The mark of Cain

On a December afternoon in Delhi, with the sky a sullen grey and the cold gnawing at your bones, there is nothing better than a warm place indoors. The Sunday morning worship doing no wonders to lift my spirits up, I rushed home from church, grabbed a quick bite of lunch and hit the bed. But my siesta was interrupted by a commotion outside. Groggy-eyed, I turned to the balcony to watch. Many others too were craning their necks to watch the spectacle in the common space between two rows of apartments in our LIG colony. (Low-income-group flats, each of which has one bedroom, a living space and kitchen.)
There was a motley crowd below, some of them beating a boy, others whispering his ‘crime’ to late-comers, and some others watching the scene, perhaps like Saul who watched Stephen being stoned to death but did not want blood on his hands. The sole voice of reason from a scrawny lad to call the police and not to take the law into one’s own hands was outshouted with a “Chup raho...”.
I could not see the boy’s eyes (I would not have dared to look into those), but I gathered that he must have been nine or 10. He was clothed in no more than a shirt and a sweater that was barely enough to keep the cold away, and I don’t remember if he had a pair of shoes on. His hair was dishevelled and his hands and feet bore telltale signs of winter, his dry skin looking like cracked porcelain. The boy could hardly take the blows anymore, and once he turned like a top before falling to the ground.
His crime? The little boy had wandered into the corridors of the flats, and seeing a neatly made bed in the front room of my neighbour’s flat, slipped between the warm ‘rajai’ (blanket).
Perhaps all he wanted to do was to sleep in a warm bed, which he otherwise never did.  But the little girls of the house who came in after playing outside saw a stranger sleeping in their bed and started screaming (only fairy tales have friendly dwarfs who let a Snow White stay). The ‘thief’ was immediately captured, a few questions asked and then blows rained on him.
Winter is the cruellest time for the homeless poor in north India (monsoon in other places). Media reports say more than 350 people died of the cold in the region this winter. Thousands of people in India have only the sky as their roof. 
Homelessness not just robs people of an address, but it robs them of their dignity too. Here are some chilling statistics. Action Aid in 2003 found out that there were 78 million homeless people in India. CRY (Child Relief and You) in 2006 estimated that 11 million homeless children live on the street.
What the streets can do to children is anyone’s guess. I dread to think of what happened to the child I saw years ago in Delhi. The gates of prisons are forever open to children like him.
Jacob Riis, a photojournalist, documented the squalid living conditions in New York City slums in the 1880s in his book, How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York. The book portrayed the Dickensian setting in which children lived or worked for a living. He blamed the apathy of the middle class and the rich for turning their tenement into dens of vices and crime. Public reaction soon followed, which led to improvements in their living conditions.
“The first tenement New York knew bore the mark of Cain from its birth, though a generation passed before the waiting was deciphered,” is the first line of Riis’ book. The ‘mark’ that God set upon Cain has come to be referred to as a person's sinful nature. But this article is not about the sinful nature of people who are pushed into a world of crime and violence by circumstances beyond them, like the ones whom Riis speaks of or whose lives he documents, but about people like us who do not know how the other half lives.
“Long ago it was said that ‘one half of the world does not know how the other half lives.’ That was true then. It did not know because it did not care. The half that was on top cared little for the struggles, and less for the fate of those who were underneath, so long as it was able to hold them there and keep its own seat,” Riis wrote in the Introduction to his book.
Metropolitan Geevarghese Mar Osthathios, in his Theology of a Classless Society, says “hardly anybody is non-violent in our exploiting structure of injustice in which we are all voluntarily or involuntarily involved. The alternative is not between violence and non-violence but between greater and lesser violence, between structural and special violence and between hidden and manifest violence. If we are silent about the endemic violence of the unjust economic, cultural and social structure of our society and raise a hue and cry about the bloody revolution which is a result of the former, we are justifying the evil tree and condemning only the evil fruit.”
That means we are as guilty as anyone else in perpetuating structures that kill and maim. How will we escape having blood on our hands? Like Cain, who has killed his own brother, are we seeking a mark on our head lest others might harm us when we ourselves are guilty?
The question still burns, "Where is your brother?”

