#Dalit Christians

[queerism1969]

[infantisimo]

very insightful piece written in 2009 by the late gail omvedt on christianity in india, politics of conversions, dalit and tribal christians, the british empire (company and raj periods), brahminical hegemony and violence, 2008 anti-christian kandhamal massacre, jotiba phule and the dilemmas faced by dalit christian theology and the larger dalit movement.

the references at the end are a treasure for anyone interested in learning more.

[indizombie]

The birth of the 21st century unleashed the onslaught of neo-liberal economic policies and the religious fundamentalist insurgence changed our concept of nation, nationalism, and politics. The Hindutva politics of cultural nationalism and its violent disposition toward indigenous and minority sections in this country provoked us to ask “Who sings the nation?” (Spivak) and “Whose imagined community?” (Partha Chatterjee). The issues such as the Babri Masjid case, Muthalaq case, Uniform Civil Code, the CAA, anti-conversion laws, and attacks on Dalit/Tribal Christians so and so forth have unveiled the wretched status of minorities in this country. Realizing that Muslims are hard to nationalize/ Hinduise, Christians are now targeted to be  integrated into the pan-Indian Hindu cultural identity. Recently, some of the church leaders are satiated through frequent visits and political offers by the communal forces, and of course, few of them have already preyed on it due to the issues connected with foreign funds or any other personal issues of corruption. However, Christians should not forget the ideological position of Hindutva as it renders Christians, Muslims, and Communists internal threats to the Indian Nation.

Fr. Dr. Y.T Vinayaraj, director, Christian Institute for the Study of Religion and Society (CISRS)

[shaileshrathod]

તમિલનાડુએ દલિત ખ્રિસ્તીઓને ���ાભ આપવા માટે બંધારણીય સુધારાનો ઠરાવ અપનાવ્યો

તમિલનાડુએ દલિત ખ્રિસ્તીઓને લાભ આપવા માટે બંધારણીય સુધારાનો ઠરાવ અપનાવ્યોવિધાનસભાએ ઠરાવ પસાર કર્યો જ્યારે ભારતીય જનતા પાર્ટી (BJP) નેતાઓ વિરોધમાં વોકઆઉટ કરી ગયા.તમિલનાડુ એસેમ્બલીએ બુધવારે એક ઠરાવ પસાર કરીને કેન્દ્રને બંધારણમાં સુધારો કરવા અને ખ્રિસ્તી ધર્મમાં પરિવર્તિત થયેલા અનુસૂચિત જાતિના લોકોને સમાન અધિકારો, સંરક્ષણ, છૂટછાટો અને અનામતનો વિસ્તાર કરવા હાકલ કરી હતી.તામિલનાડુના મુખ્ય પ્રધાન એમકે…

[byfaithmedia]

Have you read Prophecy Today’s Article on the Indian Awakening? With quotes from Mathew Backholer’s Revival Fire - 150 Years of Revivals, this article is uplifting, inspiring & an encouraging read.

Buy now: https://byfaith.org/product/revival-fire-150-years-of-revivals/

[shehzadi]

so far, nearly 3 weeks on from the inauguration of ram mandir, indian authorities have demolished as many masjids and/or madrasas.

30.01.24 - akhoonji masjid & madrasa in delhi, also destroying a cemetery, shrine and all the students’ belongings in the process.

01.02.24 - a madrasa in maharashtra despite facing opposition from local muslims and one day before its scheduled court appeal.

08.02.24 - a masjid & madrasa in uttarakhand. this comes one day after uttarakhand became the first state to pass the uniform civil code (x, x) which aims to apply a ‘hindu code’ to all indians, infringing on the rights of dalits, adivasis, sikhs, christians, buddhists and muslims (i.e. anybody non-hindu) to practice their religion/lifestyle. muslim women protesting the demolition were lathi-charged (beaten with sticks) by police, a shoot-on-sight order was given resulting in 6 muslims killed and 300+ injured in the riots that followed, a curfew was put in place during which hindutva mobs burned down muslim homes and businesses while shouting abuse at muslims.

as always, no prior notice was given and bjp used it’s gold-standard excuse for each demolition, citing ‘illegal encroachment’.

in addition to these masjid demolitions, indian authorities bulldozed 2 neighbourhoods (ghettos, really) in the same timeframe and also without prior notice:

01.02.24 - jasola slum, which, having been around for at least 16 years, should not have been demolished without providing alternative housing, as the delhi slum policy states for slums which came up before 2015. obviously, housing hasn’t been provided.

