#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)

[anonymouswarriorhumanist]

Halloween season is here and so is the hypocrisy of savarna asses.

(A little Personal Rant Below):

I was born in an Indian Christian family. Though, I have long since renounced my faith in religions as being a patriarchal structure for domination, nowadays I see a whole lot of Upper caste Hindus, both Gen Z and Millennials jumping on the western bandwagon of Halloween and the hysteria around it.

Halloween is a pagan festival with Celtic and other pagan origins that was incorporated into the wider Chritian framework and made into All Hallows Eve or the day when u remember dead people from the family, etc etc.

I have not seen All Hallows Eve being a popular festival atleast in India among Christians, but western and Spanish-speaking nations do take it srsly apparently.

What is most surprising is to see Savarna Hindu Indians being more excited for Halloween than any Christian person I have seen in my life. Even if we forget for one moment that Halloween had pagan roots and say it is a Christian festival, you gotta love the hypocrisy.

Savarna Indians will not hesitate to bash Christians back home.

Eg: A best friend of mine who is a Kayastha Hindu sanghi girl (My disappointment stems with how she didn't evolve politically with me and due to this I never try to talk politics with her.) Loves Halloween yet whenever she meets me, she doesn't hesitate to be micro aggressive to my Christian identity ( yes, I can scream and cry all I want that I am an atheist but I will always be dogmatized based on my western surname). We won't even be talking about religion and suddenly she would feel the need to bash our old Christian school (one question: if sanghis don't like Christians, why tf do they send their kids to their schools?) And look at me weirdly and say Christians this and Christians that. Then with a straight face, fawn over the aesthetics of Christmas or Halloween (pretend they r Christians for one moment).

Another friend of mine is a Kanha Bhakt :) yet she too would go crazy over Halloween but is sanghi af. All over insta, people like these in india are going crazy over Halloween yet they won't hesitate to trash Christians in india or support parties that kill or murder them.

As usual, Shameless upper Caste Hindus and their Countless Hypocrisies.

As for me, like I said before, I have always been dogmatized as a Christian even if I scream and shout I am an atheist to these savarna Hindus. So I have decided to own my identity. If they want me to be a Christian villain for them who goes around converting innocent people, so be it!!!😊🤭😉

The co-optation is wild here. And as again, I hate sanghi UC Hindus for another reason.

[nohkalikai]

Dalit Madonna (2000) by Jyoti Sahi

[tiredguyswag]

shut up about the ram mandir im genuinely gonna start crying

[anonymouswarriorhumanist]

Please can u worry abt thr native Christian population in India too with a percentage of only 2% living in India and which has rapidly declined since 1950 census?

Bangladeshi Hindus are suffering but Indian Christians in ur native nation r suffering the same way. Why are Nuns being gangraped?

Pls answer

Hindus are being gangraped, lynched, and having their property destroyed in Bangladesh rn. Amidst all the news coming out of there don't forget about the minority that always ends up dealing with the brunt of chaos. in 1971 most of the victims of the genocide were Bangladeshi Hindus and everyone conveniently leaves this detail out.

(And i know some mf will either no true scotsman this or say that it's all lies and that all the videos coming out are fake or propaganda from the BJP or something instead of another event in a long chain of violence. The Hindu population has crashed from 30% at independence to 9% today. Estimates say that in the next 30 years, Hindus will be extinct in Bangladesh)

[shaileshrathod]

તમિલનાડુએ દલિત ખ્રિસ્તીઓને લાભ 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.

[anonymouswarriorhumanist]

True though no religion is perfect.

Even as a feminist, most religions r manifestations of the patriarchal control of women by men. Since all religions r man-made, not woman-made.

BUT BUT BUT

Hear me out.

The trouble is some religions and their people r in positions of power over other religious and cultural minorities.

An example would be Hindus over Muslims and Christians In India. So, for religious minorities such as even Muslims in Israel, their religious identity becomes an act of subversion to the genocide/discrimination occurring to them. Kinda like them reclaiming their dogmatized identity and using it to fight back.

So, while all religions r bad, their followers may use their religious identity (over which they r oppressed) to fight back against the majority. So Muslim women adorning the hijab in today's India is both an act of freedom and subversion. A Christian reading the Bible amid anti-Christian hate in India is an act of subversion. A Dalit worshipping their own deities over Brahmanical/ Hindu ones is an act of subversion.

There is always place for nuance.

So even though all religions r shitty, we cannot deny the power dynamics b/w some religious communities wherein reclaiming your oppressed identity becomes crucial.

Other than that, beautiful post.

Love,

A Disappointed Atheist,

not to get all 'anti-theist' on my blog, but the way some fuckers on this site really act as if there's some perfect religion and all other ones are the absolute worst is absolutely delusional and downright stupid.

There is no fucking perfect religion.

Every religion has atrocities attached to its followers and texts. Racism, sexism, homophobia, casteism, classism, antisemitism, islamophobia and every other bigotry that you can think of will apply to at least one religion. No religion is clean. Stop fucking pretend as if there's some cheat code in a religion that makes it better than everything else.

(fair warning, if i see anyone use this post to be hateful towards any religion, especially islam and judaism because i know that you fuckers will try, i will report you. this post is not to diss any religion, but merely to criticize people who believe that one religion is the best and every other religion is horrible. if you see anyone use this post to harm anyone, report them)

[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

[anonymouswarriorhumanist]

Sanghi Logic: Hindutva Cult Groupthink

Hey Guys,

just my 2 cents,

Sanghis will only care about minorities when it suits them.

(A) Sanghis: Dalits- ''Who tf cares about them after all calling out upper caste people on their (shitty) behavior is itself casteist, right? And I treat my maid very nicely too, so I am not casteist at all!"

But then with the same straight face, they will spout shit like, ''OMG!! Dalit Hindus in Pakistan are being persecuted UwU."

(B)Sanghis- Christian missionaries r converting us. Let's burn them in a bus with their kids.

And then they will say smth like 'Omg, Christians and Hindus should unite against Muslims. Trump is my Daddy and I will lick the grass of his golf court."

Sanghi Whataboutery is insane guys.

[nohkalikai]

The real gospel is about transformation. Apparently, Dalit and lower-caste mass conversions used to confound several European missions, which is ironic considering the numerous mass conversions in the Bible. Jesus was baptised as part of a mass, as were many of the early apostles. 

Ambedkar understood the power and rebellion inherent in mass conversions. He saw the far-ranging insurrection they symbolised and made real. [5] I don’t know how exactly my ancestors converted. We have a few stories and educated inferences, which ultimately don’t matter to them or me.  Their choices are not meant to constrain or direct my life.

I’m interested in the stories of family members whose lives are still in living memory because they influenced and were loved by people I love now. 

I love hearing about Thotho, my mother’s grandfather. He was the principal of a teacher training college in my hometown. He wore khadi, loved Shakespeare and Ambedkar, and joyfully called himself a “beef-eating Dalit from Orathoor”. Everyone says he would have loved talking to me.

I love hearing about my father’s grandmother, Pattima. She raised him and cultivated his education and potential because she once dreamed of him as an adult getting on an aeroplane. She immediately shifted him from his Tamil-medium school to an English-medium one because if he was going to be an important man, he had to reach for the sky with open hands. 

[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.