Michael Kongala | bless-ministries

BLESS India
Andhra Pradesh, India

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I am Michael Kongala, the founder of BLESS, which is an acronym for Brothers in the Lord for Evangelism and Social Services.

In 1999, out of my desire to reach the untouchable, underprivileged, and destitute people of India, I started BLESS to minister the gospel among those who would be forgotten. The power of the gospel is showing all the people of india that there are no classes of people, but only individuals that need the love of God to have real change in the world.

I was born as one of the untouchable people, in a family that is the lowest class in the Indian culture. My father, Reverend K. Bhaskar Rao is a pastor to the people of Ponnur in Andhra Pradesh, India. He and my mother, Sarah, work together ministering the gospel to the people of Ponnur. My father is a man that has had to overcome being from the poorest class of people, the Dalits.

We want to thank Mark and Pamela Rohr from the United States, for becoming hands on partners with us. They have taken a personal interest in helping to generate donations and enlarge our activities with Bless Ministries. Please view the video of their visit to our work.

3000 years ago the Hindu religion propagated to the people of India that there are four main caste (classes) of people: the Brahmins made up of priest and teachers; the Shatriyas consisting of rulers and soldiers; the Vaisyas being the merchants and traders; and the Sudras, the laborers and servants. There is an additional class that is considered lower than the four social structures of humanity, and this is the Dalits. The Dalits are approximately 300 million people that are considered "untouchable." Literally, the Indian people will not touch the Dalits because they are considered so worthless. Their position in Asian society is justified by ancient Hindu religious texts such as The Laws of Manu.

Dalits are expected to perform menial, degrading tasks that include unclogging sewers, disposing of dead bodies and cleaning latrines. Dalits are forced to live in separate settlements, prohibited from worshiping in temples, barred from using the village wells, and their children are often denied education or made to sit in the back of the classroom.

The Indian constitution outlaws the caste (class) system and reserves nearly 25 percent of government jobs and university spots for Dalits. However, more than a million of these posts remain unfilled, or filled by dishonest non-Dalits. Even simple Dalit assertions of their lawful rights and privileges have touched off hate crimes against them by members of the upper castes. These have included rape, harassment, violence and murder. The average literacy rate among Dalits is approximately 37 percent. Among some Dalit communities it is as low as 10 percent.

Every hour, two Dalits are assaulted, three Dalit women raped, two Dalits murdered and two Dalit houses burned, according to the Human Rights Education Movement of India. Yet, only one percent of those who commit crimes against Dalits are ever convicted. In India alone, the combined population of Dalits and other low-caste groups equals approximately 700 million people.

This may help you understand what it means to be like an untouchable caste man in India. I was born in such caste. I faced many embarrassment moments in my life being untouchable. Untouchables don’t have freedom as others even though India got freedom 75 years ago. Indian Dalits are still under the bondage of high caste people. The good news is the majority of Indian Christians are untouchables and finding freedom in Christ. We are so thankful to the Lord our God, who treats every man in creation as equal without any differences.

When I was an young boy, I was shy and timid. I kept my faith mostly to myself and I was not being bothered about my appearance. As I began to enter my teenage years, I became very keen about how I looked. One day, as I was looking at myself in the mirror, I was curious about the scars on my body. I could see burnt marks on my ears and arms. I didn’t know how or when these marks appeared. When I asked my Mum and Dad, they told me I was in a bitter incident at the age of 13 months.

As a baby, I was playing on the bed fell into a hot dish full of boiling spicy soup. I was burnt severely and hospitalized. My condition was so severe my parents, being in the state of depression, cried out to Jesus for help. My father made a promise in the presence of the Lord, that he would dedicate his son [me] for the Lord’s work if He would save his son from the effects of this terrible accident. God heard his cry and was so gracious to me. I was completely healed. This bitter incident has changed my life in big way. I surrendered myself to the Lord and I accepted Jesus as my personal Savior that day. I praise God for his wonderful miracle that took place in my life.

God gave me a vision and passion to love and care for the orphans, hungry, and homeless children, the elderly and lepers in our communities. We do this by conducting mass crusades, pastors conferences, and boring wells to supply fresh water supplies. We work to educate people to become self-reliance as we develop communities with training life skills for jobs and a better way of life.

We are now building a school that we can use to educated the children as well as adults. With their newfound freedom in Jesus Christ, for the first time in centuries, our people can overcome the brutal class system that has dominated the Indian social structure. This school is one of our ways to make real change in our country.