no-longer-a-slumdog

No Longer a Slumdog
Slightly above Dalits on the caste ladder is another huge
group of people, an estimated 500 million more. 9 They belong to
the Other Backward Castes. They also suffer abuse and injustice
at the hands of the upper-caste minority. The two groups combined
represent a population that is well over twice that of the
United States. In fact, more than one out of every 10 people alive
on planet earth today is either a Dalit or an OBC.
Can you think of any system in history that has so adversely
affected such a large percentage of the world’s population as this
scourge of the caste system has I can’t.
These masses of people grow up without hearing about the
love of Jesus. They live without peace, suspecting there is something
fundamentally wrong but not knowing how to change
things. These are the “harassed and helpless” Jesus talked about
(Matthew 9:36).
One woman among these masses is Indrani. She grew up in
a Dalit Gypsy family, traveling from place to place. Her parents
taught her how to drink when she was a girl, and also how to
smoke, gamble and beg. She thought her ways were normal. Later
she lived in a small hut the government granted to her clan. She
made maybe Rs. 50 per day (US$1.10) through her begging, and
her husband made about Rs. 100 per day (US$2.20) working on
fences. They had eight children, all of them girls.
Indrani did not want her girls to be raised the same way she
was but didn’t know how she could make a difference in their lives.
Thankfully, Indrani met a missionary named Joseph, who told her
about GFA Bridge of Hope. Her girls were soon enrolled.
They learned about Christ, hygiene, discipline and manners,
reading, respect and general self-control. But their learning didn’t
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