06.02.24 - panchsheel nagar in mumbai which, having been around since 2011, entitled residents to paid rehabilitation, which has also not been given. this has left over 110 families homeless.

the demographic of both neighbourhoods, surprise surprise, is overwhelmingly muslim, buddhist and dalit.

bjp is enjoying the cover it is receiving from israel’s genocide in palestine to do whatever it wants and is getting bolder by the day. this ‘bulldozer justice’ has been happening for years, but not at such a rapid rate as it is now.

[mahoutoons]

i'm feeling controversial today so here's another hot take. and before you type away at your keyboards, know that this is all coming from a south asian.

white leftists have got to stop acting like christianity is the only religion that deserves to be criticized and you cannot touch any other religion because that'd be racist and bigoted. because as an indian who's watching my country progress towards hindu nationalism, this attitude doesn't help at all.

white people see hinduism as this exotic brown religion that's so much more progressive but don't know the violence of the caste system, how it others a large portion of the population on the basis of caste, literally branding them as "untouchables". they teach us in school that this problem is a thing of the past but the caste system is still alive and shows itself in violent ways. and that's not even covering how non hindus are treated in the country. muslims especially are being killed, have their houses bulldozed, businesses destroyed, and are being denied housing, our fucking prime minister called them infiltrators and there's this fear among hindu extremists that they'll outnumber the hindus in the country. portraying hinduism as this exotic religion does a disservice to all those oppressed by the hindutva ideology

similarly, white people see buddhism as this hippie religion that's all about peace but have no idea how extremist buddhists in myanmar have been persecuting the rohingya muslims for years and drive them out of the country.

if anything portraying these religions as exotic hippie brown religions is a type of orientalism itself.

and also y'all have got to realize that just because christianity has institutional power in america doesn't mean there aren't parts of the world where they are persecuted on the basis of religion. yes karen from florida who cries christophobia because she sees rainbow sprinkles on a cake is stupid but christian oppression DOES exist in non western countries where they're a minority. pakistani christians get lynched almost on a daily basis over blasphemy accusations. just look up the case of asia bibi, a pakistani christian woman who was sentenced to death on blasphemy charges because of something she said when she was being denied water because it was "forbidden" for a christian and a muslim to drink from the same utensil and she'd made it unclean just by touching it (which is ALSO rooted in casteism and part of pakistani christians' oppression also comes from the fact that a lot of them are dalit but that's a whole other discussion). and that's just one christian group, this isn't even going into what copts, assyrians, armenians etc have faced and continue to face. saying that christians everywhere are privileged because of american christianity actually harms christian minorites in non western countries.

and one last thing because this post is getting too long: someone being anti america doesn't automatically mean they're the good guys. too many times i've been seeing westerners on twitter dot com praise the fucking taliban just because they hate america. yes, the same taliban who banned education for women, thinks women should be imprisomed at home, and consistently oppresses religious and ethnic minorities in afghanistan. yes, america's war on afghanistan was bad and they SHOULD be called out for their war crimes there. no, the taliban are still not the good guys. BOTH of them are bad. you cannot pretend to care about muslims and brown people if you praise the taliban. because guess what? most of their victims are BROWN MUSLIM WOMEN. but of course white libs who praise them don't rub their two braincells together to make that conclusion.

this post has gotten too long and i've just been rambling so the point of this post is: white "leftists" whose politics are primarily america centric should stop acting like criticism of ideologies like hindutva, buddhist extremism, and islamic extremism BY people affected by these ideologies is the same as racism or religious intolerance because that helps literally no one except the extremist bigots. also america is not the centre of the world, just because something isn't happening in america doesn't mean it isn't happening elsewhere

[timetravellingkitty]

Reva do you have any recommendations on dalit feminist history/ dalit feminist movement? Any book? Any documentary etc..

coming out as dalit (yashica dutt) and the trauma of caste (thenmozhi soundararajan) are both memoirs by dalit feminists (the latter helped organise dalit history month and founded equality labs; she especially focuses on casteism in the indian diaspora) . I also recommend karukku by bama, who is a dalit christian

there's also dalit feminist theory (edited by sunaina arya and aakash singh rathore) but I haven't read that yet

[metamatar]

it bears repeating as a religion christianity is literally, textually and scripturally more progressive than hinduism. it is atleast textually arguing that all people are equal in the eyes of God. this is why dalit conversion to christianity is often a genuinely emancipatory move.

