This article tackles caste-based poverty by a focus on the position of Dalit women in India. Of 200 million Dalits (= former Untouchables), nearly 50% are women, often referred to a ‘thrice Dalit’, as they suffer from the triple oppressions of poverty, being female and being female Dalits. They are frequently let down by both the Dalit movement itself as well as the women’s movement in India that focuses more on social problems like dowry deaths—more relevant for caste women and not those outside the caste system. Many Dalit women are denied access to education, to meaningful employment, health provision and are the first to suffer the negative effects of globalization. Access to upper caste wells is forbidden. Worst of all, Dalit women are exposed to many forms of violence (including temple prostitution) and are frequently raped as a way to humiliate Dalit men. The degrading work of ‘scavenging’—removing human excrement-falls mostly on Dalit women, since men are more likely to be ‘upwardly-mobile’. Despite all of this, a new strength now emerges in challenging caste boundaries, contributing to self esteem and a stronger sense of identity. The strong spirituality of Dalit women has sustained strength through songs and stories, and in some cases by subverting patriarchy through ironically re-shaping traditional myths. The article ends by suggesting forms of action from Church, society and feminist theology to show solidarity and effect social change for Dalit women.

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Liberation theologians, from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and even from North America and Europe, are actively engaged in responding to massive human rights violations in countries where revolution has either been a success or a tragic failure. The inspiration for this commitment is the Church's 'Option for the poor', originating in the historic Conferences of the Latin American Bishops at Medellin and Pueblo. But twenty years on, in a changed global context, there is a need for Liberation Theology to develop more than a praxis-oriented focus: there needs to be a further development of that epistemic shift on which Liberation Theology was originally constructed, as well as a new sensitivity as to how knowledge itself is attained. This new sensibility must extend to those who have withstood and suffered the violation of human rights, and include reflection on who has the right to know, and the de-humanisation process on both individual and communal levels. I will briefly explain what I mean by this epistemic shift before exploring the whoie notion of 'dangerous memory' and its bearers. I consider this to be a theo-political task theology has always been concerned perhaps over possessively with the location of truth and its formulations. But since the work of Michel Foucault, philosopher and social historian, and his call for the 'insurrection of the subjugated knowledges', it is no longer possible to ignore the power factor in theological expressions. The call to listen to oppressed peoples as the 'bearers of theological truth' must be woven into the struggle against the dominant ideology. By proposing to recover and empower 'dangerous memory' as three distinct tasks -de-constructive, reconstructive and prospective -theology aims to recover, slowly and painfully, the past which has been suppressed by the oppressor, specifically as a tool to build hope in a liberated future.

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In the last twenty years Ecotheology has developed steadily: in all areas of theology it has related the human and non-human, insisting that our well-being and flourishing belong together. All key concepts of theology, for example, redemption and grace, have been re-imaged to include earth and all her creatures (McDaniel 1995). My approach here takes a more grass-roots method. For fifteen years I have been involved with the villages of Rajasthan and this experience has transformed my theological method and raised new questions. I now ask, in the interwoven suffering of poor communities, trees, plants and animals and their mutual struggle for survival, in the struggle to attain the most basic realities of life, do we glimpse the presence of the sacred? Is God revealed in a new revaluing of these very realities?