By Matters India Reporter
Chennai: The Madras High Court has set July 8 as the deadline for India’s Catholic bishops and federal and state governments to respond to a petition alleging caste based discrimination within the Church in the country.
The court on June 25 issued notices to the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India, Conference of Catholic Bishops of India, the 18 bishops in Tamil Nadu, ministries under federal and Tamil Nadu and Puducherry governments.
The court on that day admitted a writ petition filed by Gnanapragasam Mathew, convener of the Tamil Nadu Dalit Christian Coalition, explaining various practices of caste-based discrimination among Catholics in Tamil Nadu’s 151 villages.
In his petition, Mathew alleges that Dalit Christians are forced to have separate churches, cemeteries, festivals, and funeral carts in Tamil Nadu. They are barred from church councils and denied participation in the choir and alter services.
No bishop has been appointed from the Dalit community, the petition pointed out.
Mathew pointed out that India has 174 Catholic dioceses, 18 of them in Tamil Nadu.
According to the petitioner, such acts of discrimination should be treated as intentional acts of oppression that violate the Indian Constitution and the UN Declaration on Human Rights.
The caste-based discrimination in the appointments of bishops has become a matter of concern in recent times, Mathew says.
According to him, only 10 of India’s 180 bishops come from the Dalit community that accounts for some 70 percent of the Catholics in the country. Tamil Nadu has only one Dalit bishop, he says.
India has four cardinals, but none from the Dalit community. Mathew regrets. Only two among 31 archbishops are Dalit.
Ten bishops were appointed in Tamil Nadu in the past 14 years, but none is a Dalit.
“This clearly illustrates that the Church is biased and caste-based,” bemoans Mathew.
Although non-Dalits form only 30 percent of India’s Catholics, they occupy majority of Church administrative positions.
“The Church that preaches justice and liberation to the downtrodden has been oppressing its Dalit members for decades. Several times in the past the Dalits have managed to apprise the Pope of this ground reality,” Mathew explains.
He recalls late Pope John Paul II as the first pontiff to address the caste issue in the Indian Church. In an address to the clergy, he said caste-based discrimination in the Church is detrimental to the values of Christ. Pope Francis also has called for the immediate removal of all forms of oppression in the Church.
According to Mathew, the best way to address caste bias in the Catholic Church is to get more Dalits involved in the Church administration. “One such progressive step would be appointing Dalits as bishops,” he asserts.
Mathew says bishops in Tamil Nadu and India have in the past three decades admitted the prevalence of caste-based discrimination in the Church. They also expressed their dismay over the Church’s negligence and failure to eradicate the practices.