Special Program Sunday At St Rose—

Bringing Light To The Poor Of India

By Shannon Hicks

Father Amal Raj Chellakan is very passionate about his research and especially of his continued work bringing hope and education to the thousands of people living within the caste system in India. During a recent visit with the priest that was scheduled to last for just under an hour, it was surprising to see how fast the time went by while listening to him talk about his background and current objective.

An annual guest of St Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church, Father Amal will offer a special program on Sunday, January 25, in the church’s parish hall.

“Bringing Light to the Poor of India” will share Father Amal’s personal journey through his collegiate studies and first visits to the United States, then back to India where he continues to face violence, impoverishment, and conditions unimaginable to most of us in the United States. He will share how, and why, he continues to bring hope to those trapped in an ancient caste system, the fixed social system prevalent in India where it is nearly impossible to change one’s social class.

Despite the fact that the Indian Constitution outlawed caste-based discrimination, the attitudes and practices remain, especially in rural areas.

A Catholic priest, Father Amal has been visiting Connecticut for a few months each year since 2000. Prior to that he had been studying for his doctorate at the Catholic University in Leven, Belgium. At the beginning of this decade Father Amal spent a few months each summer visiting at St Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church in Shelton.

He also met and befriended Father Robert Weiss, the pastor of St Rose Church (now Monsignor Weiss). Father Bob visited India in 2004, Father Amal said this week, where he “saw the work I was doing with the poor, and the children, and saw the toughness in real life.” He has visited St Rose for at least a month each year since Father Bob’s trip to India.

During his research studies at the university, said Father Amal, he felt compelled to do something more for the people of India. A native of southern India, Father Amal said that his focus is on northern India, where caste system practices are more prevalent.

“I began looking at empowerment of the poor, and the eradication of poverty in the age of globalization,” he said this week. “I am basing my research and my work on Creation, meaning human beings are created in the likeness of God. Everyone should have equal rights basically as humans.”

Father Amal has also focused his efforts as a missionary priest, he said, in a region where there are not a lot of Catholics.

“There is, however, poverty, underdevelopment and illiteracy, all because of this caste system, which does not allow lower caste empowerment,” he said. Those in the lower castes, he said, are deprived of their own land, and of education.

“The duty [of those in the lower castes] is only to serve the higher castes,” he said.

Among those supporting Father Amal’s work is a group called Pax In Terra, headed by Newtown resident Michael Taylor. According to its website, the group is interested in creating a network of technical experts in sustainable development that support projects around the world; providing monetary and other resources for the revitalization of these communities; and creating educational forums where best practices can be communicated and shared with communities, nonprofit organizations, and government entities.

While the group is seeking to support projects where it can use its resources to support activities like the organization of a Peace Park in Nicaragua, it has already committed to support Father Amal’s work because “it truly seeks to support the ‘untouchables’ in northern India in numerous ways,” the website continues. “As you will see, Father Amal has taken tiny amounts of funding to build a hospital, schools including a nursing school [classes are scheduled to being in August 2009, Father Amal said this week], is training women to be empowered, and supporting a variety of other activities.”

On Sunday afternoon, Father Amal will speak about what he has seen, what he and his associates have begun, and what they have already seen as positive changes.

“We are educating girls, and have teachers from the lower caste. The system is changing,” he said Tuesday morning. “We are trying to empower them through various awareness programs, especially the girl children. Others try to kill them or not educate them. They are put into child marriage.

“We want to educate as many girls as possible, girls and women. We have programs, self-help groups, and handicrafts, works, activities for girls, like tailoring, and more training programs. Then we can change the system, the social system.

“The society is beginning to think, ‘they have brains, they can get jobs,’” he continued. “Literacy is power, and the lower caste people are beginning to ask for that. ‘Give us our right, to education,’ they say.”

It is not going to be an easy fight, nor will it happen overnight, this desire to raise people out of the caste system. Father Amal knows that.

“Lower caste people live [as a family] in a mud house, in one room, with ten to 15 people in there. They don’t even own any land. It’s a very big deal for people to move up.

“Most of these people live in dependence of their landlords, and what they can get from the land they feed to their children. They live on less than $1 a day. With that they need to feed everyone in their family, which often means only one meal a day,” he said.

There are the obvious problems with malnourishment; hygiene issues such as malaria and diarrhea with that number of people living together; the ongoing fight against snakes, which can easily attack within homes where so many are living and sleeping on the floor; and India is also seeing its own battle with a growing number of HIV/AIDS cases. Handicapped people and those afflicted with polio populate the lower caste, as do widows.

“Once you become a widow you are considered cursed,” explained Father Amal. “So those women are neglected, they are not taken care of.”

How Father Amal and others are fighting this centuries-old social system will be the focus of much of his talk this weekend.

“We may be small in number, but we are spread out across the country,” he said of those who are committed to bringing change to the country. “We are bringing change to the poor.”

Father Amal Raj Chellakan will present “Bringing Light to the Poor of India” from 5 to 7 pm (following 4 pm Mass) on Sunday, January 25, at St Rose Parish Hall, 40 Church Hill Road. All are welcome. Reservations are not needed but additional information is available from the parish office; call 426-1014.