My God, their God
A board outside a temple for the Goddess Kali in Orissa's Puri district orders Dalits to stop at this point. "Harijans can pray from here," it declares. The warning sign was put up in August last year after three schoolgirls entered the shrine to offer Prasad to the Goddess, an icon of empowerment and Shakti. The board outside the temple proves that there is little political will in undoing the wrongs inflicted here - or in challenging archaic and illegal conventions rooted in the caste system.
