Humanity Face to Face
International humanitarianism, perspectives on topics in human rights
About Jeannie Hatcherson
Dalits of India PLace Hopes in the "Goddess of English"
December 2, 2011 at 2:13 pm by Jeannie Hatcherson
The other day I started watching "The Sound of Mumbai." As I travel to
Kolkata, India each year to volunteer with slum children I was drawn
of course to this film. In my time with poor Indian children, I always
feel I learn and gain in many ways much more from the experience than
what I give, so I was intrigued by this effort to showcase Indian
children singing the much-loved songs from "The Sound of Music." I
will admit that it seemed rather ethnocentric that foreigners would
find it useful to teach under privileged Indian children English songs
that have nothing to do with their background, ethnicity or
environment. But I guess I was wrong.
In An "English goddess" for India's down-trodden, BBC News reported
that the dalits of India are "building a temple in Banka village in
the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh to worship the Goddess of
the English language, which they believe will help them climb up the
social and economic ladder."
The dalits, known as untouchables, are so low and vile that they
perform the most polluted, menial tasks in Indian society, working
with animals skins, waste and tending pigs and buffaloes. Ghandhi
called them harijan, or "children of God." While discrimination based
on caste is illegal in India, and has been since independence in 1947,
many of the country's 200 million dalits face injustices daily, living
in slums and squalor, attending school but made to sit and eat
separately and suffering violence perpetrated by higher caste Hindus
whose actions often go unnoticed or are disregarded. Indeed, the
Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) charity has stated that while
some crimes are reported, much caste-based discrimination and violence
in India goes unrecorded.
Just this week, an Indian dalit boy was killed because he had the same
name as that of high caste man's son. The boys father, Ram Sumer, had
been given several warnings by Jawahar Chaudhary to change the names
of two sons whose names were the same as his own, Neeraj and Dheeraj.
The body of Neeraj, 14, was found in a field by two friends: he had
been strangled. Chaudhary denies involvement saying he was framed, but
two acquaintances of his have been arrested.
But hope springs eternal, and for the dalits of Banka, action means
change. About two-feet tall and made of bronze, the newly 'minted'
Goddess of English is modeled after the Statue of Liberty. According
to Chandra Bhan Prasad, a dalit writer who came up with the idea:
She is the symbol of Dalit renaissance. She holds a pen in her right
hand which shows she is literate. She is dressed well and sports a
huge hat – it's a symbol of defiance that she is rejecting the old
traditional dress code. In her left hand, she holds a book which is
the constitution of India which gave Dalits equal rights. She stands
on top of a computer which means we will use English to rise up the
ladder and become free for ever.
Dr Chandra Bhan Prasad with the statue of the English goddess
While Hindi is the most widely spoken, there are dozens of languages
regularly used in India with hundreds more in use in rural areas. To
communicate, Indians often use English as their lingua franca. In
Banka, Nalanda school principal Shiv Shankar Lal Nigam says that "It's
not possible to get by in today's world without English. Even to
communicate with people in other Indian states, you need to know
either the local language or English. Since you cannot learn multiple
Indian languages, English has to be used as the link language."
To succeed in medicine, education, engineering, IT, virtually any job
of consequence, it is important to know English. Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar,
a Dalit thinker and architect of the Indian constitution, is quoted by
Chandra Bhan Prasad as stating that "English was the milk of a
lioness, only those who drink it will roar."
To avoid discrimination, some dalits converted to Christianity, but
some found even this unsatisfactory (read Indian Dalits find no refuge
from Caste in Christianity) . The government of Indian passed
legislation decades ago to remove and make punishable prejudice and
wrongdoings aimed at dalits to no avail. Perhaps the Goddess of
English will help dalits combat caste inequality: after all, the
origins of caste discrimination are embedded in Hinduism, perhaps it
necessary to fight centuries old religious beliefs with an equally
imposing supernatural 'force.'
Kamlesh was pushed for walking on the 'wrong' road
Kamlesh was pushed on to a pile of burning rubbish for walking on the
"wrong" road
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