Thank you, sir.
The situation with regard to the discrimination against the Dalits and their situation in view of a constitution that condemned untouchability in its practice is very similar to what happened in the United States with regard to the problem of racism and blatant slavery, even though there was a constitution that declared that all men were equal before God. Society itself never accepted that ideology but continued to operate on what they believed was the proper ideology, and that is the inequality of human beings.
This problem in India is a socio-economic construct. While we have a constitution that states one thing, we have a society that operates and runs on caste mores, caste policies, and caste guidelines. I'm embarrassed and ashamed to say that the problem of caste discrimination, which is unique to India, has been carried by Indians wherever they have gone, including to your great nation of Canada. That's because it is a societal way of looking at fellow human beings. Why don't we dismantle untouchability when it is in the interests of the nation? We constantly ask why a vast majority of the 250 million Dalits and tribals are still kept in oppressive situations.
There are definitely economic dimensions. If you accept the figure that there are close to anywhere from 40 million to 100 million bonded labourers of one kind or another in India, you can imagine the economic profit that cheap labour brings to everybody, and nobody wants to dismantle that system. Secondly, with the emergence of human trafficking and the sexual trade, and the complete vulnerability of Dalit women, girls and boys, and the fact that this is becoming a multi-billion dollar industry worldwide, again economics becomes a means of perpetuating the system. I am ashamed, embarrassed, and even heartbroken to inform you, sir, that in the state of Andhra Pradesh, where I live, there is village after village where you will not find one girl child above the age of five, because all the girl children in those Dalit tribal villages have been sold into sexual trafficking. So economics is one reason this situation continues.
The third thing, sir, is the grab for a slice of political power in India. The moment the Dalits and the tribals are empowered and exercise their political rights in their own way, and not because of what some landlord is telling them, the political equations in the country change. So there are political issues also at play, because of which this has continued. Every time, as a previous president said in recent years, Dalits have tried to assert their rights, there has been a tremendous backlash. In fact, today there are more atrocities against Dalits than there were even before independence. Those atrocities are linked with their trying to assert their rights, to which there is a backlash.