US embassy cable - 05NEWDELHI8266

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 05 NEW DELHI 008266 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PHUM, PGOV, PINR, ECON, ELAB, KDEM, KIRF, SCUL, IN, Human Rights 
SUBJECT: INDIA'S SHAME: LINGERING BIGOTRY AFFLICTS 200 
MILLION DALITS 
 
 
1. (SBU) Summary: India,s 200 million Hindu and Christian 
Dalits (formerly &untouchables8) constitute approximately 
21-25% of the population.  Dalit leaders argue, and our Human 
Rights Report agrees, that Dalits are subject to sporadic 
cases of human rights abuses, including rape, trafficking, 
and segregation.  The UPA government is moving to address the 
issue, but has not yet resolved whether to reserve spots for 
Dalits in the public and private sector, or abolish the caste 
system and reservations altogether.  Some Dalit organizations 
seek to globalize the Dalit plight in the same way that 
bonded labor and repression of women have been brought to 
world attention.  Lingering yet widespread prejudice against 
Dalits in India will make quick progress difficult.  For 
example, segments of the Indian press criticized Dalit 
activists for testifying to the House International Relations 
Subcommittee on Global Human Rights chaired by US. 
Representative Christopher Smith(R-NJ) in Washington last 
month.  But India is undergoing rapid social change, the 
position of Dalits is improving, and their political power is 
increasing.  Dalit individuals such as Reserve Bank chief 
economist Narendra Jadhav and others are rising to the top of 
their professions by merit and hard work.  At least one Dalit 
has been President (K.R. Narayanan), and many have been 
powerful cabinet ministers.  End summary. 
 
Brahminization of Foreign Policy? 
--------------------------------- 
 
2. (U) While social scientists generally agree that 
approximately 21-25% of the Indian population are Dalits, it 
is difficult to determine with great accuracy how many 
Indians fall within this category.  Dalits are themselves 
divided into upper and lower castes, and many in the upper 
echelons claim they are not Dalits at all.  The Indian census 
does not ask respondents for caste status, making any figures 
an estimate at best. 
 
3.  (SBU) Dr. Udit Raj, who founded the All India 
Confederation of Scheduled Caste/ST Organizations, testified 
before the US Congress on October 6.  He complained to Poloff 
on October 18 that Brahmins are the natural enemies of Dalits 
and use their dominant position to perpetuate the caste 
system.  Claiming that Brahmin FSN,s predominate in the 
Embassy Political Section, he accused them of keeping the 
real story of Dalit oppression from Political Officers. 
(Note: Of six Embassy FSN political staff, three are 
Brahmins, one Kayasth, one Rajput and one Sikh.  No political 
FSN has taken a stance on Dalit issues). 
 
4. (SBU) Offended by &Times of India8 (October 17, 2005) 
coverage of his House of Representatives testimony, Raj 
complained that it portrayed him and the others who testified 
as beggars who were &unpatriotic to go to a foreign 
government8 to discuss the plight of Dalits.  Contending 
that Brahmins run the Indian Embassy in Washington, dominate 
the GOI and sweep the Dalit cause under the rug, Raj opined 
that upper caste Indians are not embarrassed by the lingering 
racism and do not want the system exposed and reformed, as 
they &would lose their slaves.8 
 
Bio Note 
-------- 
 
5.  (SBU) Udit Raj (known as Ram Raj prior to his 2001 
conversion from Hinduism to Buddhism) began his career as an 
activist of the CPI(M) sponsored Students Federation of India 
(SFI) on the campus of Jawaharlal Nehru University in the 
early 1980,s.  After graduation, he joined the Indian 
Revenue Service under the Dalit quota and served as an Income 
Tax Commissioner before resigning to found a union of Dalit 
employees in the public sector.  He has long been an 
outspoken opponent of US foreign policy, and regularly 
participates in anti-American demonstrations.  Despite his 
expressed antipathy to the USG, he has represented a number 
of persons seeking US visas, with mixed results.  Raj is well 
known to the Mission and has used his advocacy of Dalit 
causes to cultivate a high-level media profile and strengthen 
his CPI(M) credentials. 
 
Globalizing the Issue 
--------------------- 
 
6.  (SBU) Raj and other Dalit leaders are attempting to 
implement a strategy aimed at globalizing the untouchability 
issue, but are finding it difficult to attract support from 
higher caste Hindus.  Raj found it ironic that the Indian 
elite and intelligentsia lean to the left but remain 
reluctant to accept Dalits as equal citizens.  He argued that 
this is because caste is the essential element in the Indian 
identity, noting that &Barring a few, Indians are born with 
a caste rather than a national spirit.  They can give up 
national habits,8 becoming American, Malaysian, South 
African, or Australian, for instance, &but cannot give up 
their caste identity.8  He claimed that following the 
tsunami of December 2004; upper caste groups were not ready 
 
SIPDIS 
to mingle with Dalits, even to receive much-needed aid and 
temporary housing. 
 