[eclecticwordblender]

me on eid: religions and by extension religious festivities are inherently misogynistic and i refuse to partake in any religious celebration.

liberals: you feminazi islamophobic bitch bet you don’t say it about your hindu festivals.

me on christmas: religions and by extension religious festivities are inherently misogynistic and i refuse to partake in any religious celebration. + i went to a catholic school and all my worst experiences and memories are linked to that hell hole.

liberals: you casteist (most christians in india are dalits who converted) bitch bet you don’t say that about your brahmin festivals.

me on diwali: religions and by extension religious festivities are inherently misogynistic and i refuse to partake in any religious celebration.

liberals and conservatives together: you feminazi bitch bet you don’t say this about muslim and christian festivals.

[mariacallous]

On August 27, Sabir Malik, a migrant worker in the Indian state of Haryana, was lured from his home and beaten to death by a mob of at least 10 Hindu men. They suspected that Malik, a Muslim, had eaten beef. Lab tests run by local police would later find that he hadn’t. But it didn’t matter: The attack was led by “cow vigilantes,” the name for Hindu nationalist militias and mobs that take it upon themselves to violently enforce Hindu supremacy on India’s minority communities, particularly Muslims.

A new report from the Center for the Study of Organized Hate (CSOH) shared exclusively with WIRED found that Instagram, which is owned by Meta, is becoming a key avenue for cow vigilantes to share their violent exploits with a wider audience, and even raise money.

“It's clear that Meta is complicit in the proliferation or the flourishing of cow vigilantism in India,” says Raqib Hameed Naik, founder and executive director of CSOH. These practices, Naik says, are likely in violation of Meta’s own policies around hateful and violent content.

Between February and August 2024, CSOH identified and analyzed 1,023 Instagram accounts run by users involved in cow vigilantism. Researchers found that 30 percent of the accounts shared content showing physical violence against Muslims involved in the cattle business. Some videos flagged by CSOH show high-speed car chases down India’s highways, where cow vigilantes tail and try to pull over trucks carrying cows. Others are more graphic, showing vigilantes beating men who they claim are engaging in cow slaughter or the cattle trade. One video, which garnered 5,200 likes, showed three frightened Muslim men in the trunk of a car. Another video shows a cow vigilante beating an older Muslim man with a wooden bat. That video received more than 1,200 likes.

The 121 Instagram Reels analyzed by CSOH showing physical violence against people transporting cattle garnered over 8.3 million views, and most were not labeled with the Meta filter that warns users of graphic content. CSOH found 53 accounts that had posted violent content were eligible for Instagram’s “Send Gift” function, which allows approved creators to earn money directly from donations from their followers. Other accounts would post bank details in their Reels or comments sections. “That means anyone on Instagram who likes their work can send them money to continue doing that violent extremist activity,” says Naik.

To test Meta’s systems, CSOH reported 167 posts that depicted violence using Instagram’s on-platform reporting systems. None of the posts had been removed as of October.

According to Meta’s policies, it does not allow “content that glorifies, supports, or represents events that Meta designates as violating violent events,” including “hate events” and “hate crimes.” Meta spokesperson Erin Logan told WIRED that Meta has “strict policies against violent or graphic content on our platforms, and we enforce these rules impartially. We will review this report once we are provided it and will remove any violating content and disable accounts of repeated offenders.” Logan declined to answer questions about whether Meta considers cow vigilantes as part of “violent or hateful groups.” Last year, the company removed profiles associated with Monu Manesar, a cow vigilante who was arrested and accused of instigating violence in Haryana.

Cow protection is not new in India, where Hinduism holds cows sacred. But the country also has a substantial minority population that includes Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, and Adivasis, or indigenous people, that have no religious prohibition against eating beef. Dalits, the group at the bottom of the Hindu caste system, also sometimes consume beef. Due to their marginalized status, Muslims and Dalits in particular have long relied economically on the cattle industry.

Since India prime minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party swept into power in 2014, several states have passed stricter laws when it comes to cow protection. A Congressional Research Service report released last week noted that cow vigilantism was one of several types of “religiously motivated repression and violence” used by Hindus and supported by the country’s Hindu nationalist government against minority communities. According to an April report from Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, cow vigilantism was the motivator for 22 percent of all communal violence by Hindus targeting Muslims between 2019 and 2024.

“Vigilantes organize their targeting to disburse punishment to minorities through extrajudicial means,” says Angana Chatterji, chair of the Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights Initiative at UC Berkeley. “Hindu nationalist leaders in government have aligned with these militias, and their speeches often function as dog whistles to rally people, reportedly stirring them to commit these extrajudicial acts that have included home invasion, theft, and lynching.”

