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CV NEWS FEED // Of Nepal’s Christian converts, 65% are members of the Hindu Dalit, or “untouchable,” caste, according to a recent report from the Federation of National Christian Nepal.
One of these converts told Union of Catholic Asian (UCA) News that he found the peace he was seeking his whole life within the Catholic Church.
“I am happy to become a Catholic and feel like a liberated human being now,” 40-year-old Simeon Biswokarma told UCA.
Biswokarma, along with his wife and three children, were baptized Feb. 4 at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Kohalpur in Banke district. Three other families were also baptized.
The husband and father of three explained that he has been facing discrimination due to his social caste since he was a boy.
He recounted a time when he was 7 and living in a majority Hindu village in Nepal. He and his friends were playing soccer, and he ran onto his friend’s porch to grab the soccer ball.
“His mother started hurling abuse against my family and me. I couldn’t figure out what I had done wrong, but she kept saying I had defiled her house, and called me a ‘Dalit,’” he said.
The discrimination came to a head again when he was 17 and fell in love with a girl from a higher caste, who is now his wife. The couple ended up fleeing their village in order to get married after villagers and the girl’s family threatened them.
“We even got death threats. It was not safe to live in the village, so we eloped to India and got married in 2004,” he recalled.
Before he left, one of his uncles, who had converted to Christianity, gave Biswokarma a Bible and told him it would bring him peace.
Biswokarma and his wife moved back to Nepal in 2006, and he made a living by driving auto-rickshaws, a three-wheeled vehicle used for public transportation.
Before turning to the Catholic Church, Biswokarma was interested in becoming a Christian, but a negative experience with a friend who had converted to a Protestant denomination delayed his conversion.
“He was a close friend of mine, but once he became pastor, he stopped talking to me. He developed an air about himself which put me off,” Biswokarma said.
In April 2024, another auto-rickshaw driver, a practicing Catholic, introduced Biswokarma to a Catholic priest from India, whom the article did not name for privacy reasons.
The priest described his first meeting with Biswokarma.
“When he first came to us, he was a little confused,” he recalled. “But then he bared his heart, talking about the caste-based discrimination he faced.”
The priest added, “So, we ensure there is no poor or rich, big or small inside a church. We try to treat everyone as equal and with dignity.”
After the meeting, Biswokarma started attending Sunday Mass with his family, and regularly went to Bible studies at the parish.
Biswokarma said the story of the Samaritan woman (John 4:4-42) particularly resonated with him.
Although he knows that he will continue to face discrimination due to his caste, Biswokarma stated, “I have finally found the peace I was seeking for many years in the church.”
