We have witnessed better results when a social justice and peace lens and approach is used by philanthropy. It enables a focus on root causes and mechanisms that perpetuate injustice as opposed to just alleviating the effects of unjust treatment. However, there remain many questions to be answered about the practice of philanthropy for social justice and peace (PSJP). What is it? How is it done? What difference does it make?…The answers are there. There are great examples across the globe of effective social justice grantmaking, of why this approach is necessary and the change that it brings about. In an attempt to learn more about PSJP so that we can improve our own grantmaking practices and to help change the discourse and direction of mainstream organised philanthropy to one that puts social justice and peace at its core, we will bring you stories that define PSJP and all its elements.
Here is one story of a courageous foundation and its approach to a persistent and deep-rooted issue that has plagued Indian society for over 2000 years:
The Dalit Foundation, New Delhi, India
Written by Max Niedzwiecki (2009), updated by Andrew Milner (2012)
It was a ‘lightbulb’ moment. In a conference room in St Petersburg, Martin Macwan, one of the founder members of the Dalit Foundation, had just explained to a gathering of fledgling social justice foundations from around the world that the Dalit Foundation had redefined the term ‘Dalit’. For them, it no longer meant an outcast, despised and discriminated against under the Hindu caste system, but someone who strove for equality and justice. For one woman from a European fund, the explanation was both enlightening and inspiring – ‘I am a Dalit!’ she exclaimed.
Started in 2003, the Dalit Foundation is the first grantmaking organization in India committed exclusively to the eradication of caste discrimination and the empowerment of Dalits and other marginalized communities.
Caste discrimination in India is illegal, but centuries-old attitudes are not changed by the passing of a law. Dalits in many parts of the country remain subject to the most degrading forms of discrimination and to extreme violence at the hands of dominant caste Indians.
The following incident was reported in the Dalit Foundation’s 2006 Annual Report. On the night of 4 October 2005, five-year-old Astha (name changed) was kidnapped from her home, brutally raped and left to die. Her father found her the next morning unconscious and bleeding profusely. Astha belonged to the Dalit community, her attacker to the local dominant caste. Besides the trauma of the child’s injuries, Astha’s family faced the hostility of the local police – to extent of mistreatment of her father – when they reported the incident, and despite the evidence, they named the culprit only under pressure, 22 days after the incident. In addition, the villagers ostracized the family for making the case public. This is not an isolated incident. Every hour, two Dalits are assaulted; every day, three Dalit women are raped, two dalits are murdered, two dalit homes are burned. Ninety-five per cent of all illiterate Indians are Dalits, despite the fact that they comprise only around 16 per cent of the sub-continent’s total population. In many parts of India, Dalits are still forbidden to draw water from public wells, enter places of worship or wear shoes in the presence of a caste Hindu, travel public roadways, stay in hotels or eat in restaurants. The parallels with segregation in the US and Apartheid in South Africa, both of which are universally abhorred, are irresistible.
Unable to find other ways of making a living and often coerced into service, many Dalits from the manual scavenger castes are obliged to undertake manual scavenging – the removal of human excreta from ‘dry toilets’, work which is odious, degrading, which exposes them to the risk of serious illness and perpetuates their image as impure, inferior and untouchable. In some areas, Dalit women clean the toilets of 25 to 35 households each day, and earn only $0.40-$0.50 per house on a monthly basis. This practice continues, even in some government-controlled institutions, even though, again, legislation has outlawed it.
Bhaggulal Balmiki – an end to manual scavenging
It is these kinds of unjust and abhorrent treatment that the Dalit Foundation pits itself. It provided for example, legal, medical and financial help to Astha and her family and has been instrumental in helping the work of Bhaggulal Balmiki. He has a straightforward aim – to stop manual scavenging. His struggle against this and other forms of caste-based injustice has a long history. In 1974, having just finished high school, Bhaggulal and some of his friends ordered tea from the shop of a dominant caste vendor in a local village, Samthar. The vendor refused and for their insolence, they were beaten by the local policeman. However, the incident caused a stir in the media. The policeman was suspended and the vendor arrested. Moreover, the incident brought about a change in village attitudes. Regardless of caste, everyone began to be served tea in the same mud cups and the local temples were opened to Dalits.
Supported by his wife’s work, ironically as a manual scavenger, Bhaggulal graduated and encouraged his wife to stop work to complete her studies, too. Times remained hard, however. He continued to face discrimination in his professional life and moved from job to job. In 1996, he stopped work. The next four years were the low point of his and his family’s struggle. With no money coming in, his wife returned to manual scavenging and his children dropped out of school. He persevered. He convinced families engaged in manual scavenging to charge more for their work, to send their children to school and to refrain from alcohol abuse (an understandable occupational hazard). Slowly, earnings began to increase to the point where 50 families from the Balmiki community ceased manual scavenging. Bhaggulal’s family was one of this number and he and his wife opened a small store.
