The Hazards of Belief

Hundreds of British Asians will gather in Parliament Square on Tuesday to
urge MPs to introduce legal protection for those from traditionally lower-caste backgrounds.


A coalition of community groups, human rights organisations and politicians
has been campaigning for a change in the law that would make it an offence for people to discriminate on the grounds of caste.


A report on the issue commissioned by the government three years
ago estimated that there are between 50,000 and 200,000 people in
Britain who are classified as low caste. The study, by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, identified evidence of discrimination, harassment and exclusion in schools, provision of services and in the workplace.

Another survey, published in 2009 by the Anti-Caste Discrimination
Alliance, found that 58% of those questioned felt they had been
discriminated against because of their caste status, while 78% said they did not think the police would understand if they tried to report a caste-related hate crime.

VATICAN CITY -- Pope Francis has reaffirmed the Vatican's criticism of a body that represents U.S. nuns that the Church said was tainted by "radical" feminism, dashing hopes that he might take a softer stand with the sisters.

Francis's predecessor, Benedict, decreed that the Leadership Conference of
Women Religious (LCWR), a group that represents more than 80 percent of the 57,000 Catholic nuns in the United States, must change its ways, a ruling that the Vatican said on Monday still applied.


Last year, a Vatican report said the LCWR had "serious doctrinal problems"
and promoted "radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith,"
criticizing it for taking a soft line on issues such as birth control and
homosexuality.