The Conservative Party Human Rights Commission held a hearing in Parliament yesterday on the plight of the Dalits or “untouchables” in India , in the week that Britain marks the 200^th anniversary of the abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Four leading Indian campaigners presented detailed evidence of serious human rights abuses as a result of the caste system.

The Commission heard extensive accounts of bonded labour, discrimination, rape, sexual slavery, beatings and killings of India ’s 250 million Dalits and “backward castes”.

Dr Joseph D’souza, International President of the Dalit Freedom Network, reminded the Commission that William Wilberforce, who led the Parliamentary campaign to end the slave trade, described the caste system in India as “a system at war with truth and nature”. The Dalits, said Dr D’souza, are facing a modern day slavery.

Indira Athawale, a women’s activist, said that Dalit women face sexual violence in a “culture of impunity”. She told of how two Dalit women were dragged from their homes in their village in Maharashtra on 29 September, 2006 and paraded naked through the streets to the village square, where they were reportedly gang-raped and murdered.

“If the social exclusion, dehumanisation, degradation, exploitation and oppression of Dalits is abhorrent and appalling, that faced by Dalit women is the worst of all,” Ms Athawale said.

India’s Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, has himself said that “untouchability is not just social discrimination, it is a blot on humanity”.

Stephen Crabb MP, the Chairman of the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission, said: “We held this hearing in order to get first-hand knowledge about the real problems of caste-based discrimination that continue in that country today. We conducted the hearing very much in a spirit of friendship with India , recognising the long-standing and special relationship between our two countries. But we would not be a true friend to India and its people if we did not raise these very serious issues.

“We wish to encourage the Indian Government to act to end caste discrimination and give Dalits equal opportunities in employment, education and society. We urge the British Government to ensure that British aid is directed at empowering Dalits.

“We encourage British businesses investing in India to consider seriously ways in which their investments could be used to alleviate the poverty and discrimination which Dalits face, and to seek opportunities, working with groups in India, to bring an end to this injustice.

“We believe support is also needed to help establish Dalit media groups, to give a voice to these 250 million people who have been downtrodden for far too long.

“As India ’s friends, we wish to say to India that bonded labour, sexual slavery, rape, beatings and killings of Dalits carried out with impunity is not acceptable in our modern, global age. We will do all we can to continue to highlight these concerns, and to encourage India to end this gross injustice.”