Once I received an SMS
from a friend which read ‘Incredible India, where Pizza reaches home faster
than ambulance and police; where car loan is cheaper than education loan; where
rice is Rs. 40.00 per kilogram but SIM card is free; where you can find people
standing at tea stall, reading article in newspaper on child labour and saying ‘bachchon se kaam karane walon ko faansi de
di jani chahiye’ (people who employ children should be hanged) and shouting
‘oye chotu, do chai la, jaldi’ (get
two cups of tea quickly little boy).
The constitution of
India enumerates that ‘No child below the age of 14 years shall be employed to
work in any factory or mine or engaged in any other hazardous employment’
(Article 14); ‘The state shall direct its policy towards securing that the
health and strength of workers, men and women and the tender age of children
are not abused and that they are not forced by economic necessity to enter
vocations unsuited to there are and strength’ (Article 39-E); ‘Children shall
be given opportunities and facilities to develop in a healthy manner and in
conditions of freedom and dignity and that childhood and youth shall be
protected against moral and material abandonment’ (Article 39-f ); and ‘The
state shall endeavor to provide within a period of ten years from the
commencement of the constitution for free and compulsory education for all
children until they complete the age of fourteen years’ (Article 45). Despite of this child labor is a striking
problem in India. Its prevalence is evident in the child work participation
rate, which is more than that of other developing countries. A common finding
of every research on child labour states that poverty is the reason for child
labor in India. The unrelenting poverty
forces the parents to push their young children in all forms of hazardous
occupations. Child labor is a source of income for poor families. They provide
help in household enterprises or of household chores in order to free adult household
members for economic activity elsewhere.
In India the awful
growth of child labor is also because of unsustainable systems of landholding
in agricultural areas and caste system in the rural areas. Most child laborers in India belong to the
poor Scheduled Castes and scheduled tribes.
It is because the oppressive and unjust hierarchies of the caste system
continue to ‘lock’ Dalit children out of full participation in education within
schools. The educational institution
seen as the critical platform for change becomes the medium and the very
apparatus to insinuate humiliation and discrimination at the inception of caste
identity. In other words, the discriminatory practices have been internalized
by the higher caste groups towards the Dalit (teacher, colleague, student, peer
groups) in education and social networking on every day basis. More strikingly,
education has not been significant to perpetuate awareness against nor ensured
a value system that can resist discrimination at grassroots level. So the
mission of the church is to map the diverse spheres of school life where social
relations and pedagogic processes fail to ensure full participation of Dalit
children. Keeping abreast the socio-historical experience of disadvantage that
these communities have experienced as a result of caste discrimination it is
important to bear in mind the manner in which caste identity continues to
impinge on their education and seeks for redressal of the same.
The caste system is
determined by notions of purity and pollution, themes which are identified as
central to the Hindu culture. The essence of caste hierarchy is social
differentiation between the caste groups, historically based on occupational
practice. Brahmans are considered to be the purest group as a result of their
occupational involvement in ritual and religious activities, which are
considered to be the most superior of all social activities. At the other end
of the social continuum, the Sudras or Dalits are identified as defiled as a
result of the activities to which they have been traditionally assigned, i.e.
cremating the human dead, handling dead animals and human faces, cutting hair
and nails, and manual scavenging of bodily excrements. These tasks are
considered impure in Hindu culture. Like the tasks, Sudras or Dalits are
considered to be eternally polluted and polluting.
At the time of
independence in 1947, the architects of India’s constitution outlawed
casted-based discrimination. Yet these strict delineations persist today. In an effort to break the caste barriers,
Mahatma Gandhi termed the scheduled castes as "Harijans", or,
literally, the "people of God." This terminology is strongly
discarded by the scheduled castes, who prefer to call themselves Dalits or the "oppressed".
The Government of India has passed
counter-caste legislation. For instance, the 1954 Harijan Act makes vocal,
physical and social abuse of the Dalits punishable by law. In order to counter
social oppression, this legislation also ensures positive discrimination (reserved
seats) for the Scheduled Castes in education, employment and political
representation in local institutions, state legislatures and the central
government. Despite counter-caste law,
poverty and social "backwardness" remain widespread among the socially
disadvantaged, and many of these constitutional privileges remain acutely
distant and unapproachable for persons unable to access and benefit from them.
In practice, these tools have been politicized to benefit various other Caste
groups for whom oppression has not been a social reality.
As a result of this
Dalit children are discouraged to go to school.
In many parts of India sitting arrangement for Dalit children in schools
can be easily distinguished. So, very
often it is observed that most of the Dalit children dropout of schools from
primary classes and get into child labour.
Indian government has taken initiatives to alleviate the problem of
child labor in recent years by invoking a law that makes the employment of
children below 14 illegal, except in family owned enterprises. However this law
is rarely adhered to due to caste identity and social discrimination. It is now certainly the mission of the church
to take up the issue of child labour from caste perspective and free the
children from bondage – the salvific purpose of Jesus for which we are all
called.
Kasta Dip
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