Journey to self

Years ago, long before Gandhi-giri became a fad, I went on a whirlwind tour of Delhi. The architectural splendours of Lutyens’ Delhi and the sandstone marvels of the Mughal era had always beckoned me. Any sightseeing trip of Delhi, as you know, is incomplete with a pilgrimage to the Rajghat and the Gandhi Museum. 

The Rajghat, Mahatma Gandhi’s memorial, has an aura of holiness surrounding it. An eternal flame burns here as if to remind the world of the relevance of Gandhism for time to come.  The black-marble-slab memorial on the banks of the Yamuna invites as many as 10,000 visitors every year, apart from heads of state and visiting dignitaries. It has the epitaph ‘He Ram’ (O God), which he uttered with his last breath.
Rajghat and the Gandhi Museum were on the last leg of our trip. Visitors were few and scattered on that wintry afternoon in January – most people on our bus had walked away after making a ritualistic tour of the place – and I saw a feeble, old man making his way to the memorial.  He wore a crumpled Gandhi cap and leaned on for support to a young man who looked like his grandson.
Even as I watched, the man stumbled his way to the black stone, touched it in reverence, and, in what would remain in my memory for a long time to come, buried his face in his hands and wept uncontrollably. Tears streamed down his weather-beaten face. I felt a lump in my throat.
There was no doubt that he was witness to the “lovely dawn of freedom”, as the poet Sarojini Naidu remarked. But what did that mean to this poor man from some remote corner of India? What spell had the old man with a spinning wheel cast on him? Or a million others like him? My journey in search of Gandhi had just begun.
Significantly, we saw a revival of the Gandhi cap in the anti-corruption crusade led by Anna Hazare. Thousands of people, young and old, sported them as they held candle-light rallies and meetings in support of him. But do symbolic gestures such as this or wearing khadi or using handmade paper mean anything?
Beyond idolising Gandhi, a theologian friend told me, it becomes imperative to reinterpret Gandhian principles. For instance, writing in Young India, Gandhi said: “The extension of the law of non-violence in the domain of economics means nothing less than the introduction of moral values as a factor to be considered in regulating international commerce.”
How would we engage with Gandhi’s positions on caste, patriarchy and trusteeship?  How would we reconcile with the vision of a poverty-free India, as expounded by a minister, that 85 per cent of the Indian population should live in cities and to the idea that all urbanisation processes should be halted. How would we be led forward into action to build an India where “women will enjoy the same rights as men”?


Mannequins wearing Gandhi caps.

Those laying claim to the legacy of Gandhi will have to do more than wear his cap or ‘like’ it on Facebook. That would be to resist all forms of structural violence as well. Structural violence is the result of policy and social structures, and change needs to come from altering the processes that encourage these. Thus young professionals in the forefront of anti-corruption also have to make active interventions in preventing the commoditisation of health care, education, and other essential needs of citizens.
It is also very Christian to have this sort of generalised dissatisfaction, “a maladjustment to the world”. As theologian Richard Beck says, “More, these feelings help with resisting idolatry, letting us know that the status quo isn’t the Kingdom.”
In one of his speeches, ‘Proud to be maladjusted’, Martin Luther King, one of Gandhi’s greatest admirers, said: “…[T]here are certain things in our nation and in the world which I am proud to be maladjusted and which I hope all men of goodwill will be maladjusted until the good societies realise. … I never intend to become adjusted to segregation and discrimination. I never intend to become adjusted to religious bigotry. I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few….”
Gandhi himself said Jesus was the most active resister known perhaps to history. “This was nonviolence par excellence.”
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams says Jesus would have joined the Occupy movement to protest against social and economic inequality. “Jesus would be there, sharing the risks, not just taking sides,” he said. Jesus, who “constantly asked awkward questions” would be “steadily changing the entire atmosphere by the questions that he asked of everybody involved — rich and poor, capitalist and protester and cleric.”
Another Christmas. Another spiritual journey to know the mystery of the Incarnation.
“…were we led all that way for Birth or Death?
There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods. I should be glad of another death.
--- ‘Journey of the Magi’, T.S. Eliot.