Chatterji says that making the violence public on a place like Instagram allows cow vigilantes to recruit new members and rally other Hindu nationalists in different parts of the country. “For Muslims and minorities and their allies, Instagram messaging is calculated to spread terror with impunity,” she says. “To indicate, ‘Stop protesting. We are going to come for you and there will be nothing to stop us,’ especially as law enforcement is often either absent or in collusion.”

Naik worries that the problem is much deeper than just the accounts he and his team were able to identify. Earlier this year, Meta shuttered CrowdTangle, its tool that allowed researchers to track content across its platforms. “I would say it's the tip of the iceberg,” says Naik, because there is no public access to Meta’s data for journalists and civil society organizations.

India is an important market for Meta—it accounts for more than 362 million users on Instagram alone—and in the past, the company has been hesitant to take action on content that could put it in the crosshairs of the Indian government. In 2022, The The Washington Post reported that Facebook allowed hate speech and propaganda to stay on the platform under pressure from India’s government. (Meta’s shareholders later voted against an inquiry into the issue.) In 2020, The Wall Street Journal reported that employees in India worried that Meta’s then-head of public policy for India was unevenly applying the company’s hate speech policies to allow violent rhetoric from Bharatiya Janata Party politicians to stay up on the platform.

“It is interesting to note what is stopped by social media platforms—because some messaging is stopped immediately—and what is allowed to grow,” says Chatterji. “Just the extent of violence in the images requires that they should be taken down.”

[cuntylouis]

Today (April 8) is The International Romani Day. The Romani people (also called Rromani, Romany, Roma) are Europe's largest ethnic minority with an estimated 10-14 million people, though knowing exact figures is hard because the Romani often live on the fringes of society and many Romani choose not to disclose their ethnic identity. The Romani are unique among peoples in the sense that they've never identified with any territory or claimed they have a homeland where they came from. Their origin was somewhat a mystery for a long time (the slur "gypsy" comes from Europeans thinking they came from Egypt) but later genetic research has traced their ancestry to northern India and more specifically to the casteless Dalits. The Romani arrived in southeastern Europe by the 1300s and in western Europe by the 1400s, and in modern times the live in every continent.

The Romani experience a very high level of discrimination and marginalization and are among the most persecuted groups of people in the world. The entire history of the Romani people has been filled with ostracization, deportations, slavery, and systematic abuse ranging from segregation to forced sterilizations. Anti-Romani sentiment reached its peak during the Holocaust when 25%-50% of the European Romani were killed in the genocide called Porajmos, and some countries' Romani populations were destroyed completely. After the war the communist Central and Eastern European states tried to forcibly assimilite and suppress their Roma populations. In the present day anti-romani racism continues to be extremely common, with the studies showing most Europeans (especially Eastern Europeans) have unfavorable views of Romani people, hate crimes against them being common, and many of them living in poverty and marginalized.

People have many misconceptions about the Romani that often trace all the way back to the Middle Ages. The Romani are often confused with other itinerant groups like Irish travellers which are culturally and ethnically a completely separate group. Despite being almost synonymous with the nomadic lifestyle most Romani nowadays are not migratory, and with those who are it's often not by choice but because of persecution or homelessness. Most Romani are Christians or Muslims and they don't usually practice witchcraft, and if they do it's never to try to curse of hex anyone. There is a prevailing conception that Romani are seductive and hypersexual despite that Romani communities tend to be fairly sexually conservative. Fetishization harms especially Roma women who are often victims of sexual violence. While it may be true that there's more crime among the Romani populations (there are conflicting studies about this) majority of Romani are not thiefs or otherwise criminals, and it's important to understand that the crime is a direct result of poverty and deprivation, with it often being almost impossible for the Romani people to get jobs or higher education and being generally rejected by the society around them. The Romani themselves are frequently victims of crime, for example being extremely overrepresentated among the trafficked people.

Despite all this, the Roma people have persisted for hundreds of years and managed to retain their culture and identity. The Romani populations around the world have very diverse cultures and traditions but have many similarities too. A very high value placed on the family and deep love that the Romani people have for each other is something i think has helped them to survive. Despite all the challenges i'm optimistic about the future and i believe that the Romani will continue to survive and things will get better even though it may take time.

[genderkoolaid]

Would you say that culture influences religion or vice versa? Everything I've read about cultural Christianity in America is about how Christianity has shaped the culture here, so I'm wondering if it's religion or culture that shapes the other.

I think they both influence each other in a reciprocal way. Culture influences religion which then influences culture.

