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Quick Summary: Citizens Justice Institute calls for world wide mass action to end mistreatment of Dalit people in India.Boycott and diplomatic rupture urged.

TOTAL BOYCOTT OF INDIA NECESSARY.

Tell Bush and Rice; Break relations Now!

STOP OUTSOURCING TO TYRANTS! NO MORE TRADE OR RELATIONS WITH INDIA UNTIL RESOLUTION OF CENTURIES OLD HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUE!

We in the United States have heard of the Untouchables for years, but confusion and misunderstanding exists about this topic. If one recalls social studies courses about India and its Hindu faith, one remembers that Indian society is a highly stratified society with the light-skinned Brahmins on the top and dark skinned Untouchables, called Dalits, on the bottom, and other castes in between.

The caste system is hereditary. The families of those who are untouchables have been living as untouchables for 3000 years. They are the descendants of conquered tribes who have been subjected to a cruel and vicious fate, to suffer as a group, they and their descendants, in the worst possible conditions for centuries.

While Hindu mysticism and culture may hold charm and fascination for some, the ugly truth is that the Hindu faith holds 160 million untouchables in a bondage worse than serfdom.

The Dalits are held in a form of near slavery in which they are forced to work for subsistence earnings for the higher caste Hindus. They are forced to perform tasks that other Hindus refuse to do, such as handling excrement, working with leather and attending to corpses. Failure to perform these tasks may subject them and their entire village to murder or other atrocities, such as disfigurement with acid, gang rape, the burning of the village and similar human rights crimes.

Sexual atrocities are sadly common. Dalit girls as young as eleven are often abused by men from higher castes and the Dalit community is often powerless to do anything about it. Married Dalit women are often attacked by those from other castes, stripped naked and paraded through villages to entertain upper caste men and to humiliate their husbands. Many of the child prostitutes of India are Dalits. The sexual abuse of the Dalits is widespread, continuous and unabated.

Discrimination against Dalits is ,supposedly, illegal in India but there is no enforcement. The feeble and half hearted efforts of the Government of India to ameliorate the situation for public relations purposes have in fact provoked responses by Hindu terrorist organizations who wish to resist any change in the treatment of the Dalits.

Those in the West who are so inclined can help fight this horrible human rights crime by contacting those companies, such as Fidelity, Salomon Smith Barney, Delta Airlines and Exxon that do business in India and requesting that they stop.

We can write to our elected representatives in Congress and voice our concern, and contact the State Department and express our views. The letters we send make a difference and absolutely do influence government action. We can write letters to major media outlets and ask that they cover the story.

We have seen successful lawsuits attack issues around the Holocaust and slavery reparations. Lawyers for the Citizens Justice Institute are now exploring the possibilities of suing American companies doing business with India for aiding and abetting a human rights crime that rivals the evil of the Nazis.

If you would like to assist in the cause to help end mistreatment of India's Dalits, please contact the Institute at 781-925-5253.