India has hit the headlines twice within the past week, but the biggest long-range story has remained submerged.
The two headlined stories were important ones. Indian voters surprised pundits by tossing out the incumbent Hindu nationalist party. The leader of the winning party, Sonia Gandhi, then said she would not be prime minister.
But the deeper problem will take more than an election to fix: Over 200 million Dalits ("untouchables") still face discrimination at least as great as that faced by black Americans 50 years ago.
Although officials legally abolished the caste system in 1949, culture almost always trumps law, so castes remain a significant force throughout India. (Generally, the lighter-skinned Indians belong to a higher caste, the darker-skinned ones to a lower.) As in the United States up to the 1960s, those near the bottom can lord it over those at the bottom. Sudras (members of the peasant class) can feel superior when they refuse to drink from the same glass as a Dalit.
Some Indians joke sadly about a prominent Dalit politician who returns to his small village to open a hospital and is welcomed by those who once looked down on him. After a fancy lunch, he is preparing to leave when another Dalit comes into the room through a back door. The politician says, "You don't have to come in by the back way now. I was once like you, and see what I have made of myself." The other replies, "I just came to get my plates. They borrowed them to serve you your lunch."
Why does such bigotry remain in India at a time when it is largely gone from the United States? One reason may be the difference between the biblical sense of equality and a common Hindu theology of inequality. The biblical understanding is that all of us are sinners (Psalm 14:3: "there is none who does good, not even one"). We all owe anything good in us and our living circumstances to God's grace. Many of us know that God offers that grace to people of all races. Kids convey more truth than they realize when they warble, "Red and yellow, black and white/ They are precious in His sight/ Jesus loves the little children of the world."