Author: IANS
Publication: The Times of India
Date: February 14, 2004
URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/496862.cms
A Christian organisation representing Dalits
or the socially underprivileged on Saturday questioned the church leadership
for demanding special treatment for them and accused it of exploiting their
economic and social backwardness.
Stating that Dalit Christians accounted for
about 70 percent of India's Christian population, the Poor Christian Liberation
Movement (PCLM) accused high-caste Christians of exploiting them.
The church leadership wanted to exploit the poverty and unemployment among
the Dalit Christians to demand reservation of government jobs for them by
getting them classified as scheduled castes, PCLM president R.L. Francis said
in a statement.
People belonging to the scheduled castes benefit
from reservations in educational institutions and government jobs.
"It is worth mentioning here that when
they (Dalit Christians) were in Hindu society, they were the victims of the
caste system . The foremost reason for their coming to the fold of Christianity
was that there would be no discrimination and they would be treated as equals.
"But despite a wide network of (Christian)
missionary schools and colleges, most children of Dalit Christians have not
been able to rise above the literacy level because these convent schools are
busy catering to the educational needs of upper and high caste people. The
neglect of Dalit
Christian children by these institutions is the root cause of the problem.
"The same is the case with job opportunities
and entrepreneurship development. Dalit Christians are being denied all these
facilities while the church leadership continues to flourish by usurping vast
foreign funding and real estate resources," Francis charged.
Demanding a Dalit Christian Development Board,
he said that in the coming parliamentary elections, members of the community
would only vote for parties which supported this.
