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Goa witnessed another incident of caste discrimination within a year when upper-caste Mahajans sacked and drove out a priest in the last week of July for conducting the wedding of a dalit couple inside a temple in Khazane village in Pernem district of North Goa.
Sadashiv Narayan Kale, a middle-aged priest living with his old mother, wife, and two children, was forced to resign from the temple job and vacate the house his father had built. The Kales had migrated from the neighbouring Sindhudurg district of Maharashtra 40 years ago.
The issue became a public controversy when a local daily reported that the priest had been evicted, after the temple committee came to know of the wedding conducted in May.
Last year in August, villagers had prohibited the cremation of a dalit in a public crematorium meant for Hindus in Bardez taluka, which has some of Goa's most famous tourist beaches like Calangute and Baga, where locals chase foreigners but consider members of the dalit community untouchable.
Like last year, the present incident has been resolved with the intervention of two local non-governmental organizations, Samata Andolan and Goan People's Front.
The wedding actually appears to have been a mere excuse for the temple committee, which already wanted to get rid of Kale. "This is a political ploy and the quitting of the priest has nothing to do with the dalit wedding," said Damodar Sawal, president of the committee. "In fact, our temple committee represents everyone, from a Brahmin to a Harijan."
Local dalits, however, disclosed that they are still prohibited in the temple beyond certain limits, not allowed to bring homemade prasad for pooja, and not allowed to draw water from the public well.
The priest did receive some support from a section of the villagers, who opposed the move to remove him, the sarpanch (headman) being one of them. Kale was also given shelter by the neighbouring village of Poraskadem, which shares the same panchayat (council) and sarpanch.
Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar personally summoned the priest to verify the facts, after the incident was highlighted in the assembly, though he is yet to make a statement in this regard.
Meanwhile, bowing to public pressure and the intervention of NGOs, the temple committee has publicly promised not to prohibit the priest from visiting dalit houses, while the sarpanch personally went to hand over his house to him.
But Kale is still too scared to return to the village.
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