Akaparambu is the name of a small village in the Ernakulam district of Kerala, India. It is famous primarily for two reasons: it is only 1 km from Cochin International Airport; and, it is home to one of the oldest Christian churches in India – Mor Sabor and Afroth Jacobite Syrian Orthodox Cathedral.

The South of India has recently seen an upsurge in tourism. The beautiful beaches around Kovalam have gone from hippy spots to places where developers have built big resorts and pull in many high-end tourists. The area is rich in coconut palms and is hot year round. The back waters of Cochin are also popular places to explore for tourists. Unlike the north of India, the Malayam people in the area are more relaxed and less prone to rip-off tourists. They also have a distinctive style of cuisine which is also very different to the north.

For these reasons Cochin International Airport is doing very well. As a result land prices in Akaparambu have risen dramatically over the last few years. Many people envision several villages near the airport being amalgamated into a big ‘airport city’. This would obviously lead to a few people getting very rich and subsistence farmers being moved off their land.

It is believed that Christianity reached India before it did Europe. Legend has it that Saint Thomas the Apostle established the Syrian Church in India in AD 52. This is probably apocryphal but the close geographical locations between India and Palestine; as well the importance in the region of trading with India makes it very likely that India was one of the earliest foreign countries to establish Christian communities.

The Mor Sabor and Afroth Jacobite Syrian Orthodox Cathedral was established circa AD 825 when the Christian merchant Sapor Esho led a group of Syrian Christian immigrants and two priests to Akaparambu.

Today the community of Akaparambu is mostly Christian. It remains one of the most important Christian sites in India. It is visited by all the Patriarchs of Antioch who come to India. The good thing about Akaparambu is that those of the Muslim, Hindu and other religious persuasions manage to happily co-exist in the village. One is reminded of other peaceful communities such as on Koh Phangan in Thailand where non-eventful co-existence of communities is threatened by the forces of economic change that will inevitably create divisions in order to prise the land from the local people.

Nagpur is the third largest city in Maharashtra State in India. It is located at the Zero Mile Marker meaning that is literally at the center of India. The river Nag flows through the city. In the Marathi language ‘Nag’ means cobra. According to the famous activist for justice for dalits or untouchables Dr. B. R. Ambedkar the people of Nagpur belong to the dynasty of the Nag who were followers of the Buddha. This post will look at the movement started by the late Dr. B. R. Ambedkar and the present condition of the dalits in Nagpur.

The system of caste and of untouchability is perhaps the greatest stain on the religion of Hinduism. Many Indian religious leaders and intellectuals have tried to fight the inherent discrimination found in the notion of the untouchable. Mahatma Gandhi implored the Hindus to view dalits as harijan meaning ‘children of God’. Gandhi’s immense influence did have some impact in improving the lot of untouchable people. Many inspired by the great leader changed their notions of caste, and the Congress Party enacted laws to make it mandatory to employ a quota of dalits in government jobs.

However, sadly the prejudice that makes the dalits dirty people who have to live on the outskirts of town, who cannot drink from the main water supply, who can be beaten or killed for just casting his or her shadow on a Brahmin, who can only do the filthiest jobs still continues. Dalits function as the ‘other’ in Hinduism: they define the holy purity of those within the caste system by their contrasting impurity. Dalits are not members of the caste system but they are members of Hinduism. Hinduism ironically needs the untouchables to make its social hierarchy work.

Dr. B. R. Ambedkar understood that despite the law and the implorations of Gandhi nothing would greatly improve for the dalits. In Nagpur the dalits were particularly poorly treated. It is a city that is famous for its Hindu extremism.

