Caste War and Christian Peacemaking in India

Abstract

has wreaked havoc on the Indian society in warlike proportions. The paper explores whether the notion of ‘caste war’ is far-fetched and demonstrates how the burgeoning caste rivalry and mushrooming atrocities against Dalits represent an increasingly divided India where caste-based internal enmity has far worsened of late. Offering ‘war’ terminology as the right prism and needed corrective to epitomize the warlike hostility that caste has instantiated in the Indian society, the paper advances Christian peacemaking as the urgent intervention. To this end, the paper is divided into two unequal parts, with the first part engaging the notion of caste as war and the second illustrating how Christian peacemaking would pursue a triple fold framework that unceasingly promotes the Christian social justice agenda, Dalit agency, and annihilation of caste within the Church and society.