Word: harijan
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Bengal, the parson of Christ Church flung open the church doors and called his flock from their thatched houses. "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden," he intoned in a deep bass, "and I will give you rest." About 125 villagers, most of them harijan (untouchable) converts, took shelter. When winds ranging up to 100 m.p.h. ripped off the roof, the walls crumbled and entombed the congregation; all were found dead the next day. Rosaiah, the village agnostic who lost his wife and two children, had not gone to the church. "It was God that failed...
...Bombay, India, Doctoral Student Raja Dhale was distressed by the continued oppression of the harijan, or untouchable caste, to which he belonged. After reading about the Black Panthers in TIME, he founded the Dalit (Oppressed) Panthers, a group composed almost entirely of members of the untouchable caste who have since attracted considerable attention by protesting the iniquities of Indian society in polemics and poetry that have come to be known as "Dalit literature...
Untouchables are regular victims of brutality. In remote villages, "uppity" harijan women are sometimes paraded nude through the streets and then raped. A scuffle between an Untouchable laborer and some caste Hindus in Tamil Nadu State on Christmas Day in 1968 led to an arson attack on an Untouchable ghetto: 42 men, women and children were burned alive...
Placard-carrying "militant" Untouchables have not yet appeared on the streets of Delhi, but the harijan case is being made more and more vocally by the small harijan bloc in Parliament, by a few enlightened caste Hindus-and by the Communists. As Gandhi warned, if love and legislation do not overcome Untouchability, the only alternative may be bloody revolution...
...ablest working Cabinet man. As Communications Minister in the 1950s, for example, he planned the airline reorganization that nationalized Air-India, the country's international carrier. Even more important than his ministerial work is his role, conferred by Gandhi 23 years ago, as the Congress Party's harijan leader. It provides him with a powerful fulcrum. When Prime Minister Lai Bahadur Shastri died in 1966, Ram swung his bloc of more than 50 harijan parliamentary votes behind Indira Gandhi, assuring her election as Prime Minister over a conservative Syndicate faction rival. The Syndicate's bosses have never...