When Manu visited Vienna

Brand Dalit. Branded Dalit. The activist with a known cause is a pretentious and privileged animal. Pontificating on the pros of proselytisation in TV studios and seminar halls.

When Manu visited Vienna

Brand Dalit. Branded Dalit. The activist with a known cause is a pretentious and privileged animal. Pontificating on the pros of proselytisation in TV studios and seminar halls.

And then there is the faceless untouchable. Humiliated, humbled, raped, burned. He is, was and will be the damned, in the many villages of India Shining.

In Vienna and Punjab. There's no way to escape Manu, the progenitor of the caste system.

Or is there?

They also seek solace in Sikhism, Christianity, Islam, whatever, to escape the curse of caste.

And every year, Brand Dalits (op-ed page hacks, khaadi-wrapped activists, seminar regulars and worthies such like who speak for Dalits) argue how it's an exercise in futility.

That conversion to another faith brings about no discernable change in the way society treats Dalits. Whether you are a Buddhist Dalit, a Dalit Christian or a Dalit Muslim, you were, are, will remain a Dalit.

They argue Dalits learnt the futility of conversions long before the advent of 'foreign' religions like Islam and Christianity.

That those who converted to Buddhism to escape social ostracism, reconverted to Hinduism to avail of the benefits of becoming dwija (twice-born) through good karma in the present birth.

Further, caste wheedles its way into other religions as well.

These Brand Dalits now have a reason to rejoice. At the root of the current Sikh violence in Vienna and Punjab is casteism.

Upper caste Sikhs and Dalit Sikhs are baying for each other's blood. Funny, Sikhism was supposed to weed out casteism.

To such assumptions, my friend Mohammad Saleem Adil, a 47-year-old lawyer based in Delhi, firmly disagrees.

A decade-and-a-half ago, Adil was Satbir Jathav, a Dalit who had been enduring years of social discrimination. Then he decided to embrace Islam.

"There was a need to connect, to not be persecuted for being born an untouchable," he told me.

"This was possible, I found out, in the same lifetime, but only by discarding Hinduism. I was an outcast all my life. Then, after converting, I felt like I finally belonged."

Like Jathav, Dalits in Meenakshipuram in Tamil Nadu discarded Hinduism.

In 1981, 150 Dalit families from this village in Tirunelvelli district embraced Islam to free themselves from untouchability and police harassment; Meenakshipuram became Rahmat Nagar.

With conversion came wealth, and many of them got jobs in the Gulf countries.

There are other instances. From being an entirely marginalised community of toddy tappers and coir weavers who were not allowed into upper-caste Hindu temples and whose women were supposed to leave their breasts uncovered, the Nadars of Tamil Nadu gained immense socio-economic mobility by embracing Christianity in big numbers in the late 18th century.

This was the community that would engender achievers such as the late Tamil Nadu chief minister K Kamaraj, the Amritraj brothers of tennis and Shiv Nadar, founder of the HCL group of companies.

Yes, caste seeps into other faiths. But left to themselves, Dalits would remain Christians or Muslims or Sikhs because of the obvious benefits- either social, educational, financial, or all of them, that most often come with them. The Brand Dalit will rave and rant.

Conversion is an easy option. Hinduism is not a religion, but a way of life; purge it of vices like untouchability. But that, the Branded Dalit will tell you is another story. Till then, there are other false Gods.

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