India calling

I wish I had been better about blogging while in, or immediately upon returning from, India. Already the most of the memories have faded and only the ones that are documented with photos have been firmly implanted in my mind.

I wanted to be able to take every person I know on my journey, to be able to recall every single detail: every smell, every smile or stare from people in the slum, every heart racing car ride through the major cities. But I also know that there is no way I can put into words what I saw and felt because I have no context in which to place it.

I went to India, a land that, as one woman on the trip said, "was just a place on the map before." Seeing that land alone would have overwhelmed even the most seasoned traveler, I am convinced. But on top of that, I also saw a part that many would consider rude to talk about in polite Indian society; the slums, the Dalits, the poverty that was so extreme, yet so much a part of the country, that it wove in and out of even the most wealthy neighborhoods in a way that could not go unnoticed unless it were intentionally ignored.

How do I categorize this trip in my life? I have nothing else to compare it with. As my 10 days there drew to a close, I convinced myself that my journey would be a starting point, a foundation on which to build my life. Somehow, I thought, I would get back to India and make a difference. Either as a journalist or a missionary or a teacher, but the more days that wedge themselves between then and now, the less that thought seems like it could be a tangible reality.

I promised myself that I would make people care about what is happening over there. People who could, in turn, also make a difference. But now, I find it hard to even care myself. In a country that is so addicted to comfort, I am sadly, very content continuing on in my life as it was before India.

I can see friends and family, and even myself, growing tired of talking about India. And for that I feel like a failure. I have not been able to fully describe what I saw in order to get people to care. I am even beginning to doubt myself about what I saw. Is there really an entire group of people who are treated as garbage because of they fall outside of the caste system? How could it be that a country that is growing so rapidly in business and commerce could still hold on to such archaic ideas?

And then I find myself questioning how I, as a foreigner, could be qualified to pass such a judgement. Didn't I only spend 10 days there? How can I be informed enough about their culture to even be able to make such an observation? How do I know I wasn't just listening to the rants of some pseudo-political/religious NGO leaders?

But then I am faced with the images of the young men on the street corner who had a look that I had never seen on anyone's face before. They must have been close to my age, but they already looked as if they were facing death. Their lives had no value. Or the little girls who clung to my fingers in the slums, who I had to peel off my hands and place back with their parents before I could leave left. Or the old man who gratefully accepted the small piece of fruit from me as if it were a precious jewel.

This is desperation, this is hunger, this is heartbreak. And while I know that it exists in every shape and form in every corner of the globe, I saw how it takes exists in India. Now that I have seen that, I have a responsibility to God and those people that I may never see again to do something about it.

I just need to figure out exactly what that means.

Free the Dalit

So why, you may wonder, did I even go over to India in the first place?

Anyone remotely familiar with Mother Teresa's work is probably aware of the caste system in Hinduism and India. Basically, it's the organization of different groups of people in India. Hindu teaching holds that people come from different parts of a primordial being to make up one body. The main castes, or varnas, are the Brahmins (priests and teachers born from the mouth), Kshatriya (rulers and soldiers born from the arms), Vaisyas (merchants and traders born from the thighs) and Shudras (laborers born from the feet). Each varna is further divided within itself, forming a sub-caste system within a system. 


After all that comes the Untouchables (or the Dalits, as they have begun to call themselves in recent years), who are considered too defiled to even make up a part of the caste system. There are an estimated 250 million Dalits in India. 


They are out-castes in the truest sense of the word.


Despite their status of being "untouchable," Dalit women are often victims to human trafficking. Because they have no skills and no rights, they are made to be prostitutes, often times at a very young age. An estimated 25-100 million people are involved in human trafficking in India, estimates vary so much because many cases are unreported making it difficult to determine just how many are involved.


Within the last 50 years, a movement among the Untouchables has began to organize to eradicate the subjugation of their people. They have begun to call themselves the Dalits (the crushed, or oppressed).

One particular group that is leading the way in this movement is the Dalit Freedom Network who seek to prevent child trafficking through education.
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Friends Church in Yorba Linda, Calif. put the trip together to bring awareness to the situation in India and the work they've been doing to prevent children from falling victim to the system through education. We toured the schools and slums and met the leaders of the Dalit Freedom Network in India. All I can say now is that what these people are doing in revolutionary. It truly is undermining an entire social and religious structure that has been in place for thousands of years. Pray for them all, they need it.