In the shadow of India's economic miracle lies a people often deemed untouchable, largely impoverished, and seemingly invisible. Bubbling beneath the shimmering image of a new India is a cauldron of inequality, caste-based subordination, and religious tension that could boil over into even greater civil strife and violence. At the center of these forces lies the Dalit struggle. While Dalit rights are often denied and hopes are crushed, growing political, economic, and spiritual empowerment is fueling a movement for liberation. The emancipation of the Dalits could serve as the key to securing India's nonsectarian, democratic future. However, this future collides with the ancient system of castes, which still confers profound benefits or burdens upon Indians simply because of their birth names.

For more than 3,000 years, the caste system has divided Indian society into four distinct classes, or varnas. Outside this system are the Dalits, who according to caste are not considered part of human society and are therefore less than fully human. While untouchability was outlawed in the 1950 Constitution and atrocities against Dalits are prohibited through the 1989 Prevention of Atrocities Act, a lack of political will and widespread corruption at all levels makes the law all but obsolete. Untouchability remains particularly acute in the rural areas of India, where 70 percent of the population still resides. While a great deal has changed in the sprawling and more tolerant cities, in rural areas people's entire lives are circumscribed by a caste identity that suffocates their dignity and segregates their lives.

The Dalit population approximates that of the entire United States. Imagine the U.S. population living in a perpetual state of discrimination and marginalization. This should strike a familiar chord with our own recent history with Jim Crow segregation. According to Joseph D'souza, president of the Dalit Freedom Network and All India Christian Council, the government has outlawed the symptoms of untouchability but ignores the actual disease of caste that still relegates nearly 250 million people to an apartheid-like existence. Comparing the Dalit struggle to a system of apartheid may seem like hyperbole. However, the entrenched system of caste systematically subordinates a large segment of Indian society.

The name "Dalit" means "broken" or "ground down." Approximately 25 percent of India's vast population is Dalit. To this day, people from higher castes refuse to marry Dalits; they are relegated to occupations that are considered degrading; most caste Hindus will not eat or drink with Dalits; and the majority of bonded laborers and sexual slaves in India are Dalit. Caste is part of a Hindu belief that people inherit their stations in life based on the sins and good deeds of past lives. Despite signs of economic mobility, Dalits are often the victims of dehumanizing acts of violence and humiliation designed to keep them in their place. As I learned more about the mounting crisis of AIDS in India, it is the Dalits who are most prone to be living with HIV and most likely to die a painful death from the disease.

I first heard about the Dalit struggle at the World Conference Against Racism, Xenophobia, and Discrimination in 2001. A large contingent of Dalit activists were present in full force. Their message was that the entrenched caste system in Southeast Asia was equivalent to racism and that their voices could no longer be silenced. Unfortunately, their voices were drowned by so many other oppressed voices vying for global attention, and by the controversy around the pulling out of the U.S. delegation.

It took another six years for the Dalit struggle to capture my conscience. In a presentation about the modern-day system of slavery, Gary Haugen, director of the International Justice Mission, based in Washington, D.C., described India as the worst abuser of human trafficking in the world. During a series of meetings over the past year, Rev. Sam Paul, national secretary of public affairs for the All India Christian Council, and Dr. Joseph D'souza have brought the Dalit struggle even closer to home, asking Sojourners to become engaged in the international Dalit freedom movement.

A year later I find myself in the crucible of the Dalit struggle, spending a week with the Dalit Freedom Network and the All India Christian Council, visiting one of the provinces in India that is hardest hit by Christian persecution and Dalit oppression. In many parts of India, the Dalit struggle intersects directly with the issue of religious freedom, as nearly 70 percent of Christians in India are Dalit. While Christians constitute a small minority in India, 2 to 3 percent of the population still translates into roughly 30 million people. Many Dalits and tribal caste people converted to Christianity in order to escape religiously sanctioned inferiority within Hinduism, drawn to a new identity and equality in Christ. However, many in India cling to the notion that India is a Hindu nation and that to be Indian is to be Hindu. Dalit Christians are thus twice-oppressed, once as the outcasts, and then again as members of an often-despised faith. This series will explore the Dalit struggle based on my experiences over the past week through what has felt like a baptism by fire. I hope and pray that you will join me in learning more about this modern system of apartheid.

