By Matters India Reporter
Vailankanni, July 15, 2022: The Dalit Christian Liberation Movement (DCLM) has urged the Catholic bishops in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu to implement the Church’s policy to empower their community.
The ecumenical movement’s open letter to the prelates recalled a 10-point empowerment program of the Tamil Nadu Bishops’ Council and another eight-point program of the state unit of the Conference of Religious India, the association of major superiors. They also reminded them the 2016 Dalit Empowerment Policy of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India.
The July 11 letter reiterated its demand to appoint bishops from the community in the vacant dioceses of Tamil Nadu. They also requested the prelates to share with the movement their resolutions regarding the Dalit Christians. If the bishops fail, the movement will launch agitations and sit-in protests.
The bishops met at Vailankanni July 10-14 for the general body meeting.
A surprise visitor to the meeting was Apostolic Nuncio Archbishop Leopoldo Girelli. The nuncio’s program Vailankanni was not published earlier.
DCLM sources said the nuncio’s address of the bishop is yet to be known.
The nuncio’s visit comes at the time when the movement is demanding Dalit bishops in Tamil Nadu. When its leaders met the nuncio at Vellore some months back he told them that the Tamil Nadu bishops have to propose the names of the Dalit priests to be appointed as bishops.
The DCL has been demanding the rights of the Dalit Christians for the past 30 years.
Dalit people constitute 65 percent of the Catholics in Tamil Nadu but their representation in the hierarchy is almost nil. Only one among the state’s 18 bishops is a Dalit.
The DCLM has undertaken advocacy, protests, memoranda and public meetings to eradicate such discrimination and empower their community.
Their latest letter said the Dalit Christians are denied their proportionate representation in the appointment of bishops, education and employment.
The movement wants the bishops to introspect their ways and do everything possible to bring justice to Dalit Christians.
The following are some demands from the movement:
• To appoint Dalit bishops in the vacant dioceses of Sivagangai, Kuzhithurai, and Vellore, besides Kumbakonam and Thanjavur that would soon fall vacant.
• To appoint the Dalit priests as auxiliary bishops where the Dalit population is 50 percent or more.
• To bifurcate dioceses that have Dalit Christians majority. This would rectify the problem of unequal representation of Dalit bishops.
• To promote the religious vocation among the Dalit Christians. It is evident that the Dalit vocation is consistently denied in the diocese of Sivagangai.
• To give preference to the Dalit Christians in the Catholic educational institutions
• To take special care in the socioeconomic empowerment of the Dalit Christians.