A Beacon of Hope From South Asia

“WHAT'S YOUR CASTE, Daniel?”

Glancing around my sixth-grade history classroom, I knew my answer to the teacher’s question wouldn’t mean anything to my American peers. It hardly meant anything to me, a South Asian kid. As years passed, I heard murmurs about controversy surrounding the teaching of the Hindu caste system in our classrooms. And in 2017, I watched California’s board of education vote to approve history textbooks that erased key aspects of a 3,000-year-old system of apartheid that presently affects almost 2 billion people around the world.

Caste is personal, systemic, violent, and subtle—all at once. Dalits, caste-oppressed people formerly known as “untouchables,” know this too well. As Dalit theologian and Christian minister Dr. Sunder John Boopalan told me, caste is the “oldest surviving form of anti-human oppression.”

How does caste work? Why does it matter? What do we do about it?

The best teachers on this subject are those who have persisted, resisted, and found God amid the brunt of caste oppression. Dalit liberation theology exists as a beacon of hope against crushing evil, calling all of humanity to see God, freedom, and ourselves in a renewed way.

Caste as an origin story

IN A 2016 INTERVIEW, civil rights activist Ruby Sales said that every theology should have “hindsight, insight, and foresight.” Using hindsight, we often find that oppression is rooted in the origin stories we tell.

The origin story of caste goes back to the ancient roots of Hinduism—more accurately called Brahminism—honed over centuries by upper-casts groups seeking to maintain social and political power and further entrenched by British colonial forces. The creation story in the Purusha Sukta tells of a primeval god sacrificing himself to create the world. Varnas, or castes, emerge from different parts of his body. Brahmins (priests and scholars) originate from his head, Kshatriyas (warriors and administrators) from his arms, Vaishyas (farmers and merchants) from his thighs, and Shudras (laborers and servants) from his feet. This hierarchical system ranks people according to purity and assigns their occupations.

Rather than simply differentiating between “us” and “them,” caste determines human value. And beneath the body of the divine lies those the caste system treats as inherently inhuman: Dalits and Adivasis. Adivasis are the Indigenous people of the Indian subcontinent, who share common roots with Dalits.

“Caste sustained itself for 3,000 years on theological grounds,” said Dalit theologian and pastor Joseph Prabhakar Dayam. Just as one might appeal to the biblical narrative of imago dei creation to derive value, the Brahminical origin story determines human worth—and worthlessness—within the framework of caste. This origin story was digested, reproduced, and institutionalized, infecting every conceivable corner of Indian life.

In Sanskrit, Dalit means “crushed” or “broken.” Relegated to society’s margins, Dalits are forced to work jobs such as manual scavenging and handling of dead bodies. They are systematically barred from participating in basic activities and institutions. In his 1936 essay “Annihilation of Caste,” Dalit reformer B.R. Ambedkar depicted how Dalits were even condemned for walking, salivating, eating, and learning, for fear that they would pollute upper-caste people.

Though this practice of “untouchability” is now illegal in India, Nepal, and Pakistan, it continues to tangibly affect 300 million Dalits daily. Dalit activist Martin Macwan calls it a “slow genocide.” If you’d like proof, type “Dalit” into Google News and read the results. Within the last year alone, Dalits of all ages have been brutalized, lynched, and raped for acts such as eating, defecating, and marrying outside of their caste.

Caste is all-encompassing, influencing all of South Asian society. Someone’s caste can be identified by their name, choice of food, clothing, neighborhood, marriage, and more. As South Asians migrate, caste oppression goes with them, whether to Fiji, Sri Lanka, Guyana, or the U.S. Although often ignored, caste cannot be absent from any meaningful analysis related to South Asian people—including the topic of Christianity.

Erased from church history

“SO, YOU'RE INDIAN and Christian?” Every Indian Christian in the diaspora has heard this question. The assumption is that the “exotic, esoteric” Indian identity and the otherwise colonial, “civilized” Christian identity are irreconcilable. Indian Christians themselves have struggled to accommodate the cultural influence of Hinduism to a “white man’s” Christianity.

When Christianity arrived in what is now the Indian state of Kerala 2,000 years ago, it hardly expanded beyond the region—largely due to caste boundaries. Dalit theologian Arvind P. Nirmal, known by many as “the father of Dalit theology,” drew sharp distinctions between theologies of Dalits and non-Dalit Indian Christians, noting that “until the 1970s, Indian Christian theology was developed mainly by [caste-privileged] converts to Christianity.” In their attempts to formulate an Indian Christian theology, Nirmal asserted, these converts actually propagated the Brahminic caste system, creating a “Brahminical Christianity.” Though inculturation is usually a helpful adaptation of faith, caste short-circuited this process.

Nirmal’s claim exposes the overt and covert syncretism embedded in popular Indian Christian theology. Because Dalit voices—which were mainly concerned with freedom—were not prioritized when constructing most traditional Indian Christian theology, many religious practices and gatherings still involve casteism today. Dayam, a pastor in the Andhra Evangelical Lutheran Church, told me that his denomination’s archival material only mentions “upper-caste” Indians, even though the church was predominantly Dalit. “As Dalits, we had the challenge of writing ourselves into the larger Christian narrative of the nation, which was absent until then,” said Dayam.

For Dalits, caste-infused Christianity was merely a substitution for Europe’s colonial Christianity—not any more authentic nor accessible. But throughout the last century, foreign and Indian Christian missionary efforts spurred mass conversions in South Indian Dalit communities. (Many other Dalits have sought liberation from the caste system through conversion to Buddhism or Islam.) In a way, Christianity was best understood, practiced, and brought to flourishing by caste-oppressed communities. While Brahminical Christianity caged and corrupted the faith to fit caste norms, Dalit Christianity was a liberating movement that spread rapidly, empowered “untouchables,” and “proclaimed good news to the poor,” as Jesus insisted in Luke 4.