Adam Taylor is the senior political director for Sojourners. To learn more, read Hidden Apartheid: Caste Discrimination against India's "Untouchables." Feb. 2007

In the Dominican Republic, an estimated 10 percent of children are sexually exploited. According to Project Rescue, the average age around the world for a child sex slave is 13, and the average cost for a child sex slave is $150.

But child sexual exploitation is not only an overseas issue. According to U.S. law enforcement, there are at least 20,000 children manipulated and forced to engage in prostitution on a daily basis -- the actual number is unknown. What is known is that child sexual violence and exploitation has been growing dramatically around the world for the past couple of decades.

Advances in technology and communication have served to exacerbate the problem. But contrary to popular opinion, child pornography is not confined to seedy Web sites. Mainstream Web sites, such as Craig's List, allow for "barely legal" adult offers.

In the U.S., the high demand and easy money is a lure for vulnerable children. In 2005, The New York Times told Justin Berry's story. At 13 years old, Justin entered a life he eventually realized he would not be able to leave without significant intervention. Thankfully, he did obtain the help he needed. But his story exemplifies the evolution and ease of child exploitation in a high-tech world. The article stated,

A six-month investigation into this corner of the Internet found that such sites had emerged largely without attracting the attention of law enforcement or youth protection organizations …. "We've been aware of the use of the Webcam and its potential use by exploiters," said Ernest E. Allen, chief executive of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a private group. "But this is a variation on a theme that we haven't seen. It's unbelievable."

Of course, child exploitation goes beyond Internet pornography. After a series of investigations in the early '90s, the FBI stated:

the utilization of computer telecommunications was rapidly becoming one of the most prevalent techniques by which some sex offenders shared pornographic images of minors and identified and recruited children into sexually illicit relationships. In 1995, based on information developed during this investigation, the Innocent Images National Initiative was started .…

The PBS program Now recently discussed child prostitution in the U.S. with Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, who said:

It's one of those issues that doesn't get discussed and therefore there's an assumption that perhaps either it doesn't exist at all or the young women and girls who are prostitutes are there by their own free will … [The child prostitutes are] 10 or 11 years old, and the age is getting lower. We're not talking about 17 and 18 and 19-year-olds, although we could.

My friend Rev. Gabriel Salguero reminds us of the need for all of us to use our gifts to combat child exploitation. We must respond to the issue as a community where writers, musicians, politicians, business people, and the religious community use our collective resources to raise one voice to protect the children of our world. He challenges us not to see this issue in terms of nationality or geography but as an issue that calls into question our very sense of humanity.

Rev. Juan Carlos Morales is the senior pastor of Hosanna Assemblies of God in Ellenville, New York. He is also a member of the Latino Leadership Circle, a graduate of the Center for Urban Ministerial Education (CUME), and a seminarian at New Brunswick Theological Seminary. On Thursday, May 29, the Inocencia Project raised monies in its first public event and fundraiser. Inocencia Project was founded by Emanuel Veras to combat child prostitution in the Dominican Republic and around the world. Inocencia Project is a project of Cigua Palmera Foundation and is supported by Hiccup Media Group and through individual donations. To donate and learn more about Inocencia Project, go to www.ciguapalmera.org.

For more information about efforts to address this critical need, go to:

www.projectrescue.com
www.libertadlatina.org/cd/Site/organizationalpages/OC5b_childprostitution.htm
www.pbs.org/now/shows/422/index.html
www.fbi.gov/page2/dec05/innocence_lost_arrest3.htm
www.humantrafficking.org/countries/united_states_of_america

Yesterday I had the chance to attend a compelling panel hosted by the Center for American Progress Action Fund and Penn Press titled "Human Rights and the 2008 Presidential Campaign." The panel discussed a report released by CAPAF about the prominence (or lack thereof) of human rights issues in the 2008 presidential campaign.

The report's findings show that of the 2,253 questions that were asked in the Republican and Democratic debates through Dec. 27, only 5.1% of the questions posed to candidates dealt with human rights issues (CAPAF called their definition of what constituted a human rights issue "a generous interpretation" -- it included topics such as Darfur, torture, genocide in Iraq, and promoting democracy). This was in contrast to the 8.6% of questions about immigration, 10.7% on moral issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage, and 18.1% about general personal politics and party values.

