No More Castes!

Asian Human Rights Commission

[Ed. Note: The following proposal is intended for the international Dalit solidarity network and all other activists concerned with the eradication of caste-based discrimination. It seeks to foster East-West dialogue about discrimination based on caste and to offer a blueprint for a 10-year international campaign from August 2001 to August 2111 to eradicate caste.]

Introduction

The Brahmins and their allies have succeeded in using the Indian government as their mouthpiece and have attempted to impose global censorship on discussing caste discrimination during the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (WCAR) that will begin at the end of August this year in Durban, South Africa. Hence, it must be clear to everyone that caste prejudices are so deeply ingrained in upper caste minds that it will take an enormous effort to rescue those labelled as lower castes from the daily oppression they must endure. Thus, work on a global lobby to eradicate caste has only begun with the WCAR. There is still much to do that requires a far more complete vision that must be pursued with far greater resolution. As repression in India on this issue is intense, global solidarity has an important role to play to alter the discrimination that lower caste people experience. We propose the elements below as broad policy components for this global plan.

Information-Sharing

* Establishment of web sites in every state, city, town, village, etc., where there is a concentration of Dalits to make constantly updated information available on all matters affecting Dalits, including information on their way of life, health and education, access to drinking water and its purity, violence against Dalits and the implementation of constitutional provisions and other laws, particularly the Atrocities Act in India

* Development of a global urgent appeal network to respond to all information and to keep alive lobbying on a daily basis

* The provision of training for Dalits themselves to use these facilities and to use modern communication networks quickly and efficiently

Organisational Development

* Form supportive networks among regional and international agencies, including human rights and development non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and assign a person to work on the caste issue

Lobbying

* In every country in the West, a knowledgeable lobby should be created to educate the people of that country on this issue. These groups can use suitable ways to explain the issue to their society taking examples from their own country and comparing them, for instance, with similar examples in South Asia and other areas of the world where caste discrimination exists. Media facilities must also be used constantly for this purpose as they were by the movement against apartheid.

* These groups can also lobby their government. However, priority should be given to educating their people so that there will be a large number of support groups in the country. It is only when there is popular demand for a policy change that governments will respond.

* All religious groups be encouraged to take a very active part on this issue. Church-based groups, for instance, can be a great help in this regard.

* A special Western lobby must be built to critique U.N. agencies, including U.N. human rights organisations, on the manner in which these agencies deal with the caste issue.

* International aid agencies should be challenged to incorporate an analysis of caste in their work and to direct their efforts at eradicating caste discrimination and poverty.

* A strategy for the United Nations to play a greater role on this issue should be developed.

Education

* University professors should be encouraged to study this issue in depth and include caste discrimination in their classes. In this regard, many studies in the past have played down the place of caste in Indian society. These must be exposed and challenged.

* All human rights education courses must be encouraged to include caste as an issue.

Activities

* Develop and maintain constant activities for building Dalit solidarity, for example, by hosting events to celebrate the International Day for Dalit Solidarity on April 14 every year

* Organise other activities and seminars on this issue on a regular basis

General Comments

The above elements require further discussion and additions and need to then be used to formulate a time frame for the 10-year campaign. We should be able to see some concrete outcomes after 10 years of work, for example:

* The proliferation of local web sites supplying information to the international community on the conditions of Dalits;

* The appointment of a special rapporteur or similar monitoring and lobbying position on the caste issue in the United Nations;

* The formation of organisations working to eradicate caste through their own governments, as well as South Asian governments, in all major Western countries;

* Development agencies operating in South Asia explicitly targeting the eradication of caste discrimination in their programmes;

* The employment of people in major regional and international NGOs to combat caste discrimination; and

* The offering of lectures on caste discrimination at all major universities as part of their core syllabus.

Regarding the actual situation of Dalits in South Asia, the efforts - for which more specific actions and strategies need to be developed - could be targeted towards:

* Bridging the literacy and education gap between Dalits and non-Dalits;

* Convicting people for atrocities against Dalits;

* Accepting and affirming proportional representation for Dalits in the police, judiciary and Parliament;

* Ending manual scavenging as alternative work is created.

It is vital that measures begin now to develop these strategies and cooperative plans for the network. The WCAR provides activists from around the world an opportunity to actually meet and learn together from our combined actions how we should proceed in the much longer term towards our true goal: to eradicate caste from South Asia. We know that this conference is a "movement-builder" so we must take some time to come to a collective understanding of what kind of movement we are building and how we should go about building it.