In the early 1980s, Dalit Christians joined other social movements in the face of caste massacres, to assert themselves in a new way. Through suffering, revolutionary consciousness, and inspiration from black and Latin American liberation theologies, Dalit liberation theology was born.

A God who suffers

“MY CASTE IS Christian.” In the Christian church, Indians are generally averse to speaking candidly about caste. Boopalan likens it to controversies of race and politics at the classic American Thanksgiving dinner. When the subject is broached, statements like these are common.

Seeking to escape the clutches of caste, Indian Christianity often advocates for a sort of “casteless” society. Similar to so-called “color blindness” about race, facile “castelessness” aspires to reduce caste identity and cultivate a common identity as “Christians.” But this approach actually ignores, perpetuates, and accentuates Dalits’ painful reality. It does not ultimately deal with India’s great sin of caste and instead allows it to fester within the church.

“In my church, we were kept from participating in different ministries,” said Sri Lankan artist and priest Rev. Jebasingh Samuvel in an interview. “They took and hid our choir dresses to keep us from singing. They took our microphones and made us sing at the back of the choir. I realized, then, that we came to Christianity from Hinduism for human dignity—but even in Christianity, we are still facing discrimination.”

Dalit theology was developed by people once deemed untouchable who reclaimed their Dalit identity to honor their history of resilience. It identifies Jesus as a Dalit to emphasize God’s incarnation and liberating work in this world, not only the next.

In Jesus, Dalits found a God who knew, entered, and redeemed their experience of suffering. Nirmal called Jesus “the Prototype of all Dalits.”

Jesus was a poor refugee who made his home and ministry with the marginalized and was executed by the state. He rose triumphantly from an unjust death, demonstrating power to conquer sin and oppression, and gives living hope to a dying world. Jesus’ birth, life, and death is precisely the Dalit experience. And Jesus’ resurrection is the power, hope, and freedom that liberates us. To Dalits, he is present in suffering, and he also liberates from suffering—today and in the next world.

“For a community whose world was characterized by historic crosses, accepting somebody with that historic experience of the cross was not difficult,” Dayam said. “God is broken, crushed, and torn asunder on the cross ... for a ‘re-membering,’ or putting together of the body in Christ. Neither Jew nor Gentile. Neither female nor male. That’s what the gospel vision is: Jesus, the Dalit, re-members the otherwise broken body politic.”

When we finally allow the cross to liberate us, it changes everything. In some places, Dalit Christians were not allowed to participate in Communion until after upper-caste congregants did. In Tamil Nadu, Dalits practiced Oorulai—a form of Communion in which every household cooked in pots, brought them to church, and poured each into a single vessel. Folk spirituality like this gives us true models of God and community.

Dalits were also drawn to Jesus because of his word. With the Bible, they finally had direct access to read and listen to scriptures. Brahminical texts, such as Gautama Dharma Sutra, specifically prescribed violence against caste-oppressed people who engaged with Hindu sacred texts. Theologian Monica Jyotsna Melanchthon wrote, “For a community that was denied access to traditional [Hindu] scriptures and experienced discrimination sanctified and justified by the same scriptures ... the gospel message came to them as the first ray of hope they had ever known.”

As Dalits study biblical texts, everyone benefits. Fields such as Dalit hermeneutics and Dalit womanism arise out of this work, sharing a liberatory self-assertion similar to that in Dalit literary movements of the 1980s. These theological contributions are not a departure from biblical truth—quite the opposite. They are authentic expressions of God’s eternal word working in God’s people.

“When I read the Bible from a Dalit perspective, I see Jesus embracing Dalitness,” said Samuvel. “Reading passages like Luke 4 and John 2 from a Dalit perspective gives me hope personally and gives us healing communally. They teach us to question corrupt systems. And my Dalit spirituality always encourages me to work for others. It is never a self-oriented spirituality, but a community-oriented spirituality.”

Reclaiming a fundamental humanity

THE TOPIC OF caste can be overwhelming, especially for non-Dalits and non-South Asians. It may feel confusing or disheartening, and gaining a deeper understanding about it may cause you to relearn everything about India—from yoga to vegetarianism.

For South Asians, our response should involve detangling and dismantling the deeply rooted personal, systemic, and spiritual stronghold of caste wherever we are. Caste takes our people’s lives by the minute. It persists as a dire human rights crisis under our noses, and yet we often shrink away in defeat, compliance, and ignorance. Christians especially must openly and systematically address caste as sin that we can all be liberated from—Dalit and Brahmin alike, oppressed and oppressor alike. In doing so, we must elevate Dalit voices. This is why we all need Dalit liberation theology.

“In turning in repentance to broken communities, one [finds] one’s participation in the life of God,” Dayam said.

The Dalit liberation movement is not focused on land, culture, or self-determination. It is distinctly a movement to reclaim fundamental humanity. Dalit theology calls all people to rediscover their humanity as created by God. Though embodied in the “crushed people” of India, Dalit theology engages with and shapes God’s global movement of liberation—especially as Hindu nationalism and caste violence rise around the world. Dalit theology offers us God’s prophetic call: repent, resist, and ultimately be human again.

“God became human not that humans can become divine, but that humans can simply become human again,” Boopalan said. “For me, Dalit healing means simply that.”