In the report, William F. Schulz, a CAPAF senior fellow and former executive director of Amnesty International, offers a possible explanation for this marginal attention:

Human rights issues have rarely, if ever, been a principal focus of political campaigns for President or even for Congress. This reflects the fact that human rights are often perceived to be matters involving people far away whose needs and interests have very little relevance to our own.

However, he argues that human rights issues, such as the genocide in Darfur and military torture, do in fact have an impact on us here in the U.S. and should be a more prominent focus in the current presidential campaign:

Many U.S. actions have colored the attitude of the international community toward America and thereby implicated U.S. national interests quite directly: the "unsigning" of the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court; the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; the denial of habeas corpus to certain prisoners; revelations regarding U.S. use of torture. Moreover, the continuing saga of unstaunched death and destruction in Darfur, Sudan, has cast a pall over the reputation of every country that has failed to stop it.

One might assume that human rights would have been more central to the 2008 presidential campaigns to this point than in years past given the relationship of human rights controversies to U.S. policy and interests—the fact, for example, that how the world regards this country can have a very direct impact on America's national security, and the need, in light of Iraq and Darfur, to clarify when in the future the U.S. should commit its blood and treasure to countering regimes that abuse human rights.

Here at Sojourners, human rights issues, such as the genocide in Darfur and human trafficking, are incredibly important. They are not issues that "have little relevance to our own;" instead, they are central to our mission as people of faith to follow Christ's example of fighting for and working with the poor, rejected, and forgotten.

Despite the disheartening findings of the CAPAF report, I think change IS happening. This shift in values, the desire to focus on ending and eradicating these huge moral issues of our time, is happening. As a member of the progressive faith community, I hear a lot of discourse about this movement that we see happening all across the country, this "great awakening," this spiritual revival that is sparking a social movement.

But you don't have to take our word for it. All of the panelists at the CAPAF event yesterday affirmed that change is happening, and that a lot of progress has been made just in recent months to make these human rights issues compelling national values. In fact, two of the panelists, Gary Haugen, president of the International Justice Mission, and Gayle Smith, co-founder of the ENOUGH! Project, specifically singled out people of faith as being leaders in bringing about this change.

"We're seeing some shift in terms of what values are all about, from values as a matter of personal choice to values as an expression of solidarity and global citizenship," Smith said. "There is the beginning in the faith community of a translation of values from, again, within the four walls of our homes to the far reaches of the globe." Smith cited the increase in attention to the genocide in Darfur as one tangible example.

Haugen agreed, saying that the religious community has contributed to "a broadening of issues to include human rights and international human rights" in the national conversation. He also talked directly about the impact faith had in the abolition and civil rights movements, and how the spiritual foundation of those movements provided a "very profound motivator for sustaining a prolonged, successful fight."

"Religion can be a conviction to force us to act on hard, painful issues. It is a very powerful, sustaining, motivating force," Haugen continued. A force that is having a clear effect again now, he said.

It's true that issues such as genocide and global poverty are big and seemingly insurmountable. But, as the event reaffirmed for me yesterday, ultimately we have the conviction and force to win this fight.

(You can watch the full panel discussion here).

Kaitlin Hasseler is the media assistant for Sojourners.

Part six in a series of posts by Bob Massey, a Los Angeles screenwriter who is currently traveling to India with a team from Ecclesia Hollywood hosted by a faith-based human rights organization whose work in Mumbai concentrates on rescuing girls from sexual slavery. + Click here to read previous posts

Back to Ishmael's office to hear from the aftercare team. We'd already seen them in action, obviously, but to hear about what goes into rehabilitating a trafficked girl is an intense experience. The team happens to be entirely women. In fact, much of the larger office is women, and nearly all are Indian. I want to make clear that this isn't some big American crusade just because Ishmael is from the U.S. This is an effort by Indian Christians. And people from all over the globe support it since the traffic crosses international borders.

At lunchtime we discovered that Pizza Hut here serves curry pizza. That's your big American crusade, if you're looking for one.

