A woman pastor has degraded the Nadar community of Tamil Nadu by saying that they behave inappropriately with female customers. Nadar associations have taken offence to it and filed complaints against the preacher. She has been accused of driving a wedge between communities by even Christians who converted out of Nadar community.
Beulah Selvarani, a pastor of the Church of South India, had made the derogatory remarks while preaching at the CSI Church in Kundrathur, Chennai. While speaking about the dangers girls face in educational institutions in light of the recent cases of sexual abuse in schools, she said that girls who go to shops run by the Nadar community face rhe same.
She can be heard saying in the video doing rounds in social media, “Have you watched what happens when our girls go to shops? Have you noticed what Nadars do when they put the sold items into our girls’ hands? They feel up their hands”. The Nadar community has taken offence to this remark and associations have filed complaints against the pastor seeking to book her under the Goondas Act for disturbing communal harmony.
The Nadar community was the first to convert to Christianity during the British rule in most numbers. To this day apart from SC, STs they remain the majority to have converted out of Hindu dharma. While they took up toddy making as their prime profession, they have come a long way from there due to their business acumen. Most of the grocery shops in TN would be run by the community and they are recognised for their hard work which brought them up in the society.
However Christians despite claiming that there is no Christianity continue to discriminate against people based on caste. While it was agrarian feudalism at best with landless and landowning classes against each other the missionaries turned them against one another in the name of caste system. However they themselves are guilty of discriminating people who left Hindu dharma and embraced Christianity thereby ledt their castes.
To this day marginalised Christians, SC/STs who converted to Christianity to escape so-called caste discrimination are not even represented in the church administration. Organisations working for their cause continue to protest against discrimination in appointing bishops and are not even given audience by their higher authorities. Yet they dare to mock Hindus of practicing discrimination.
