The Dalit's family business in the Big Issue Japan
Vatican’s newly started monthly paper intends to cast light on the marginalized people.
Vatican aims to have them contribute to the newspaper by participating in its production and distribution.
For example, the street artist Maupal, who is famous for regularly making a graffiti art of the Pope on buildings around the Vatican for years, will have a design of his featured in the first edition.
It is clear that Pope Francis took the initiative of this new project, according to the article.
This enterprise reminds me of the Big Issue magazine, the world’s most widely circulated street newspaper, founded in 1991 and published in four continents.
I sometimes writes a short article in the Japanese version of this magazine based on news articles in local languages of South Asia.
The recent one, to be issued soon, is about a business conducted by Dalit families in a small village in Nepal.
Dalit, previously called the untouchables, are one of the most discriminated people in Hindu society, both economically and socially, although discrimination is legally prohibited.
Socially, they are not accepted as equal humans to share water to avoid “impurity” in some remote areas even now.
Economically, they have very limited job opportunities -- except for jobs that were traditionally considered to belong to their lot.
The article is summarized as follows:
A young Dalit named Shyam returned after several years-long labor in India, and came up with an idea for starting a “homestay” business in his own village, to avoid working again in India.
It was so innovative that most villagers doubted how far it could work.
However, by his initiative, the Dalit people, especially the women, started to learn how to receive guests, serve food and behave accordingly, since they were not accustomed to talking with people outside of their community.
There was an unseen border never to be allowed to cross and go beyond.
Initially they were afraid nobody might come and stay at their home because of social stigma put upon them.
In fact, at the beginning, only foreign tourists came and stayed with them.
Then, gradually local tourists, Hindus and other Nepalis, visited their village and stayed in their house as a guest or sometimes like family members, to share space and time, even foods and water, with Dalit people.
The outcomes of this new enterprise were more than expected.
Non Dalit villagers have become helpful to them by providing products such as milk, meat and vegetables.
Dalit people no longer need to go so far, like visiting bazar, for buying those items.
They got a new habit of keeping clean in and around their houses, growing organic vegetables and had an idea of making a small flower garden in front of their houses.
Women, who were strongly required to stay back behind men, have advanced to the front of this business and have not been hesitant any more when talking to people even if the latter belong to the upper caste.
“We crossed the border. We have overcome," Shyam said.
Now he realized that that was one of the best methods to change human minds and eliminate social discrimination.
This family business, participated by some other Dalit families all together, started 7 years ago.
Until now more than 800 foreigners from 18 countries and about 200 Nepalis were welcomed by Dalit community.
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