In the afternoon we saw the other side of Mumbai at the Inorbit Mall. Turns out malls everywhere are pretty much the same. And it highlighted all the tensions that are the hallmark of this trip. Some of us also caught half of a Bollywood flick at the multiplex. It was in Hindi but you pretty much get it: girl wants boy, boy brings home light-skinned princess, girl breaks into the forbidden room where the ghost lives, there's a musical number, then some physical comedy, boy gets his comeuppance, and so on. We do this in Hollywood by a similar formula. We know the drill.

Flight to Delhi.

Train to Dehradun.

Except the train thing is worth noting because it's not at all like a Wes Anderson movie. Wes, you big fat liar. I mean, filmmaker.

Sigh. I wish Owen Wilson were my friend too. You know that scene in The Royal Tenenbaums when they go confront Owen Wilson's character in his apartment and he's sitting there smiling that Da Vinci-esque O.W. smile, and above his head is an oval framed drawing of some tighty-whities? Okay, never mind. I know you can't say "tighty-whities" on a Sojourners blog.

Anyway, the train was more like - too much baggage, heat, changing money, watch the money belt, ATM won't take our card, insane taxi thing, beggars who are bringing their A-game by trying to amuse the money out of our pockets and it almost works, one insane guy who insisted on getting my address (Ted Nugent, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., Washington, DC 20001), missing one ticket, getting kicked out of seats, a thrown rock shattering the train window, and about a bazillion supernice friendly Indian people.

Seven hours later we're at Dehradun. Snagged by our friends Hari and Dr. Reeta, who run SNEHA, a school / health clinic / vocational training center for kids from the slums.

Next up: the greatest place on earth, SNEHA.

Part five in a series of posts by Bob Massey, a Los Angeles screenwriter who is currently traveling to India with a team from Ecclesia Hollywood hosted by a faith-based human rights organization whose work in Mumbai concentrates on rescuing girls from sexual slavery. + Click here to read previous posts

Bob experiences the big righteousness comedown …

At the offices of Ishmael's organization, we were schooled on the ins and outs of rescuing girls from brothels. We talked with the legal team, the investigators, and the undercover guys. It's real spy vs. spy stuff. But the stakes are real.

So that night we took a little tour of Mumbai's red light districts. To the American eye, they're no seedier than anywhere in the city, and if you weren't paying attention you wouldn't notice the prostitutes. They don't dress flashy or sexy (other than wearing too much eye makeup). But they stand around in the same way that prostitutes everywhere stand around. Pimps loiter nearby. But otherwise it's merchants, tons of people in Muslim dress, street kids - buying, selling, talking, eating, walking, honking, biking, avoiding this or that, etc.

So it was in that context that I was looking at the girls-we-were-told-are-prostitutes and I caught myself noticing one in particular and thinking, "Hm, she's cute."

And, in a flash, there it was:

You're a guy, you're stressed and lonely, maybe you're single (or maybe not), you come equipped with a sex drive, and there she is - some cutie standing there - waiting, available. It's a transaction, no one gets hurt (right?). She gets what she wants (you tell yourself), you get what you want (you tell yourself) …

Probably most of you saw this insight coming a long way off. But it's disturbing to realize there's no great space between cop and perp. It's so weird to be a guy, a male, wrestling with this notion of righteousness. Especially where women are concerned. I mean, there are Russian guys who've written thousand-page novels on this very epiphany, but it's different to feel it push through your own skin.

Not that Ishmael's crew has time to parse the finer points. They prod the cops to rescue girls and arrest pimps and traffickers. But they think about this stuff and pray about it. And they know that, individually, none of them is holy.

Part four in a series of posts by Bob Massey, a Los Angeles screenwriter who is currently traveling to India with a team from Ecclesia Hollywood hosted by a faith-based human rights organization whose work in Mumbai concentrates on rescuing girls from sexual slavery. + Click here to read previous posts

One of the genius moves of this anti-trafficking program in Mumbai is that they don't just bust bad guys and rescue girls from sex slavery. They spend as much effort helping those girls recover.

The girls are set up in a group home where they're cared for, educated, trained for the workplace - but primarily loved. Most of them were sold into slavery by impoverished parents. So you can imagine (actually, no you can't) some of the feelings they must deal with.

