderabad, India, September 2009

A snapshot of Hyderabad, India, September 2009:

A woman walks across the road in Hyderabad.

A young man selling vegetables.

The pavement is so busy, it is actually easier to walk on the road!

Shoppers in Hyderabad.

Taking it easy!

Shop window.
Roof top view of the city.
An English Methodist Church in Hyderabad.

Manequins in a shop window modelling long kurtas.

A very blurry picture of women celebrating the festival of Durga, the Hindu Goddess of power. You can't really see in this picture, but they were letting floating candles drift out on to the lake.


Hyderabad.

Outside the Vivekananda Institute of Human Excellence. I can tell you what I was briefly told about Swami Vivekananda. Swami Vivekananda was a liberal Hindu who revived Hinduism at the end of the 19th century in a way that appealed to the secular mind and to Hindus who felt oppressed by the caste system. He was also a strong advocate of interfaith relations, believing that one faith alone could not lead to the truth. However, his spirtual philosophy was intellectual and so it did not catch on in the mainstream. I bought a couple of his quote books for a few rupees at a store outside the Institute.

Religious leaders from different faiths talk about overcoming violence and making peace in the world at the Vivekananda Institute in Hyderabad.

The guy in the orange is Swami Srikanthananda. He expressed some wonderful ideas: "Religion is realisation, it is experience, it is not only theory." He also repeated a Vivekananda quote: "Religion is the manifestation of the Divinity already in man." And some other powerful stuff: "When we try to limit God, we become enemies."

Another one of Swami Srikanthananda's beliefs which resonated with me was this: "It is a sin to say we are all sinners. We are all divine souls." It made me think about Christianity, which has strong ideas about sin. I think one of the helpful things about Christians recognising "sin" (or "wrong doing", as I prefer to say) is that it allows injustice to be recognsied and acted upon. I believe passionately that social justice falls within the ambit of religion and many denominations of Christianity advocate this too (Methodism, for example). Something that can happen within Christianity is the glorification of suffering. I, along with others, had to bite my tongue as I listened to a sermon by a preacher doing just that to Christian Pano Dalits and Kandho tribals in Kandhamal, all of whom had lost their homes and many of whom had lost loved-ones following persecution by Hindu fundamentalists in August last year. Hearing that St Paul became a Saint after his head was chopped off just made me feel exasperated. However, many Christians will tell you that Christianity is not about the glorification of suffering.

I also listened to a stirring speech on peace by a Brahma Kumaris follower called Sister Kanti. She said: " All that I create carries some energy, so if I create a peaceful thought, then I create peaceful energy." The idea is that peace starts with a peaceful thought. So simple and so true. She recommended meditating on peace for 15 minutes every morning. The meditation would go like this: "I am a peaceful soul, happiness is within me, I do not search for anything outside myself."

Sister Kanti also said that long, long ago, there was a world that was 100 per cent peaceful and that we have "come down" from this time and now hope to return there. If this is "devolution", then I am prepared to consider it...

...I asked Swami Srikanthanandra when he believed the time would come to go back to this world of 100 per cent peace. He said that that place was within me, as it was within everyone.

Agra, India, September 2009.

A snapshot of Agra, India, September 2009:

A man with a monkey on a lead on the road to Agra from Delhi. Women preparing and selling vegetables in Agra.

Taj Mahal, Agra. I was surprised that most of the visitors were actually large groups of Indian boys armed with cameras who never tired of asking for a photograph... and another one... and just one more....... The fountains of the Taj Mahal.

We had to walk barefoot around the Taj. High on the heat from the sun and the burning from the marble underfoot, I saw the incarnation of love above the tomb... I traced my hand along the white marble wall and not a trace of dust came off on my palm.

Agra town shop.
Street sellers on the road leading up to the Taj Mahal. If you want to experience the hard sell, this is the place to go!

Delhi, India, September 2009

A snapshot of Delhi, September 2009:

Children play on the street in Delhi.A colourful street store.Street market, Delhi.

Every van was colourful.A cobra with a snake charmer.

A typical auto rickshaw.

Delhi is hosting the Common Wealth Games next year.

A dusty highway in Delhi.

Islamic Centre in Delhi.


"The Price of Freedom is Responsibility" - Discuss!

Social activists from high-profile NGOs in Delhi talk about the situation for women in India.

India - Orissa One Year On

I have just come back from India where I have been reporting on the continuing existence of the caste system (which is legally abolished but still practised) and the situation for people in Orissa whose lives were turned upside down when fundamentalists went on a murderous rampage in August last year. I will post a link to the reports once they are published. For now, here are a few of my photos from Orissa.
The woman wearing glasses and a creamy coloured kurta is Rama Hansraj, a relief worker working with Dalits (the Untouchable, discriminated outcast in India) and Adivasis (tribal people considered even lower on the pecking order than Dalits, according to the caste system). She is standing with displaced villagers from the Kando tribe and Pano Dalits in Kandhamal, Orissa. In the background are the first signs of the infrastructure for a new village, which has recently been legally demarcated. Rama (a Dalit herself) is working for a Catholic relief fund - not because she is a Catholic, but because this is the best way she can help her people. She is truely amazing.

The Kandho and Pano people of Kandhamal, Orissa, perform a traditonal honary welcome with singing and dancing. A man welcomes us at one of the handful of remaining relief camps in Kandhamal, Orissa. All the government-run camps have closed (there were around 17 camps in Kandhamal this time last year). I heard horror stories about the squalor in the State-provided camps. Many people were forced to flee, not only their burning homes, but also the camps. This camp was aided by the Church. A woman at the same relief camp as above.


Kandho and Pano displaced villagers tell of what happened to them at the end of August last year. Many lost loved-ones and 5,000 homes across Orissa were burned. The violence was started after a hard-line, anti-Christian Hindu leader, Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati , was murdered by Maoists, some of them Christian. Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati was the leader of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad party. Hindu fundamentalists reacted by persecuating Christians.



Children at the Happy Valley Children's Home in Kandhamal, Orissa. Happy Valley Children's Home helped with the relief effort in the area, providing food and clothes to refugees and finding them shelter. A Hindu girl - probably on her way to dance at a wedding - spotted on the road to Berhampur, Orissa. On the back of the auto rickshaw that the beautifully painted Hindu girl was travelling in, a boy clings on for a ride.Traffic on the road from Bhubaneswar to Berhampur, Orissa.

Crab and prawn fishing are an important export from Chilika Lake, the largest lake in Orissa.
The green and hilly landscape of Orissa, a north eastern state of India (there are 28 states in India).

New Delhi Court Decriminalizes Gay Sex

A New Delhi court has ruled that consensual gay sex is not a crime, The Times reports today. The Delhi High Court ruled that applying the 1860 colonial law, which ranked homosexual intercourse alongside bestiality and paedophilia as “sex against nature” and punishable by 10 years in prison, violated the constitution and international human rights conventions.

One small step for the 21st century and a giant leap for humanity: http://tinyurl.com/mkbshc

There was a stirring article by Johan Hari in The Independent yesterday on the history of gay rights in this country ahead of London’s Gay Pride tomorrow: http://tinyurl.com/mtzuzp

If only the Church would wake up to the 21st century and sanctify civil partnerships. There is a lot of progressive talk at grass roots levels (in the more sophisticated circles of the Christian world, ie: http://tinyurl.com/mhk8o3), but at the decision-making levels there is still much coughing and buck passing. I am not up to speed with what is happening among other faith groups, but I imagine it is very similar. Meanwhile, humanism continues to live up to its name. Long may humanists continue to spread enlightenment.