July 07: International Indigenous Day
The scene was worse than pathetic. We have seen it in the press, or directly on our roads: men, women, and children walking for days on the national high ways and railway tracks to reach their home during the abrupt lock down—walking for days in the sun, hungry, thirsty, without a place for rest, and often beaten by the police. Thousands of migrants were crisscrossing each other on their way home from cities like Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Delhi, Bengaluri, Hyderabad, Benares, Bhopal, and Nagpur. These are the excluded and the most vulnerable persons in the Indian society. They belong to the ST/SC/OBC/ Dalits and other marginalized groups. They are farmers, daily wage earners, domestic workers, unskilled laborers—the unorganized workers who make up 92% of the working class in India. They are deprived of the human rights and human dignity enshrined in the Constitution of India. They are out of the “mainstream” of the Indian society, who are educated, earn well and have political clout.
It is our moral responsibility to include the excluded in the mainstream of Indian society—which is precisely what many powerful people do not want. How do we do it?
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Fr Alexander Ekka SJ
