Right from the first Jesuit missionary to India, St. Francis Xavier, letters from Jesuits to the Curia in Rome gave us a very good glimpse of the times and peoples of those centuries: their traditions, cultures, customs, religions and languages. Taking pity on the plight of the people many more missionaries landed on our shores. They toiled and brought considerable changes in the lives of the people they were privileged to serve. Fr. Joseph Xavier of the Madurai Jesuit Province, presently Deputy Director of Jesuit Refugee Service in Rome, has published “Excluded and Victimized City Makers: Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of Dalits among Dalits.” This small step by our Jesuit companion has indeed become a giant leap for every one of us in Social Action. The book right from the beginning calls for moving from the charity, developmental and agitational models that were relevant in their time, to a Rights-based activist model that is slowly gaining ground as the way available for us to explore and embrace. A replication of this study in other metropolitan and cosmopolitan cities of South Asia will empower many excluded and victimized communities of other countries as well. Provincials in the Conference of South Asia may take note and encourage the social activists of their respective Provinces to pursue similar research studies that will enhance the Social Action apostolate.

Fr. Kolvenbach addressing the social activists once challenged them to become “the voices of the people instead of being the noises of the people.” Many Jesuits all over the world have taken up the challenge. A casual look at the Year Book of the Jesuits gives us enough information about the research work and publications by Jesuits involved in the social action ministry. Fr. Joseph Xavier’s research on an ignored community – the “Arunthathiyars” (forced manual scavengers in Chennai and other parts of Tamil Nadu) – draws our attention to other marginalized groups that are brushed under the carpet of Liberalisation, Privatisation and Globalisation. At a time when the bicycle riding bards of social awareness and conscientisation are becoming a vanishing tribe among Jesuits, this research and its publication throws a challenge to our social activists as well as academic centres of excellence to commit themselves to social research.

• Eugine Muthu, SJ

Excluded and Victimized City Makers: Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of Dalits among Dalits. |  Author: Fr. Joseph Xavier, SJ
Publication: Shanlax Publications | Price: Rs. 400/- | Deputy Director of Jesuit Refugee Service, Rome.

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