7.   (SBU) As part of their internationalization strategy, 
some Dalit leaders hope to compel the US and other countries 
to address &India,s human rights failures,8 when 
discussing poverty eradication with Prime Minister Manmohan 
Singh and other high-ranking Indian officials.  They also 
hope to recruit the Indian Diaspora into their cause.  Raj 
claimed that overseas Indians raised considerable funds for 
the Hindu nationalist Vishnu Hindu Parishad (VHP) and BJP 
during the 1990s, and pointed out that Dalit groups hope to 
mirror their success.  Dalit groups also hope to involve 
international lending institutions such as the World Bank, 
and plan to urge them to address the plight of Dalits in all 
their Indian programs, or face Dalit agitations calling for 
their withdrawal from India. 
 
Should Caste Be Abolished? 
-------------------------- 
 
8. (U) The UPA government has been responsive regarding the 
untouchability issue and is debating what to do about it. 
Article 17 of the Indian constitution outlawed 
&untouchability8 in 1950, but the GOI continued to rely on 
&caste reservations8 in public sector employment and 
education, first implemented by the British in 1932, as the 
principal means of alleviating the Dalits, plight.  While 
this has benefited a &creamy layer8 of Dalits who were able 
to take advantage of reservations, it did nothing to 
discourage Indians from embracing a caste identity.  The 
reservations issue became politicized in the late 1980s, when 
the GOI began extending reservations to more and more groups, 
causing a heated backlash among groups that were left out, 
who feared they were being deprived of desirable government 
jobs and slots in educational institutions.  Today more there 
are more than 50 percent reservations in some areas, causing 
deep resentment among higher-caste Hindus, including the 
occasional public suicide by frustrated job-seekers. 
 
9. (U) The NDA government appointed Suraj Bhan to head the 
National Commission for Scheduled Castes in February 2004, 
with the brief to submit a report to President Kalam 
detailing atrocities against Dalits, the effectiveness of the 
reservation system, and to make specific recommendations as 
to how the GOI can improve the status of Dalits.  The report 
must be submitted by January 2007 and the GOI must respond 
within one month with an &action report8 specifying what it 
plans to do to protect Dalits from discrimination and abuse. 
 
10.  (U) Bhan has told the press that the reservation system 
is not functional, as it gives legal sanction to 
untouchability, which has been banned in the Constitution, 
and &bogus claims by higher caste members claiming to be 
Dalits have been on the rise and reserved seats are not being 
filled on the plea that there aren,t enough suitable 
candidates.8  He argued that the caste system is itself 
inherently unjust and discriminatory and untouchability will 
not disappear until the caste system is eradicated.  Bhan has 
announced that he will recommend the GOI change Article 17 to 
ban caste itself rather than untouchability and abandon all 
reservations.  The new wording would read, &The caste system 
and untouchability stand abolished.8 
 
Or Reservations Extended? 
------------------------- 
 
11.  (U) Some in India have taken the opposite tack, calling 
for reservations to be extended into the private sector, 
rather than reduced or abandoned.  This has touched off a 
heated debate in the media and business community.  The 
proposal has won surprisingly broad support, despite its 
potentially ruinous economic consequences.  Leftist columnist 
Jayati Ghosh argued for example that &a policy of 
reservation in the private sector would definitely not affect 
its  efficiency,, but would help in a small way in 
correcting historically entrenched and still pervasive social 
discrimination.8 Indian Social scientist Madhuri Santanam 
Sondhi argues that rather than relying solely on government, 
successful Dalits should work with the private sector to 
extend new business and education opportunities for their 
community. 
 
12. (SBU) Dalit leaders like Udit Raj reject this stance, 
however, taking the position that benevolent paternalistic 
forces such as the GOI must solve Dalits, problems by 
calling for the retention and expansion of India,s 
reservation system.  As part of this mindset, they are urging 
the USG to &take on the Indian government,8 and to compel 
American companies operating in India to create a 
reservation-based affirmative action policy, for their lower 
caste Indian employees. 
 
13.  (SBU) Raj argued (unconvincingly in our view) that 
without American intervention to compel the GOI to take 
action, many within India,s lower castes would abandon 
conventional politics and embrace Maoist revolution.  He 
maintained that Maoist calls for &class war8 resonate with 
frustrated Dalits, who increasingly feel they have no other 
choice.  Raj in a veiled threat, pointed out that a major 
shift in Dalit support towards the Naxalites could negatively 
affect Indo-US relations by drying-up US investment in much 
of India, as no US company would build a plant in an unstable 
area. 
 
Press Spotlight, but Society Snoozes 
------------------------------------ 
 
14. (SBU) The Indian press has been attentive to the Dalit 
issue at times.  Doordarshan, India,s state television 
station, ran a 30 minute documentary on the civil rights 
plight of Dalits in 2004, but Dalit Christian Leader R.L. 
Francis told us that despite these incremental gains, the 
news media gives relatively little coverage to Dalit causes. 
 
