CAMP HILL, Pa. — The misery that the Rev. Benjamin Chinnappan has seen distresses his musical voice.
"According to Hinduism, my people are born at the bottom of society and are much worse than dust," he says with a frown that darkens his cherubic face.
Coworkers at Holy Spirit Hospital here know "Father Ben" as their polite chaplain from India, but most don't realize his unusual station in life.
He is an Untouchable, a member of a despised "outcaste" in his homeland. Untouchables, known today as Dalits, are a landless people subject to blatant bigotry even in India's Christian world, where millions of Dalits have sought emancipation.
Father Chinnappan, 41, has borne the suffering since his childhood in rural South India, as one of eight children jammed into a dirt hut no bigger than the narrow living room of his Holy Spirit apartment.
These days, when he finishes his duties at the hospital, the priest returns to his apartment and fires up the computer that serves as the command center for his other life - as a freelance humanitarian for fellow Dalits back in South India.
For the last five years, the soft-spoken priest has been an advocate for India's 200 million Dalits through his pioneering Web site, www.dalitchristians.com.
For the last three years, he and a small circle of American supporters, operating as Dalit Solidarity Inc., have also raised about $300,000 to establish a children's home and a medical clinic for woefully underserved villagers near his childhood home. The two centers run on a shoestring - a good thing since the cash flow from America is uneven, and often is underwritten by Father Chinnappan's modest chaplain's salary.
"Whatever I can sacrifice, I give away to my people," he said.
Dalit Solidarity, a Pennsylvania-registered charity, is trying to get people to sponsor Indian children for $15 a month, and hopes to set up a trust to assure steady funding for its two centers.
The beneficiaries, rural Dalits, are at the bottom rung of one of the most rigid social structures in the world, a caste system said to be 3,000 years old. The system has four tiers - priests, warriors, merchants/farmers, and servants - and below them, the "polluted" Dalits, whose lot is to perform the lowliest tasks for little or no pay.
