_WORLD WATCH______________________________
____________________ India ________________

Conversion as caste protest
Catholic bishops support Buddhist converts
Thousands of Hindu dalits (members of the low castes) embraced Buddhism in New Delhi on the first Sunday in November, in a mass ceremony that was designed as a protest against the discrimination that dalits endure in the caste-ridden Hindu society.

In a remarkable public statement, the Catholic Bishops Conference of India (CBCI) came out in support of the dalits when law-enforcement officials decided to withdraw their permission for the mass conversion ceremony. “The Constitution of India guarantees its citizens the right to assemble, live in freedom, and profess and propagate their faith. We support this fundamental right of the dalits to choose the religion of their choice,” said the CBCI.

Police sealed off the grounds where the ceremony was to take place, allegedly under pressure from Hindu fundamentalists who had made the strange accusation that the conversion to Buddhism was “a Christian conspiracy to discredit Hinduism.”

Dalits (the term literally means “trampled upon”) are the “untouchables” within the rigid caste system that has prevailed for centuries in India. Bereft of social respect and forced by social customs to carry out menial jobs for the upper castes, the 180 million dalits remain the most illiterate and backward community in the country.

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