If there’s one thing the 17th World Humanist Congress is going to be remembered for, it is an agenda that truly encompassed the globe. It would not be an exaggeration to say that every region and every religion got its own space at the conference, and though the attendees, for obvious reasons, were mostly from the Western world, this did not get in the way of looking at issues that concern all of humanity. If this is not international, what is? And what bigger proof could there be of the IHEU’s international status? No longer are issues seen exclusively within the context of one particular religion, nation or ethnicity. The International Humanist and Ethical Union is busy realising the potential of each word in its title, and the involvement of the participants was testimony to this phenomenon.

There were no Africans present. The United States, in its infinite wisdom, does not deem them the right candidates to enter its boundaries and so did not issue visas. But human sacrifice, female genital mutilation, the dismal state of AIDS prevention because of misplaced religious dogma, and the ray of hope in the setting up of Humanist schools in Uganda, all came in for their share of discussion.

There was no representation from the Islamic world. That did not stop Roy Brown from passionately denouncing the Human Rights Council at the UN for knuckling under to the Islamist agenda of the governments of these countries.

The Indian contingent was disproportionately small in comparison to the range and breadth of Humanist activity in that region. But it might be safe to conclude that every participant at the Congress is now at least partially aware of the scourge of caste and ‘untouchability’.

And nothing could be more heartening than the sight of scores of youngsters briskly trotting in the corridors of the L’Enfant Plaza Hotel, the venue of the Congress, going from one discussion to another, readying themselves to take on the mantle of leadership of Humanist organisations in the future. That the IHEYO is gaining momentum is evident from the thoughtful and detailed models that its members have created for the way forward (see article).

The IHEU, from being a facilitator for member organisations, has moved on to a bigger agenda, that of initiator, and it was as initiator that it moved certain issues to centre-stage at the Congress. The events at the Human Rights Council (see “Death of Universal Human Rights”, IHN May 2008), and the passionate, though reasoned, resistance to the agenda of the Islamic nations to give universal human rights a distinctly Islamic hue, are the result of IHEU choosing to become an activist, rather than a strictly intellectual, organisation. The journey started with the release of Dr. Younis Shaikh from death row in Pakistan, and has moved further east, to the villages of India where Humanism is not even a distant dream for the majority of the inhabitants. The slowness and sheer minuteness of the journey towards reclaiming Humanist values is reflected in a meeting that was nowhere in the formal agenda of the Congress, but was significant for the manner in which it not only brought the harsh facts of Indian society to life but also revealed the idealism and perseverance needed to realise a dream.

Two gentlemen came to meet us one evening. They were busy doctors who had driven about fifty miles and given up half a working day to discuss a cause that is not just theirs, but concerns the entire world, the cause of rooting out institutionalised inequality in the form of the infamous Hindu caste system (a divinely ordained hierarchical social order). If there is anything that displays the naked cruelty underlying organised religion, it is this practice, whose norms are most famously established in the Laws of Manu, a text written about 200 BCE, and which casts a large part of the Indian citizenry outside all society, including that of animals.

The two doctors are from that hated Indian community, the Dalits, an umbrella term for the deprived and oppressed classes, most of who belong to the so-called ‘untouchable’ castes, the outcastes who, if the Hindus scriptures are to be believed, need to be purged from Indian society. Their top-of-the-line education and career do not, in the eyes of caste Hindus, take away from their status as outcastes, and in fact might even bring them more ignominy in the form of revenge for having transcended their traditional caste occupation of cleaning up after their higher-caste brethren.

Dr. Sushant Meshram was born to a Dalit family that was forced to live in a segregated part of the city. At school he was prevented from participating in sports, drama and music, activities that are normally the right of every school-going child, because he was a Dalit. His teachers constantly reviled him and rained abuse upon his head, trying their utmost to make him give up going to school. But Sushant remained indefatigable in his pursuit of a good education. Through sheer hard work, he continually topped all exams, notwithstanding efforts by society and state to deprive him of this right. If he got educated and became something other than a collector of the higher-caste people’s body waste, then he would disprove a cornerstone of Hindu philosophy, that each person is born to his caste and its typical occupations – in the case of the Dalits, dealing with human and animal carcasses, cleaning human faeces and de-clogging sewers. Professions such as medicine are the domain of the higher castes.

Dr. Meshram and his colleague, Dr. Bachu Lal, were seeking something from the IHEU, they were seeking recognition that their cause was more than a strictly Indian concern, that there was something truly inhuman about being branded worthless even before one’s birth. They enunciated their own dreams, dreams that in most parts of the world, especially in the West,, are a very pedestrian reality. They dream of having schools for children, regular schools that equip students with the three Rs, and colleges where students have access to a sound education. These are ordinary goals, but, for the majority of Dalit children, almost unachievable. They even dream of the ultimate, a Dalit university where all the teachers would be Dalits, a revenge for the centuries of segregation that have prevented people from the lower castes from working in white-collared professions.

People like Dr. Meshram and Dr. Lal get very little support for their cause in India, for the Dalits are not accepted as equals in Hindu society. The only solution that they can think of is to look outward, to the international community, and hope that it can be moved by the plight of more than two hundred million people who are denied basic human dignity for no other reason than their birth. For sooner rather than later, the Dalits will be assimilated into the Hindu mainstream. The award-winning presentation by astronomer Carolyn Porco on IHEU Awards Night must make every human sit up and take note of the redundancy of most of the prevailing stereotypes. Her stirring revelation of the possibility of life on another planet raised the question: What happens to Dalits when aliens are discovered? Will the caste system still retain validity for Hindus?

There are many challenges before Humanism, and more keep emerging every day. The rise of religious fundamentalism, the slide into totalitarianism in several countries, the growth of evangelism and the subversion of human rights in the name of multiculturalism in various countries in the West, combined with ecological calamities and the widening chasm between the rich and poor across the globe, all threaten to submerge the voice for equality and Humanism. The plethora of issues that were discussed at the Congress only demonstrated how much more Humanist organisations need to be strengthened to manage these threats. There can be no prioritisation for reclaiming Humanist values. There can, however, be awareness of the areas where these values are lacking to the extent of almost being non-existent.

The untouchables of the world, the people without ‘humanity’, are a live example of how Humanist values still need to reach out to a large part of the world’s population. And truly international organisations like the IHEU can take on the challenge of making every ‘narrow’ issue global in its implications for the rest of humanity.

Sangeeta Mall is Editor of IHN