Fair, slim, and born again!

Many a time I have been asked, “Are you born again?” On most occasions it was as if the questioners had erected a wall around them and I did not have the password to enter their gated community. Each time my face wore a puzzled look.
There are many who behave as if being born again means gaining membership to an exclusive club of the “saved”. I recently encountered one such youngster who told me she was interested in apologetics, the science of defending the faith. It is fine as long as it is to assert one’s convictions, but more often than not it boils down to being critical of other religions or world views.
The term ‘born again’ apparently became popular with the evangelical Christian renewal in the United  States in the 1960s. But it was perhaps Charles Wendell Colson, better known as Chuck Colson, who gave a cultural construct to it with his book Born Again, where he speaks of his conversion. He was one of those named in the Watergate conspiracy. He later found the Prison Fellowship International.
With the many renewal movements in different churches in India, the idea gained ground here too.
The unquestioning Christian enthusiasm is now bandied about in matrimonial columns as one of the personality traits or possessions that a prospective bride or groom seeks.
Sample this:
Wanted Brides—Born again 26/178/fair/slim, BE work IT field, boy seeks born again, simple girl working at … able to converse in English from spiritual family….
The fetish for ‘fair’ skin or ‘wheatish’ complexion only shows the entrenched caste bias in our community. A born-again Christian ought to judge a person by ‘the content of his or her character’ rather than the ‘colour of their skin’. 
But the quintessential Christian family [in Kerala] that is interested in dowry needs more than just educational and professional qualifications to find the ‘perfect’ match! It needs a rhetorical label such as‘born again’.
What is the meaning of being ‘born again’ if it is not about acquiring new attitudes? The Oxford Dictionary of Learning says: born-again, adjective, “relating to or denoting a person who has converted to a personal faith in Christ (with reference to John 3:3)”.
Just how is a personal relationship with Christ life-changing? For instance, what should be the born-again Christians’ attitude towards money? Many think it is the password to attaining riches. The signature verse for televangelists promising such prosperity is John 10: 10: “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.”
But the Scripture also says that when the multitudes that came out to be baptised by John the Baptist asked him, ‘What then shall we do?’, he answered them: “He who has two coats, let him share with him who has none; and he who has food, let him do likewise… and be content with your wages.”
Jesus spent more time among the poor than among the rich. In his Sermon on the Mount, he says, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth ... but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.”
But any such talk is sneered at. I remember how a friend’s sermon about making ethical choices in investments was met with indifference. There were attempts at being defensive like the “rich young ruler” who came up to Jesus to know what he should do to have eternal life.
Last year, the Church of England withdrew investment from Vedanta, which is involved in a mining project in Orissa. The church was dissatisfied with its respect for human rights. As ‘spiritually reborn Christians’, would we rearrange our finances?
Not just about personal finances, many people do not appreciate pulpit talks about social inequality too. “We took on personal salvation—we need our sins redeemed, and we need our Saviour,” says Rick Warren, author of the bestseller Purpose Driven Life. But “some people tended to go too individualistic, and justice and righteousness issues were overlooked.”
Can we overstate the importance of individual salvation when the reconstruction of communities is as, or even more, important? Can personal faith substitute for social conscience?
Tri Robinson says once he realised it, he no longer could separate his passion for the Kingdom of God from his commitment to care for the environment. He is the pastor of a church in the United States. “I had to tell everyone that Christians should not only care about creation but had been mandated by God to be leaders in a worldwide environmental movement. I shared this mandate with my church, I wrote a book on caring for creation (Saving God’s Green Earth)…. Together with other like-hearted people I started a ministry called ‘Let’s Tend the Garden’. … I told everyone that caring for the creation is not an option but a commission, especially for those who value and believe God’s word in his Bible.”
Do we share this conviction? As Christians, are we ready to change our practices?
The Nicodemus question still torments my heart. “How can a person be born again?”

