*Upper caste and Dalit Catholics clash, police shoot and kill**by Nirmala Carvalho, 03/10/2008 13:53, INDIA *http://www.asianews.it
In Tamil Nadu upper caste Catholics attack Dalits, destroying dozens oftheir homes. They are "guilty" of demanding a separate parish. Police movein and fire at attackers. New Delhi (AsiaNews) – Two Christians died and many more were wounded shotby police who intervened yesterday to stop clashes between Dalit Catholicsand upper caste Catholics in the diocese of Pondicherry-Cuddalore (TamilNadu).Troubles started on 7 March when a group of Dalit Christians from theVillupuram district began a hunger strike to protest discrimination in alocal parish by the Vanniyar.Three months ago Dalits from St Jabamalais Annai Church in Earyur builtanother church dedicated to Saghaya Madha (Our Lady of Perpetual Help) andsought to have it erected as a separate parish with its own priest.They were backed in their demands by two political groups, the ViduthalaiChiruthaigal Katchi (Vck) and Ambedkar Makkal Iyakkam (AMI). The VCK evenput up posters calling for the closure of St Jabamalai and the recognitionof the new parish church.In response some 500 upper caste Christians went on a rampage on Sunday,attacking Dalits and torching over 30 huts.Police said that when they moved in to stop the protest they were peltedwith stones and were thus "forced" to open fire on the aggressors. M PeriyNayagam, 40, and A. Magimai, 24, were killed and 40 more people werewounded.Fr G Cosmon Arokiaraj, secretary to the Commission for Scheduled Castes andScheduled Tribes of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India, told *AsiaNews*that the "confrontation in the area between Dalit and Vanniyar Catholicsgoes back quite some time, but the Church does not want to split a parishalong caste line," but is working towards "gradually removing discriminationagainst the Dalits and uprooting all forms of discrimination."These tragic incidents show that it is urgent to ban many forms ofdiscrimination against Dalit Christians both within the Christian communityand especially society at large. In fact "since the Christian community isperceived as a single entity," he explained, "the government does notrecognise to Dalit Christians the same rights as other Dalits."In the Indian caste system, states have granted specific benefits and quotasin schools and public service for Dalits to compensate for their secular lowsocial standing."For years Dalits have been discriminated within the Church itself," hesaid. "They cannot sit with upper caste members in the same church; they areburied in separate cemeteries; they cannot use the same roads as upper castepeople. When the mother of a Dalit priest died in the 1990s the upper castedid not allow the funeral procession to use the main road; even the bishopfailed to bring about a compromise.""In India more than 65 per cent of all Christians are Dalit, but Christiansrepresent only 2.3 per cent of a population of 1.1 billion people.".
