By Matters India Reporter

Bengaluru, Feb 27, 2019: Dalit Christian youth are to come forward to be volunteers to strengthen the National Forum of Dalit Christian Youth Net, says Jesuit Father Prakash Louis, former director of Indian Social Institute, Bangalore.

He was addressing the delegates of Dalit Christian Youth Net held at NBCLC, Bengaluru on 14 February.

Father Louis explained the role of youth in Church as well as in society.

He introduced Srujan Rao, national coordinator of Dalit Christian Youth by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI) – Office for Scheduled Caste / Backward Class (SC/BC).

Rao informed the youth about the Dalit Christian Youth Net page on Facebook and requested to join and share the page.

The Dalit Christian Youth Net will be active in the social media to empower the Dalit Christian Youth and to educate about the Scheduled Caste status to the Dalit Christians.

In 1935 the British, who were then ruling India, gave special privileges of reservations in government jobs and elected bodies to a number of low castes whose names were written down in a schedule. These castes were not demarcated by religion and hence included people following various religions such as Islam, Christianity, Buddhism and Sikhism.

However, in 1950 a Presidential order took away those rights and conferred Scheduled Caste (SC) status only to Hindu Dalits saying that no person professing any other religion than Hinduism would be deemed to be a member of the Scheduled Caste. Then it was amended twice in 1956 and 1990 respectively to extend the SC status to Sikh Dalits and Buddhist Dalits.

Dalit Christians and Dalit Muslims are still denied this equal right.

Father Devasagayaraj M Zackarias, secretary to CBCI Office for SC/BC, requested contact persons for the regions. A boy and a girl from each region came forward to be the contact persons in the regions. The contact persons are from Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala. Soon others will be contact persons for other regions.

It was suggested to have a national convention in 2020 and the youth will organize this mega event, said Rao.