‘When silence is betrayal’

Many Christians today define their faith by ‘religious’ symbols or catchy quotes on their cars. I have nothing against a cross or rosary hanging from the rear-view mirror or against biblical verses stuck on windshields. The other day I saw a sticker that said, “But as for me, it is good to be near Jesus” (Psalms 73:28)! A clever adaptation of verse 28 in the Psalm of Asaph, written much before Jesus’ time, which has God in place of Jesus.
Depending on one’s theological leanings, it can be seen as an overenthusiastic effort to spread the Word. Or as a naive belief that the Word will be the armour against dangers on the road. (It is rarely to remind the owner-driver to armour himself with Christian attitudes. If it were so, it would not have been on the rear windshield. In fact, it signifies a condescending attitude towards ‘people of lesser faith’.)
What I consider more sickening are in-your-face messages like ‘My boss is a Jewish carpenter’. No doubt, it is catchy and sounds impressive. But in my opinion, it displays an utter lack of sensitivity to the social and political realities in India today.
What is the actual situation in our social milieu? I, for one, with my privileged schooling, have never had a carpenter’s son as my classmate. That Jesus was himself a carpenter, who was at the lower end of the socio-economic strata, did not give the disadvantaged any better access to my Christian school for their only means of empowerment and social mobility: education.
In a lecture on ‘Inclusive Education: A View of Higher Education in India’, Professor Ganesh N. Devy says thus: “Despite achievements of half a century of affirmative action in higher education, legacies of discrimination, marginalisation and denial are still enmeshed in Indian social composition. …Successive governments have tried to cope with educational and social inequalities. All of the approximately 350 state-funded universities and16,000 colleges have been trying to provide education at a relatively low cost, not entirely unaffordable to students from the poorer classes. Yet, it cannot be said that the state has succeeded in providing access to higher education for the marginalised in India.”
Thanks to the efforts of social reformers and successive governments, opportunities have no doubt increased in higher education. Yet, the livelihoods of a mason or a carpenter without education are nothing to speak of.
A few years ago, a carpenter told me that he would never want his son to take up his profession. Getting a job, a respectable livelihood option, is as difficult as getting an education. It is also worthwhile to think if any of our youths would take up carpentry as a profession unless engineering colleges or IITs came up with a B.Tech or B.E course in it!
Herein lies the problem with simplistic statements or bold assertions like the one mentioned earlier.
But even if we were to dismiss all these as superfluous, there is another thing that should weigh more on our consciences: the deadly silence when we need to speak up. For all the alleluias and praises that we are willing to mouth, are we ready to speak up in the face of injustice in the world? What should be our reaction to the recent developments in Kerala with regard to admissions to self-financing colleges?
Years ago, Rev. Martin Luther King preached at the Riverside Church in New York City that “a time comes when silence is betrayal”.  He was condemning the Vietnam War and the unjust system that created it. He said:
“We as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing oriented’ society to a ‘person oriented’ society.  When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
“…And some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak.
“…A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.
“…A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits outwith no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, ‘This is not just.’”

