Mother Teresa: a biography

MOTHER TERESA AND THE DALITS
On November 18, 1995, Mother Teresa held special prayers at the Sa-
cred Heart Cathedral in New Delhi. The occasion was to launch a two-
week fast and protest campaign demanding scheduled caste recognition
for Christian Dalits. Caste is an important part of Indian society; it is not
only a declaration of social status, it determines the course of a person’s
life. People born into the highest caste of Indian society were those with
property, money, education, and opportunities. The lowest level of Indian
society were the Dalits or “untouchables.”
In India alone, close to 160 million so-called Dalits, or known legally
as scheduled castes, were routinely discriminated against, denied access to
land, forced to work in degrading conditions, and routinely abused, even
killed, at the hands of the police and of higher-caste groups that enjoyed
the state’s protection. The discrimination against and segregation of the
Dalits has been called India’s “hidden apartheid,” and entire villages in
many Indian states remain completely segregated by caste.
Although the practice of “untouchability” was abolished under India’s
constitution in 1950, social discrimination against a person or group by
reason of birth into a particular caste remains very much a part of rural
India. Untouchables may not cross the line dividing their part of the vil-
lage from that occupied by members of the higher castes. They may not
use the same wells, visit the same temples, drink from the same cups in tea
stalls, or lay claim to land that is legally theirs. Dalit children are fre-
quently made to sit in the back of classrooms, and Dalit women are fre-
quent victims of sexual abuse. Most Dalits continue to live in extreme
poverty, without land or opportunities for better employment or edu-
cation. With the exception of a minority who have benefited from India’s
policy of quotas in education and government jobs, Dalits are relegated to
the most menial of tasks, as manual scavengers, removers of human waste
and dead animals, leather workers, street sweepers, and cobblers. Dalit
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children make up the majority of those sold into bondage to pay off debts
to upper-caste creditors.
It was the government provision that allowed a small number of Dalits
access to government jobs that set off the firestorm. But Dalits who had
converted to Christianity were denied this opportunity on the grounds
that once a person converted to Christianity, the issue of caste is no
longer important. It was also argued that Christian Dalits had other op-
portunities available such as studying in Christian schools. Christian Dal-
its argued that, in using these educational facilities, they were being
denied the country’s resources that as citizens they should have access to.
But, as others argued, if Dalits are Christians, they cannot be Dalits, as
Christianity does not recognize the notion of caste. If they are Dalits, then
they are Hindus, and, as far as Mother Teresa was concerned, she had lit-
tle to do with them.
Mother Teresa’s involvement with the campaign had tremendous
repercussions. Accused of trying to introduce the pattern of caste systems
into Christianity at the expense of non-Christian Dalits, Mother Teresa
called a press conference in which she stated that she had no idea what
the prayer meeting was about. Her statements infuriated the organization
sponsoring the event. The organization secretary stated that, in fact,
Mother Teresa did know the purpose of the prayer meeting as it had been
explained to her by the auxiliary bishop of the Delhi archdiocese.
In another time, an incident such as this would have rallied Mother
Teresa’s supporters. Instead, she not only antagonized non-Christians, but
Christians as well. One church official went so far as to say that Mother
Teresa, with her antiquated views on abortion and family planning, had
become obsolete. She had, in fact, helped create a greater schism in a
country already plagued by numerous divisions.