15.  (U) Outbursts of violence do, however, receive coverage. 
 For instance, on August 27, a Dalit taxi driver in Harayana 
murdered a Jat photographer who allegedly refused to enter 
the Dalit,s house to take family photographs.  A Jat mob 
retaliated two days later, burning and gutting 54 Dalit 
houses; many newspapers covered the violence and &Hard 
News8 magazine reported policemen did not act to stop the 
riot.  Despite in depth, initial reporting on the incident, 
the press quickly moved on to other stories.  In Mirzapur 
(UP), a Dalit woman from the BSP contesting in the Panchayat 
polls was set on fire by her upper caste opponents.  With 
burns on 90 percent of her body, she is &battling for her 
life.8  The attack received wide press coverage. 
 
Spreading the wealth 
--------------------- 
 
16. (SBU) Poloff met Poor Christian Liberation Movement 
leader R.L. Francis on October 20, who explained that many 
Dalits converted to Christianity in the last century to 
escape untouchability.  Indian,s 13 million Christian 
Dalits, however, do not qualify under the reservation system 
that scheduled caste leaders such as Udit Raj are fighting to 
expand.  Rather than fighting for affirmative action for 
Christian Dalits, Francis is petitioning India,s Christian 
churches to welcome Dalit Christians.  He claims 30% of 
India,s Christians are &old, high caste8 Christians who 
are unwilling to share church resources or high-church 
positions with the Dalit Christian underclass.  He believes 
the Church, and India itself, have enough resources to lift 
Dalits out of oppression, and criticizes Udit Raj,s petition 
to the US Congress, implying Raj does not distribute the 
funds he raises abroad to the larger Dalit community. 
 
Not All Doom and Gloom 
---------------------- 
 
17. (U) In contrast to Udit Raj,s overwhelmingly negative 
assessment, there has been considerable Indian media coverage 
of positive trends.  For every example like that of the mob 
in Haryana, there is an example of a Dalit using the 
advantages Indian society provides to advance his or her 
situation.  The Times of India, for instance, recently 
profiled the success of Narendra Jadhav, the chief economist 
of the India Reserve Bank, after the release of the English 
version of his memoir, "Untouchables: My Family,s Triumphant 
Journey Out of the Caste System in Modern India.8 
 
18.  (U) The assertions of Raj and other Dalit leaders 
regarding Brahmin dominance of Indian politics has not been 
factually correct for some time.  The Congress Party would 
not have been able to hold power for four decades without a 
coalition of Brahmins, Dalits and Muslims.  South India has 
been making great strides in reducing the importance of caste 
in politics for many years.  Starting from Tamil Nadu, there 
has been a peaceful and democratic shift of political control 
from Brahmins to the lower castes.  The Ramaswamy Naikar 
self-respect movement in the 1920,s and early 1930,s 
preceded the founding of the Dravidian parties in 1950,s and 
1960,s, which currently dominate politics in Tamil Nadu. 
 
19.  (U) The success of South Indian parties led directly to 
the establishment of Dalit-based politics in North India, as 
epitomized by the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) of Mayawati.  She 
has been the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh three times and 
is now recruiting Brahmins into the BSP.  In Bihar, another 
Dalit Leader, Ram Vilas Paswan has founded the Lok Janashakti 
Party (LJP).  A large percentage of its MLA,s came from the 
upper castes.  Although an OBC (other backward caste) rather 
than a Dalit, BJP leader Uma Bharati has mobilized Dalit 
voters in her faction in Madhya Pradesh (MP) to take on the 
upper caste leadership of the party. 
 
Comment ) Tread Carefully 
------------------------- 
 
20.  (SBU) The human rights arguments of Udit Raj and other 
Dalit activists are compelling, and likely to receive a 
receptive hearing in the US, which has experienced its own 
contentious struggle to achieve equal rights for oppressed 
minorities.  As Indian Dalit organizations lobby in the US, 
many Americans will agree with their contention that upper 
caste-based politics cannot continue in India.  Dalits are 
certainly the victims of abuse and discrimination, but India 
is undergoing dramatic social change, which is eating away at 
untouchability.  Everyday interaction in India,s urban 
centers is largely free of caste biases and most atrocities 
now take place in rural areas.  Dalits are politically 
active, vote in a solid block for their leaders and cannot be 
ignored by the political establishment.  Dalit leaders Ram 
Vilas Paswan and Mayawati have national clout, and the UPA is 
examining far-reaching proposals that could shake-up the 
caste system.  Some Dalit leaders have a vested interest in 
perpetuating GOI paternalism and the reservation system, as 
they are personally benefiting from the status quo.  Some of 
their pronouncements must be taken with a grain of salt.  The 
most useful action therefore, the US can take is to praise 
and provide assistance to efforts by India,s private and 
public sectors to address Dalit discrimination.  This would 
be more effective than attempting to "shame8 the GOI into 
action by repeatedly emphasizing the negative aspects of 
India,s social structure. 
MULFORD