The image of Jesus

Of all the enduring images I have of Jesus is that of ‘the laughing Christ’.  It is not the type you normally see in paintings and pictures, which show the seriously pious or the almost sad Jesus. It shows Jesus having a hearty laugh, chin up and shoulders thrown back. I remember it as being refreshingly different when I saw it first, at the residence of our former Achen who had introduced us, as Yuvajana Sakhyam members, to a Jesus we had never known until then.
A few years earlier, a similar picture from the pages of a magazine I was thumbing through had struck me as interesting. It was a still from a movie, Matthew, based on the Gospel and produced by Visual Bible International, a South African company. “This is a Jesus who smiles, laughs and rolls up his sleeves to work and play with those he loves,” says Bruce Marchiano, who plays Jesus in the movie.
It is said that director Reghardt van den Bergh wanted Marchiano to portray Jesus as a joyful person. In his first meeting with the actor he told him, “I have one word for you: joy.” And he quoted what is said in Hebrews 1:9 about Jesus (You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has set you above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy). Speaking about it later, Marchiano said that the director believed that it was joy that set apart Jesus from others.
The scene in which Peter walks on water is portrayed in such a way that when he starts sinking, Jesus laughs and embraces him. Imagine Jesus laughing with one of his best friends when he begins to sink, and telling him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”
A friend tells me that the portrait of the laughing Christ became popular in India, thanks to Rev. M.A. Thomas and the Ecumenical Christian Centre, Whitefield, Bangalore. In the 1960s, Achen chanced upon a sketch in London and bought it from a roadside vendor. It still adorns the chapel of the ECC. The ECC has reproduced the portrait and has it on sale.

The laughing Christ

It is quite likely that Jesus sprinkled his talks with humour. How else would children have come to him? (In today’s world, he would have been listed one of the most powerful public speakers, and his parables would have been a great hit on TED talks or YouTube.) One of my favourite anecdotes is about a child rolling in laughter when his father was reading him the Bible passage about “the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and paying no attention to the plank in your own eye”. If a child in our age could find humour in that, imagine all the young ones who followed Jesus in Galilee.
Jesus expressed other emotions too. Of flesh and blood, Jesus encountered many circumstances in his life that evoked in him the navarasas, or emotions that characterise life: love, laughter, fury, compassion, disgust, horror, wonder, peace, devotion.
Once he was “deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled” (John 11:33). Another time he “marvelled” at the centurion’s words of faith. He was seen by some as a troublemaker because he challenged the way things were done. Others saw him as a peacemaker. He loved the young man who came to ask him about the kingdom of God. But he was angry too and called the Pharisees a “brood of vipers”. He fasted, he feasted.
But just as Jesus’ humour is lost on us, so is the intention of his deeds and the reason behind these emotions.
Jesus was being no uptight conservative when he chased out money-changers from the temple with a whip in hand. I am sure he must have struggled in his mind before doing that. His anger here was as spiritual as could be. He was attacking the visible manifestations of corruption in the temple.
It is as Christ-like an emotion to act against corruption, human rights violations or environmental degradation as it is to pray.
Years ago, I struck up a conversation with a young aspirant for priesthood while on a bus journey to Kozhikode. He had been a close observer of the fishermen’s struggle in which the church had a great role to play.
“The fishermen’s struggle in Kerala was essentially a response of the traditional fishermen to the technological, economic and social changes brought about by the introduction of mechanisation of fisheries since the 1960s.” It ultimately resulted in a ban on trawling and in bringing the social security concerns of fishermen to the fore.
Playing the devil’s advocate, I asked him, “Why don’t you give the fishermen enough capital to buy mechanised boats? The church has lots of money.”
To this he replied calmly: “Christianity is not just an act of charity.”
He made me realise that the Christ with the whip is as relevant as the compassionate Christ. He made me realise that Desmond Tutu or Martin Luther King were as Christian as Mother Teresa or Father Damien.
Martin Luther King saw his civil rights activity as an extension of his ministry. He said: “The Christian gospel is a two-way road. On the one hand, it seeks to change the souls of men, and thereby unite them with God; on the other hand, it seeks to change the environmental conditions of men so the soul will have a chance after it is changed.”