In the morning we went to meet the staff and share some prayer time with them. They start the workday as a team, reading and pondering Jesus's words about love and justice, praying, and singing. Gotta say, I've never before been in an office where that happened. You realize: these people aren't just lawyers and such; they're on an actual mission from God.

Which seems like just a bunch of words until you meet the girls. They are between 15 and 18 years old, all rescued from lives of abandonment, rape, and abuse. They look about 10 to 13. They are so cool. Hilarious, talented, sweet, goofy, curious, shy, polite, utterly enamored of Bollywood musical stars and showing us their Bollywood moves. Lucky for us we had David, our heavily tattooed co-pastor who has no shame on the dance floor. David wiggled around in waves. The girls giggled hysterically. It was a blast.

We spent the rest of our hours with them getting to know names, getting impromptu Hindi lessons and then butchering it, making weird little fuzzy muppetish critters out of glue and sticks and fuzzy colorful balls, doing conga lines, and generally being ridiculous. It was wonderful. And then we had to get back in the van to leave.

That's when it sinks in for the first time. We'd just joined a bunch of girls to horse around and be goofballs (polite, well-mannered, sweet-natured goofballs, in their case), which - and let me emphasize this point - is what little girls should get to be.

Here's one thought shared by all the men in the van: men - males - have a lot to answer for.

[Right here is the place to insert Bob's kneejerk impulse to legally mandate slow, painful castration of perpetrators of sexual crimes against girls, for which Bob happily volunteers to hold the sharp knife on every one of the bastards, twice. But then take a deep breath and replace all that with some standard Christian boilerplate about forgiveness yadda yadda, and then to go cite some scripture verse so you people at home can wrestle with the tension between justice and mercy on your own time. But Bob's not actually in the mood for grace at the moment and it'll take him a while to come around, so let's just pretend it happened so Jim Wallis doesn't come put Bob the guest blogger in a wicked headlock. Thanks.]

Okay, but, seriously: someone SOLD these girls. Maybe the parents were conned into their girls would go to the city to work as domestic help or whatever. But, people, what measures would you NOT take if guys paid to rape your daughter/sister/niece/girlfriend?

Part three in a series of posts by Bob Massey, a Los Angeles screenwriter who is currently traveling to India with a team from Ecclesia Hollywood hosted by a faith-based human rights organization whose work in Mumbai concentrates on rescuing girls from sexual slavery. + Click here to read previous posts

Whew. Landed at Mumbai Airport after 20-some hours on the plane. Customs, change money, exit to the madness that is Bombay traffic. (Bombay traffic probably warrants a more lengthy description than I have time for here, but picture the Mississippi River full of large metal honking flotsam and yet somehow everyone but you knows how to get across.)

As we were waiting for the van to take us around this little street kid came over to beg. He's the "before" picture for what was to be our day and our week. He was dirty, not real happy looking, but not especially extraordinary in Bombay. Take a look at his photo. I'll come back to this.

We all trekked out to the church that our host and his family attend. It's called the Church at Powai and it was shocking in its unexoticness. We knew all the songs, it was entirely in English, and it was clear that most of the congregation were educated and basically middle class. The church also does a traditional service earlier in the day and a Hindi service later in the day, so the experience was probably wider than what we saw. Some of you will be thrilled to know you can get Michael W. Smith CDs in Bombay, should you need them.

I should mention Vishnu here. Vishnu is the 22-year-old driver who came with our rented van. We have been watching him drive and we can't figure it out. We should all be dead based on the incomprehensibility and sheer velocity of the traffic here but we haven't even had a scrape. Vishnu is a choreographer. Amazing.

And I should also mention our host, who must remain nameless becuase of the nature of his job. Those that work for his organization are lawyers and others who risk their lives to rescue women from sex slavery around the world. So our host is from the U.S., ex-military, and clearly the right man for this job. Call him Ishmael.

Ishmael kindly hosted all 10 of us at the flat he shares with his wife and kids. We also got to meet 10 boys rescued from homelessness and parentlessness by a friend of our hosts named Solomon. He and his wife started a ministry to take care of these lost boys. They taught us how to play cricket and we made balloon animals and such. See the photo of the 10 little goofballs wearing balloons here.

They are the "after" picture to the kid we met in the morning.

Many other thoughts that I'll update later. Must go now. Please keep praying.