The Catholic Church in Tamil Nadu will be organising a conference in Tiruchi on Saturday to highlight the long pending demand of inclusion of Dalit Christians in the Scheduled Caste list.
Briefing mediapersons on the conference, Antony Pappusamy, Archbishop of Madurai and president of Tamil Nadu Bishops’ Council, said the conference would be another step in the 68-year-long democratic struggle of the Dalits, who were denied reservation and other benefits when they embraced Christianity.
He said the single demand of the conference will be the removal of third paragraph of the Constitution (Scheduled Caste) Order of 1950, commonly referred as the Presidential Order, that states that any person professing a religion other than Hinduism, Buddhism or Sikhism cannot be considered a member of a Scheduled Caste. The Archbishop said that in a society structured based on caste hierarchy, the order was an injustice to the Dalits who converted to Christianity. He pointed out that the Catholic church in the country was observing August 10, the day when the order was issued, as a black day.
He highlighted that the National Commission for Religious and Linguistic Minorities, led by former Chief Justice of India Ranganath Misra, that recommended the de-linking of Scheduled Caste status from religion. “The government must implement the recommendations of this commission,” he added. Stating that the conference was being jointly organised by all the Catholic dioceses in Tamil Nadu, he said thousands are expected to participate at the conference.