Ten green commandments

Out of the mouth of babes comes great wisdom. My classmate Anjali’s little daughter had accompanied her to my office when we met after a long time. As we sat speaking, the child sat in the foyer quietly, drawing something on a piece of paper. As they stood up to leave, she gifted it to me. On it was a sketch of me, complete with a toothcomb moustache, and below it scrawled: ‘Amma’s friend.’
Even as I thanked her for the gesture, I could not but notice the paper on which she had drawn it—the unused side of a page from a notebook. To my words of appreciation, Anjali replied that the child’s teacher in her London school had taught them about caring for the environment. “They are made to realise that even pencils are from trees, and you need to be sparse in sharpening them,” she said. That was the lesson of a lifetime for me.
We hardly notice the paper drifting through our lives every day—from bus tickets to currency notes to packing material. Did you know that newly cut trees account for 55 per cent—more than half—of the total supply of paper? Can we, as individuals, take small steps to lighten the load on our planet?
If a child can, what on earth is preventing us?
A few years ago, the Church of England published a set of green commandments. It suggested many lifestyle changes such as organising a car-sharing scheme for travelling to and from Sunday worship; reviewing of any floodlighting the church has and checking whether the bulbs are energy-efficient; cancelling “wasteful” junk mail; and helping a churchyard become a 'green lung' for the community.
Recently, the CSI Synod Ecological Committee listed a 12-point action plan to be pursued by community members “to strengthen the forces of life”. The church will not use plastic cups and bags for its functions. All parishes are requested to initiate organic vegetable gardens in their premises and encourage the use of smokeless chulas and solar lamps in households and institutions.
But caring for the environment is more than all these. It also involves a more equitable distribution of resources. There is always a squeeze on the environment when the number of jobless and the poor increase. For instance, when farm prices drop, farmers in poor countries slash and burn and do all within their means to increase production. “Thus resources are plundered, rainforests denuded, rivers polluted, coastal zone regulations violated, and fisheries exhausted.”
Caring for the environment could also mean doing your bit as part of civil society in decision-making, forcing governments to honour environmental commitments, joining marginalised groups in their protests, and so on. In the words of the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, “For the church of the 21st century, good ecology is not an optional extra but a matter of justice. It is therefore central to what it means to be a Christian.”
Here are ten steps that I have gleaned from a number of sources. These
are in the form of commandments that we must think about, and can adopt and adapt in our lives.

1. You shall have a moral obligation to look after God’s creation. That includes “the dry land called Earth, and the waters that were gathered together called Seas; plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind; swarms of living creatures, and birds that fly above the earth across the dome of the sky, the great sea monsters and cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind” (Genesis).

2. You shall recognise that man does not have an absolute dominion over creation. You shall not forget the interdependence of all inhabitants of the earth. You shall not destroy the trees (forests) thereof by forcing an axe against them: for you may eat of them, and you shall not cut them down (Deuteronomy 20:19). This way you will also protect the tribal people for whom living in the forests is a way of life.

3. No economic activity shall be at the cost of natural capital. For instance, the cost of safeguarding the environment shall be included in the calculations of the overall costs of any project.

4. You shall recognise the primacy of man over technology. Remember the Sabbath day. Give rest to the land (you shall not exploit it), give a break to 24x7 production.
Therefore, you shall not consume more than you ought to, take more than what is necessary from the earth beneath, or that is in the water. This way your generations shall be blessed.

5. You shall buy stuff that will last longer, and reuse in creative ways. Try and avoid air conditioners, heaters, and washers. Reduce water consumption. Say no to plastic, unless absolutely necessary. Make use of paper or cloth bags instead.

6. You shall read newspapers and magazines online; reduce printing or photocopying unncessarily. Pay bills online and encourage online bulletins and newsletters wherever possible.

7. You shall change the light bulbs in your home and church to compact fluorescent light lamps (CFLs). Besides, you shall look at the government’s Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) standards when you buy appliances. Switch off lights and electric appliances when not in use.

