No Voice

I see a young boy walking down a dirt road lined with mud and straw homes. He is walking home from getting dirty water from a well that exists only for his type of people. He rounds the corner as he does daily only to walk into an empty home with a murdered father and brother and a raped and killed mother and sister. He begins to weep. He runs to the closest home in his village to cry for help. There is nothing they can do. In the young boy's village this is a common encounter. An encounter that goes unnoticed by anyone who has a say. This boy is a Dalit in India. This boy has no voice.

There are 170 million Dalit peoples living today in India. The Dalit people are lower than the lowest caste in the Indian social system. They are outcasted. For all of India's history it has been this way. A people group who are given the lowest of jobs. Jobs that give them the title 'dirty' by their society. A people group who are made to smash the clay jar they drink out of because it is dirty now that they have touched it. Untouchable. Treated less than animals. Dirt poor. Without a voice to rise up and make a change. They are a broken society without enough strength to make a change. No voice.

As Americans it is hard to wrap our minds around something like this. It is way too easy to write it off as being something that only used to happen. We live in a world where comfort is expected and demanded. Where both men and women are free to go to school and can afford it. We all have rights that are respected by our government. Men and women alike have the right to a voice in our world. Whereas people not too far away, in the present day, don't even have the right to life. They have no voice in a world of people that do, but don't use it.

Our daily struggle is to find a way to help this cause. To make a change. Sometimes all we can do is pray as our hearts break for these precious human beings. We believe in a God who breaks chains and heals everything He touches. Right now that is all we can do to make a change for the Dalits in India. However, Dalit Freedom Network has already established an organization to help these people. They raise money to send Dalit boys and girls to school. Because the opportunity of school creates the opportunity for a better job, which creates the opportunity to not be deemed dirty, which creates the opportunity for a major and necessary societal shift.

So for those of us who get to have a voice, let's find it, and let's use it.

Danielle and Mary