Dr. B. R. Ambedkar was born an untouchable. He was one the first of his caste to get a university education. He went on to be a respected professor in history and philosophy. He had fought the Chaturvarna system (the categorization of Hindu society into four varnas) and all the discrimination that it caused. His great contribution to the fight for social justice in India was to fight religion with religion. He pointed out the fact that Buddhism started in India and that philosophically and ethically the two religions are similar. Buddhism was the birthright of the Indian, not a foreign religion. Most importantly Buddhism treated everyone as equal. On 14 October 1956 in Nagpur B. R. Ambedkar along with his supporters converted to Buddhism starting the Dalit Buddhist movement which is still active. It was a masterful attempt at restoring the human dignity of millions of people. Simply put it gave the dalits the means to say ‘enough is enough’ I refuse to be your whipping boy any longer’.

The system of untouchability is still a strong presence in India and Nagpur. It is a prejudice like racism that is hard to combat because it is based on irrational fear. The dalits who remained Hindu in Nagpur still largely face the same uphill struggle to gain their human rights. What the great Dr. Ambedkar did along with others is to change the heart and minds of many Indian intellectuals, to show them the need to reform Hinduism. Today, many famous Hindus are not ashamed to come forward and say the caste system is wrong.

It is interesting to note that Buddhism is perhaps India’s great cultural contribution to the world. Since its inception it has spread over much of Asia. Buddhist Thailand has managed to integrate the largest group of Chinese ethnicity outside of China into its own culture. Thai-Chinese make up 11% of the population of Thailand and are regarded no differently to any other Thais. It is the great blot on an otherwise profound religion that Hinduism cannot learn to be inclusive and fair handed with all its myriad members.

It seems every year there is a new disaster either natural or man-made that we are supposed to emotionally and financially respond to. Recently we’ve had the oil spill off New Zealand, the earthquakes in Haiti, Turkey Chile and Japan, the nuclear disaster in Fukushima Prefecture in Japan, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the fear of avian flu.

And before the recent batch of disasters we had the Exxon Valdes oil spill, SARs and foot and mouth epidemics and the Indian Ocean tsunami. Just the most cursory search of the internet will reveal a dark litany of deaths caused by negligence, freak weather and tectonic movement. It seems to go by so fast it is easy to forget. The Chile mining disaster when we followed the fate of that brave band of trapped miners is already fading from memory. The scenes of devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 seem almost as a half forgotten dream. The world is even starting to lose interest in the epoch defining moment in 2001 when the World Trade Center was attacked.

Our children will read about these things in their history books and yawn. Their minds will wonder to sunny beaches in Koh Samui, to Christmas and to break time games of football. The only ones who remember are the victims and the family of the victims. The media bombards us with gruesome images and then celebrities and politicians make appeals for money. In short the media onslaught and the demand on our sympathies and resources are causing disaster fatigue. The result of this is that often the perpetrators get off lightly.

A good example of this is the Bhopal disaster in 1984. The Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India leaked methyl isocyanate gas and other chemicals. The immediate death toll was 3,000 and 8,000 people have since died from gas related diseases. (Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster).

Countless more inhabitants of the city of Bhopal have permanent respiratory problems, reproductive defects, immune and neurological disorders, lung injury and birth defects. It is hard for the Indian authorities to get exact figures of the numbers of people affected but it is estimated that the Bhopal pesticide plant disaster has affected between 100,000 to 200,000 people.

And what were the punishments handed out to the negligent factory owners that deliberately ignored safety regulations, poorly maintained the plant and used unskilled labor all to save money and improve the bottom line? In 2010 7 ex-employees of UCIL along with the former chairman received 2-year prison sentences and personal fines of $2,000. The lack of justice is a heinous crime in itself.

Karl Marx noted that the first time history repeats itself it is tragic, the second time it is farcical. He forgot to add that the fourth and fifth time it happens it becomes absurd and then forgettable. Only those who suffer feel the injustice permanently; only they refuse to believe the white washing; only they refuse to go on to the next disaster.

It is time that the punishments start to fit the crimes; that we do more to prepare and prevent rather than reel from one shocking story to the next. It is time that we stop letting the world be ruled by the greed for pieces of paper (money) and instead by common sense. It is such a simple idea that it is anarchic.