8. You shall conserve fuel.  Walk, or use the public transport to office at least once a week. You shall carpool as much as possible. Start with neighbours going to church together.

9. You shall plant a sapling. You shall also strive to dissuade farmers from using chemical pesticides, which kill microorganisms in the soil. Buy locally grown and organic vegetables.

10. You shall have a spiritual response to environmental questions. Create a green congregation. Make a mission statement for your church and implement it.

‘We shall overcome’

To millions of people it is the ultimate song of resistance. To me ‘We shall overcome’ is also the reminder of a mea culpa moment. I had heard it sung dozens of times earlier without ever knowing its historical significance. But this time it touched my soul, it changed my vision of seeing the world. It was a deeply moving and embarrassing experience.
As a group of non-committal adolescents, we loved attending the youth camps of the church to have a little bit of fun. We were boisterous and loud, but our words were empty. Coming from middle-class families, we went to ‘regimented English-medium schools’ that had sprung up in small towns, and vainly thought it rocking that we could belt out almost all songs of Abba or Boney M. With a beat in our hearts and a spring in our steps, we made it to every camp as a gang. We practised skits for ‘talent time’, stayed late into the night to prepare the morning ‘newspaper’, giving little thought to what was discussed during the day. Our vision was tunneled.
One day during break time at one of the students’ conferences, we retreated to the verdant surroundings of Charalkunnu with guitars in hand. Unmindful of what was happening around us, we started singing loudly. Little did we know that we were disturbing a small group of people huddled together. They were a class apart from the Syrian Christians that we were. They were attending the same camp.
As the group’s attention turned towards us, we heard a loud voice from their leader, an Achen: “Do you want to sing English songs, children?” And then he began to sing ‘We shall overcome’.
The boys and girls in the group formed a circle and sang after him. The faint voice now became bolder. This came as an assault on our sensibilities. We were sorry that we had touched a raw nerve. It was never our intention to disturb anyone and we walked away. The three little words rang in my ears for a very long time.
We shall overcome, as they say, “started out in church pews and picket lines”. Since then it has reverberated through history. The civil rights movement in the United States adopted it as its unofficial anthem. Vowing to fight for voting rights for all Americans, President Lyndon Johnson invoked the hypnotic words in his famous speech.
It has inspired civil rights and pro-democracy movements worldwide and brought about reforms in governments. It has led millions through the storm, through the night, of despair and doom. The message of hope and courage has been translated into many languages, including in Hindi (‘Hum honge kamyab’).
It was not difficult for me to discern the hurt in the voices of the boys and girls, the anger deep inside them and the sense of collective self-esteem by getting into a huddle and establishing an identity.
But, has all the “cries of pain and hymns of protests” of Dalits delivered them from centuries of oppression? Has conversion to Christianity whose bedrock is “there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal.3: 28) redeemed them from social discrimination and untouchability?
Figures say there are some 19 million Dalit Christians in India. That is more than 70 per cent of the total population of Christians in the country. But their place in the church is nothing to speak of.
No doubt, caste is a political reality than just a personal reality. And it is another matter that the church has been fighting for the constitutionally guaranteed protection and privileges that Dalits lose just because they profess their faith.
But political struggles apart, don’t we need to liberate ourselves from the prejudices that have ruled us for long? African American writer James Baldwin’s essay ‘The fire next time’ explores the question of black identity. He believed the black man’s suffering was
redemptive. But he also believed that the deliverance of the whites lay in delivering themselves “from their imprisonment in myths of racial superiority”. We need to replace race with caste when we think of our own deliverance.
That is the same message that Peter got from the “great sheet let down from heaven” and made him say to Cornelius, “Get up, for I am a man as you are.” (Acts: 10).

P.S.: A cartoon I saw below one of the articles on the ‘We shall overcome’ song shows a little black boy nudging his grandfather to ask him, “Did we overcome yet?”