Several US lawmakers on October 6 bemoaned the gross human rights abuses and humiliation heaped upon the Dalits and tribal peoples in India, and said that for all the progress India has made over the years, it was highly regrettable that the lot of these 'untouchables' remained in such a terrible state as they continued to be victimised under the yoke of a shameful caste system.
Congressman Christopher Smith, New Jersey Republican, who chairs the House International Relations Subcommittee on Global Human Rights and International Operations, who convened the hearing titled 'India's Unfinished Agenda Equality and Justice for Victims of Caste System', said, "The Dalits and tribal peoples are treated as virtual non-humans, and suffer pervasive discrimination and violation of their human rights."
Smith, a fierce human rights advocate in Congress, and vice chairman of the House International Relations Committee, who has over the years been an unrelenting critic of human rights violations in China, acknowledged that "India's reformist government has made great strides to open its economy, and improve the lot of all its citizens."
He also lauded India for playing a leading role in the Community of Democracies and the United Nations's Democracy Caucus and the UN Democracy Fund and noted the transformational and exponential growth of US-India ties after decades of estrangement during the Cold War, and welcomed the 'global partnership' announced by President George W Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh following their July 18 summit at the White House.
But Smith argued that "there is still a long road to travel," and said that while "most observers have focused on the nuclear proliferation implications of our announced agreements as potential stumbling blocks to a true strategic partnership between the US and India," he believed that while both countries sought such a partnership, "we must not lose sight of India's serious human rights problems."
The lawmaker said that these problems had been "amply documented" in three current State Department reports -- the 2004 Human Rights Report on India, the 2005 Report on Trafficking in Persons, and the 2004 Report on Religious Freedom.
"All three are massive catalogues of human rights violations which the government of India condones, ignores, and in some instances, has even promoted," he alleged.
Smith asserted that India leads the world in its tolerance for sex-selection abortions and female infanticide, and noted that while India forbids both, there is virtually no enforcement of these laws.
He said that UNICEF has warned that unless steps are taken to address the problem, India would soon face unexpected social problems, not least increased trafficking of women, because as more and more girls are aborted or murdered after birth, larger numbers of women and girls will be trafficked.
Smith said Dalit girls have been forced to become temple prostitutes and are eventually sold into prostitution and tens of thousands of tribal women have been forced into situations of economic and sexual exploitation.
No group falls prey to India's poor human rights record than its Dalits and tribal peoples, Smith said, and told the packed committee room filled with human rights activists and representatives of Dalits both in the US and India that in India's own version of 'apartheid', Dalits are routinely abused at the hands of the police and of higher-caste groups that enjoy the state's protection.
He said that despite constitutional safeguards, the rights of indigenous groups in the eastern parts of the country are often ignored and mob violence, lynching, arson and police atrocities against tribal persons are all too common.
Smith said that over the years, many Dalits and tribal groups have converted from Hinduism to other faiths to escape widespread discrimination and achieve high social status.
"However, such converts often lose benefits conferred by the government's affirmative action programmes because these, according to the Constitution, are reserved only for those having scheduled caste status," he noted. "Converts to Christianity and Christian missionaries are particularly targeted, as violence against Christians often goes unpunished."
Smith said, "Christian missionaries have been operating schools and medical clinics for many years in tribal areas and among the very poor, and tribal peoples and Dalits have made great strides as a result."
But he noted that "Hindu extremists resent these gains for disturbing the traditional social order, since better educated Dalits and tribals no longer accept their disadvantaged status as readily as they once did."
Smith added that many states have also adopted anti-conversion laws, in violation of India's constitutional protection for religious freedom.
The lawmaker said that "as an American, I can easily understand the difficulty in a democratic, federal system of confronting deeply ingrained social prejudices against a minority", but he argued, "that difficulty must be faced and overcome in any nation that aspires to its rightful place as one of the great nations in the world".
"To keep nearly a quarter of one's population in subhuman status is not only a grotesque violation of human rights, but it is a formula for economic and political stagnation as well."
Smith acknowledged that "once in America, we deprived African Americans of the most basic rights and opportunities. This was especially true in our southern states, which were once a byword for poverty and backwardness among people of all races."
"For a long time we refused to act at a national level to stop lynchings, often arguing that it was a local problem," he said. "Yet we all suffered the consequences of shutting off a huge segment of our population from equality and justice."
Smith said now after the civil rights movement, led by Rev Martin Luther King who was inspired by Mahatma Gandhi, ended all legal basis for discrimination, "and lynching is only a shameful memory, the southern states are among the most economically dynamic in America, and all regions of America enjoy unprecedented prosperity."
Thus, he declared, "By fulfilling its promises of equality and justice for all, India will also benefit in every way imaginable."
Many of the other lawmakers who spoke, said it was imcomprehensible that this kind of 'apartheid' continued to be practised to this day in the land of Gandhi, who had recoiled against these policies and fought against them and even said he would like to be reborn as as 'an untouchable so that I may share their sorrow, sufferings and affronts levelled at them in order that I may endeavour to free myself and them from that miserable condition'.
Congresswoman Barbara Lee of California, the seniormost Democrat on the Subcommittee, said, "For all its success, India carries its social customs like its practice of untouchability, that impede its progress toward a modern India."
She quoted Gandhi as often saying that "it is a crime and a sin to regard a person as an untouchable because he is of a particular community."