With America & Christianity, it has been deeply shaped by Protestantism and Puritanism and the like, and the classism, colonialism, racism, misogyny, queerphobia, and general shittiness that comes with it. But there's also a reason why these forms of Christianity appealed to people and why they are dominate. They benefit the social systems that were already in place.

Like, anti-oppressive Christian theologies have existed for a long time. Liberation theology is the main thing that comes to mind, which views Christianity as being fundamentally concerned with liberating the oppressed & Jesus' death showing how God identifies with the oppressed & their suffering, in defiance of the oppressors. Unsurprisingly, liberation theology was conceptualized by Latin American, Black, Palestinian, and Dalit theologians whose experienced of oppression shaped how they interpreted Christianity, as well as feminist & queer activists.

But these theologies do not benefit the people with social capital; the leaders, the bourgeoisie, the church figureheads. They are the ones the most sway over culture & what counts as True Christianity. A megachurch preacher makes enough money to afford multiple private jets, while your local queer Black commie pastor struggles to pay rent. So people with the cultural power shape religion, and then they use religion to shape culture to keep themselves in power. Oppressive Christianity isn't passively oppressive, it makes a continuous choice to center interpretations of Christianity that sustain current systems of inequality, while suppressing & attacking ones that threaten it.

[juliakristeva]

Share some

of those pdfs omg please…

love how this is formatted like a poem.

these are the pdfs currently in my "reading" tab, all of which i downloaded from annasarchive.

the christian priest today by michael ramsay

dust in the blood: a theology of life with depression by jessica coblentz

concern for the church by karl rahner

medieval women in their communities edited by dianne watt

walking indecently with marcella althaus-reid: doing dissident and liberative theologies from the south by anderson fabian santos meza

theologising with the sacred prostitutes of south india: towards an indecent dalit theology by eve rebecca parker

the unspeakable mother: forbidden discourse in jean rhys and h.d. by deborah kelly kloepfer

virginia woolf, jean rhys, and the aesthetics of trauma by patricia moran.

[femsolid]

(using a throwaway acc for reasons)

as someone who was (unfortunately) born a hindu, i can say with confidence that it’s the most misogynistic and oppressive religion in the world. like the stuff about krishna is not even the tip of the iceberg lmao. the hindu mfs here defending that shit are deeply brainwashed with hindutva propaganda (like most hindus in india). there are legit temples here that don’t allow women and dalits to enter, menstruating women are seen as impure and r not allowed to enter certain places just to mention a few of the nonsenses. i don’t want to go on for too long but it’s truly a despicable religion that needs to die. what’s funny to me is that the hindutva mfs malding at your post will gladly rb posts about bs in islam or christianity but no one can point out the shit in their faith 😂

By "born a hindu" I'm guessing you mean born in a hindu family. Thankfully religions don't run in our blood and I'm glad you figured your way out of it.

I feel like most westerners don't really take Hinduism seriously. Even the most abrasive american atheists (you know the type) don't mention it. It feels condescending almost, like it's not a religion worth talking about, like it's inoffensive child play. But as we've seen, hindus take their beliefs just as seriously as christians and muslims.

I had heard about the temples forbidden to women before yes. I'd be interested if you want to share your experience.

[shehzadi]

more accounts of hindutva terrorism in india in the last 2 days:

beat a muslim youth and paraded him naked in telangana

razed another 40 muslim-owned shops in mumbai after previously razing 15 other muslim-owned shops on a different street in mumbai the day before

vandalised the store of an elderly muslim man in mumbai

brutally attacked the imam of a mosque in chattisgarh while chanting ‘jai shree ram’ and ‘hindustan mein rahna hoga jai shree ram kahna hoga’ (translates to ‘if you want to live in india, you will have to say glory to lord ram’)

attacked a 17-year-old dalit student because of his whatsapp status and forced him to chant ‘jai shree ram’ (translates to ‘glory/victory to lord ram’) in karnataka

beat up a christian couple for allegedly forcing people to convert in karnataka

police have also made a case against 62-year-old muhammad salim for ‘inciting riot’ because he protested alone during the live broadcast of ram mandir in kerala

and on top of all that (and these are only the recorded/reported crimes i could find), expect indian news channels and hindu nationalists to begin pedalling the ‘there was a temple there centuries ago before!!!!’ narrative again so they can repeat the babri masjid demolition with gyanvapi masjid, also in uttar pradesh because today (25.01.24) the archaeological survey of india (ASI) found ‘evidence’ of a pre-existing hindu temple. how interesting and not at all coincidental with the fact that elections are looming ahead and ram mandir was just inaugurated!!!