Converted Christians from Scheduled Castes aka ‘Dalit Christians’ have alleged discrimination in a Catholic Church in Trichy. The car doesn’t pass through their streets during the annual feast and they are not allowed to conduct events in the church owned community hall. They have written to the pope, central and state governments seeking equal rights in worship.
Tamil Nadu People’s Welfare Party(TNPWP) functionaries briefed the press about this issue on February 23rd. It is a party founded to talk for ‘Dalit Christian’ rights. Its Treasury Das Prakash said, “Dalit Christians didn’t attend the annual car festival held in July 2022. The car didn’t come to their street at all. They were not allowed saying they didn’t pay the tax. After they appealed to the parish priest he advised them to collect tax from Dalit Christians as well. But they refused to listen and conducted the car festival on their own. This discrimination should be removed. We are going to write to centre and state governments and the pope”.
TOI reported that they were not allowed to use the community hall to conduct marriages and other events. Even though 70 of the 200 Christian families in the village are “Dalit Christians” they are not even considered as parishioners. Only those from intermediary castes are considered members of the parish they allege. In 2022, Mathew, one of the ‘Dalit Christians’ of the village filed a complaint with the police and district administration after they were not allowed to get involved in the annual feast.
Mathew told Asia News that, “Dalit Christians are not included in the festival. Festival subscriptions are not collected from them and the festival car procession will not go to the Dalit streets.” He said that they have separate cemeteries for both communities and that the former parish priest who tried to involve ‘Dalit Christians’ in church activities was threatened and sent away by other Christians. It appears that no action was taken on Mathew’s complaint and TNPWP brought it to attention again recently.
This time the authorities got involved as the District Collector was directed by the Chief Secretary to resolve the issue. Priests and other Christians claimed to the Collector that they assumed that ‘Dalit Christians’ won’t have enough money to pay the tax which is why they didn’t collect it from them. They assured that the tax will be collected from them henceforth and that the Maamandram(forum) will be reformed with ‘Dalit Christians’ as members to take decisions on church affairs. It should be noted how the antagonists completely escaped media attention.
The annual tax mentioned above is a Hindu custom of collecting money for temple affairs yearly. It ensures one’s rights as a part of the community that visits the concerned temple. This money is used to conduct temple festivals, renovation, etc and to build marriage halls, educational institutions, etc for the community’s use. This is the only form of money a Hindu pays to the Kula Deva/Devi temple to assure his participation and rights in the temple affairs.
Christians on the other hand pay money to the church every month in the form of tithe. Yet they also have to pay this tax for the annual feast which media reports call a subscription tax. Christian priests have the gall to say that they thought converted SCs wouldn’t have enough money to pay this tax while paying tithe every month. The horrifying part is that despite paying tithe these marginalised people were not even allowed to use the community hall or attend the church at their convenience.
Last year there were reports of forming a separate rite for converted SCs as the Catholic church couldn’t solve the discrimination issue. Forming a separate rite will ensure that ‘Dalit Christians’ will get to practice all their rights while resolving the issue of them mingling with other Christians. Recently there was much hullabaloo about SC Hindus entering temples in some parts of the state. The original issue was of mixing feces in a drinking water tank that supplied water to SC Hindus. But the district collector and SP made it about an issue of temple entry and hogged the limelight.
All media discussed the issue for days abusing Hindu beliefs and Hindus in general. But when there is a similar issue in a church they have all gone mute. Even though the issue happened last year, it didn’t even come out till their representatives talked to the media. Even then it was played down as some inconsequential incident. It is sad that instead of recognising the farce of Christianity converted SC Hindus are still under the trance of fake equality and social justice.