Relationship with the Dalit Foundation
During all this time, Bhaggulal received at best hand-to-mouth support for his social justice work from local organizations. In 2007, however, he was given a Dalit Foundation fellowship. This enabled him to expand his work. He is now working with all the Balmiki families in 37 villages of the Jaloun district.
The fellowship provides a striking illustration of the way the Dalit Foundation works. First and foremost, the Foundation seeks to strengthen the Dalit movement by promoting exemplary Dalit leadership through grants and fellowships to small grassroots initiatives. This is an important departure. Before the advent of the Dalit Foundation, Dalit activists were encouraged to be community workers rather than community leaders.
Changing an entire society for the better
However, it’s not just about making grants. The grant was coupled with capacity building training which educated Bhaggulal on his rights, legal aids and a progressive Dalit ideology. It also exposed him to the struggles and strategies of fellow activists from different parts of the country. Such capacity-building training is critical to the way in which the Foundation works. It gives foundation partners additional opportunities to strengthen their leadership potential, sharpen their perspective and develop their skills. Peer learning, self-reflection and the value of equality are core aspects to the development of such perspective, with the stress on gender equality and subcaste integration among the Dalits. The workshops through which this training takes place are spread over the three-year support period of grants. They prepare partners to independently address issues of equality and social justice, stop atrocities against Dalits, and push forward their aims.
In 2011- 2012, the Dalit Foundation supported 130 individuals and 13 organizations of which 62 were women or women-headed organizations, across 15 Indian statesii, groups and organizations working for the empowerment of the Dalit community. At the same time, these grants are helping to build a cadre of leaders for Dalit liberation throughout the country. The Foundation funds, for example, a Young Professionals Programme, a two-year fellowship programme for Dalit youth which seeks to develop young Dalit professionals by educating them on research and intensive participation in grassroots-level activities to push forward issues relating to Dalit liberation. It also runs the Dalit Professionals Programme, a series of one-year fellowships to Dalit professionals from the fields of medicine, engineering, journalism and law. Participants work to arrive at shared views about Dalit liberation, and to become more aware of the many forms of discrimination.
Since Dalits have been associated with a culture of oppression and negativity, the Dalit Foundation also wanted to support the emergence of cultural expressions that help create a proud, united and self-conscious community. Godna art is a remarkable example. A style of painting evolved by Dusadh (a Dalit community) women in Mithila, Bihar, inspired by their oral, cosmological and aesthetic traditions, the Godna style has become the most popular style used by Dusadh artists in adapting their tattoo art to paper. Since 2007, the Dalit Foundation has identified and supported a number of Godna artists, including the pioneer of this style, the late Chano Devi who received a Ministry of Textiles and Handicrafts award in 2008 for her work.
Finally, the preservation of the caste system depends on deeply-rooted attitudes in Indian society. Changing Dalit attitudes to themselves alone will not accomplish the Foundation’s mission. The Foundation’s decision-makers, who include a board of trustees which is comprised of at least 70 per cent Dalits and 50 per cent women, understand this, so the Foundation has paid special attention to creating understanding and a favourable public opinion about the Dalit situation and the Dalit movement. The volunteers and interns who have come to the foundation have played a pivotal role in achieving this objective, serving as ambassadors for the Dalit cause.
Bhaggulal meanwhile continues to stress the importance of education both as a means of combatting caste discrimination and of helping to increase incomes to escape its worst effects. In addition to his foremost aim of ending manual scavenging, he also campaigns against other evils of caste discrimination such as violence against women and alcoholism. Even supported by the fellowship, his work is at times three steps forward and two steps back. For instance, he ran into hostility from the dominant castes of Urmi and Uwali when some families stopped manual scavenging. They were threatened and forced to return to work. His work, however, is a lesson in the importance of perseverance and that the work of an individual can have significance for whole communities.
‘I am a Dalit’
The Dalit Foundation’s work is to support all the means of campaigning against caste-based injustice but, as we have seen, it has recognized wider implications of its struggle. Unearthing one injustice often leads to the discovery of another and that injustice needs to be tackled in all its manifold guises. So they have transformed the term Dalit. Instead of being the name for a wretched and abused minority in one part of the world, it has come to mean for them anyone who works or campaigns to end injustice no matter where it occurs. In a larger sense, the Foundation’s work will only be done when everyone can say ‘I am a Dalit’. At that time, paradoxically, there will be no more need to say it.
Its work also shows that those who support social justice initiatives need to look at the smallest details – even at the work of individuals operating on one community. They need the foresight to identify such individuals and organizations and the resolve to persevere even as those they support persevere in the face of hostility and discouragement.
For more information contact admin@dalitfoundation.org.
Notes
i Unless otherwise noted, information in this document is drawn from the following sources. To enhance readability of this case study, most quotation marks have been omitted. (a) Dalit Foundation Brochure. (b) Caste Mattters (Dalit Foundation Newsletter); Volume 1, Issue 1; December 2007. (c) Caste Mattters (Dalit Foundation Newsletter); Volume II, Issue 1; June 2008. (d) Dalit Foundation Annual Report 2007-2008.
ii The 15 states are Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand