Chettipulam, Caste and UN

The location: a nondescript hamlet in the interiors of Tamil Nadu.

The issue: Violent protests by upper caste people against the entry of dalits into a temple. They are called non-dalits by the newspapers.

The news could not have been more welcoming. Government officials did not give up. On Tuesday, 100 Dalits entered the Ekambareshwar Temple in Chettipuram village.

For those dwelling in cities, this is a passing news piece worth just a glance. That the entry of 100 humans who deserved to worship at a temple and yet were being prevented by their so called upper caste bretheren took so many attempts in the recent weeks, is a national shame. It is also something the Indian government is not perturbed about.

India seems poised to assert itself as a growing world economy power. Yet its caste issues continue to ride high. Chettipuram is just an example. A tiny victory. Our landscape is dotted with tens of thousands of Chettipurams where caste based discrimination is the in-thing. And yet, Chettipurams of this nature elude any large scale effort to eliminate discrimination.

The 2001 Census puts India's total number of villages at 638,365. Approximately 250 million people across villages and cities suffer ostracism based not so much on their deeds and misdeeds, but merely a stamp of lineage on their names.

India raised a hue and cry when the United Nations Human Rights Coucil made a declaration on caste and opposed the use of the word caste. UNHCR has equated abuse in the name of caste as human rights abuse, a long overdue decision.

It is a known fact that in spite of large scale abuse, grotesque or subtle, in the name of caste within its boundaries, the country chooses to lobby in relegating caste as an issue to the back-burner in any international forum. At the 2001 Duban conference on racism and other forms of intolerance, caste was not part of the official conclusions. For long, the country has tried hard to hide to the international world its ugly side.

In the race to be counted as an economic power, should the country go to such lengths in protesting something it would dismiss as a `sensitive internal matter'? Is it not high time the country addressed this issue, especially since it wants to gain foothold in the world power groups?

Or should it meekly condone the political power and Parliament's numbers that come with caste based polling in its myriad constituencies?

The dialogue to view casteism as racism has grown stronger over the last two decades. The country stands vindicated when it protests racist attacks on Indians in Australia.

External Affairs Minister S M Krishna, the prime minister and the ambassadors who form the country's advocacy groups should ideally admit caste as an Indian reality when they talk of racism.

As a government, India may do good to do some serious rethinking on caste as the ultimate
route to power. Chettipulams may take not a few weeks to happen, but a few 100 years more, if the country and its government ignore it.