Caste-away: Still surviving beyond India's shores

Suraj Milind Yengde's Caste: A Global Story etches an unflinching history of the struggle against oppression

- Dhrubo Jyoti

In July 1982, prime minister Indira Gandhi was set to visit the US. Triumphant after her return from the political wilderness following the debacle of the Emergency, Gandhi's meetings with US President Ronald Reagan were meant to project power. After all, her supporters argued, she had stared Richard Nixon down and helped liberate Bangladesh. Now that a crisis in Afghanistan was unfolding and her party was back in the saddle in Delhi, surely she held the cards.

The visit didn't go exactly to plan. Her trip was rocked by protests from groups that had asked to meet her to discuss their concern over growing atrocities against Dalits in India. After receiving no positive response, members of VISION (Volunteers in Service to India's Oppressed and Neglected) started lobbying US senators, who promised to take up the matter with Gandhi. In separate letters addressed to Laxmi Narain Berwa, a US-based oncologist who headed VISION, Democrat heavyweight Paul Sarbanes and senior Republican Charles Mathias Jr applauded him for bringing the concerns of untouchables in India to their notice. Newspapers in the US covered the protests.