The Quint columnist who also identifies herself as an ‘activist’ today raised the ‘Dalit Christian’ bogey over what appears to be a neighbourly quarrel.
One Shalin Maria Lawrence today tweeted how her neighbour does not want her WiFi connection running through her house to reach Lawrence’s and accused her of messing around with cables. She then claimed her WiFi stopped working and her neighbour called up the service provider and got her box shifted. She then claimed that the service provider listened to the neighbour and disconnected her WiFi and left her without Internet for over a week.
Lawrence then claimed that this act of her neighbour is a ‘clear violation’ and she could file a case under the SC/ST atrocities act but cannot since she is a Christian Dalit and not covered under the Act.
Here is how Lawrence’s tweets are problematic.
She firstly invokes the neighbour’s caste, Brahmin, to ascribe motives to her actions upfront in what appears like a usual neighbourly quarrel. But what is more problematic is the casualness with which Lawrence has brought in the SC/ST Atrocities Act. It just shows how it is so easy for someone to get vindictive and file a case under the draconian laws sometimes just for a neighbourly quarrel.
Further, Lawrence claims she is a Christian Dalit. Which is also problematic. Dalits, who have shunned the faith they were born in, i.e. Hinduism, and converted to other faiths like Islam or Christianity, should not be identifying themselves as Dalits. They left the faith for a better social life and changed their name, relationship with society (where Church becomes pivot), food habits and even costumes and mannerisms. They erase their past baggage, so to say, and embrace new faith for better social status after conversion and hence are no longer socially backward.
They may be economically backward, but after converting to different faith, which promised them a caste-less society, they cannot continue to claim social handicap or backwardness after leaving the faith that handed them to social handicap to begin with. Earlier, Lawrence had suggested religious conversion as one of the methods to stop the growth of BJP in Tamil Nadu.
Lawrence’s tweets, thus, just show how the conversion mafia have ruined the social fabric of our country and also how easy it is for some people with vested interest to misuse the laws if they want to be vindictive. Which is why it is problematic.
