INDIAN DALIT FINDS HUMAN EQUALITY IN ISLAM

New Dehli, 25 Jumadil Awwal 1436/16 March 2015 (MINA) – Facing increasing religious intolerance in the Indian subcontinent, a Dalit has reverted to Islam after his community members were denied access to a prominent Hindu temple.

“What is the point in being a Hindu and having this sacred thread around my wrist if I can’t even enter a temple and perform puja,” Shyam Singh, or Azad, the new Muslim, On Islam quoted by Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA) as reporting.

Azad and his Dalit Valmiki community in Moga village of Meerut were banned from performing puja prayer at the prominent Valmiki temple last November. At that Time, Yadav’s community priest told Dalit Valmiki that they “don’t have any right to perform puja”.

As they reiterated calls for equal rights, Dalits were accused by local officials of “disturbing peace and communal harmony”.

Despite threats to embrace Islam, Dalit Valmiki’s complaints to the District Magistrates of Baghpat and Meerut, and the National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes were not answered. Worried about their safety, Meerut’s 100 Valmikis didn’t announce whether they have converted to Islam or not.

“All of them wanted us not to convert to Islam, but none of them want us to get equal status among Hindus,” Azad said about the from right-wing Hindu outfits.

“This is how we have historically and traditionally been cheated.”

For him, fleeing his village to Nepal would be safer amid continuous threats and harassment. Dalits are those at the bottom of India’s social system which separates people into Brahmin priests, warriors, farmers, laborers, and those beyond definition, including the Dalits.

Dalits often do the most menial jobs, while they are deprived of education either out of their abject poverty or discrimination at schools and universities. Muslims in India constitute 14% population of the Hindu-majority country.

Islam promotes the concept of a human brotherhood and the equality of all humans. It maintains that all humans are the children of one man (Adam) and one woman (Eve) and we all share the same lineage, as stated in the Quran:

O people, fear your Lord, Who created you of a single soul, and from it created its mate, and from the pair of them scattered many men and women; and fear God by whom you claim [your rights] from one another and kinship ties. Surely God has been watchful over you. (T/P011/R03)

Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA)