..yesterday we had a very scholistic discussion on the prevailing cast system and the umbrella of reservation on top of it.
Division of people on the basis of the jobs they do,colour of their skin ,languages they speak and the culture they follow are as old as 'puranaas',but unfortunately even today the people at the lower strata are downtrodden still.People were mainly catagorised on the basis of their livelyhood.A person who makes shoes is a 'chamar' and one who washes clothes is a 'dhobhi',and each member of his family is supposed to sustain that proffession and the next generation to follow suit.A chamar is born a chamar,lives a chamar and dies the same,he was not given the privilige to be learned and be wise.The so called upper class remained at the high end of the strata on the basis of land they own and power they possess to expolit others.Very sad that our society didnt have the dignity of labour and still continue to reel under that stigma,very different from the western part of the world where the skilled labour is always sought after and pays too.
Now, another cast has added upto the list ,the division of people on the basis of money and political power, another dangerous rift to have.we are slipping more and more deep into the world of ignorance and dividing ourselves among ourselves.
culture,a word which we never understand, often get confused with and we try to bring the ethnic tribes from the jungles to 'the main stream' in the name of upliftment.we purposefully ignore to understand that we are trying to uproot them from their natural habitat and plant them in our world,our culture??we believe living in concrete jungles,driving machines,using internet,eating junk food is a superior culture to theirs and want them to adapt to this.Is this not barbarianism,is this not conversion?have we ever tried to step into their world and understand them? can we ever go to the jungles,not as a tourist and try to survive even a week??They have a culture which is original and they still follow that.its us who are of an inferior race.
But still we dont eat food made by 'them'.still they are untouchables and they have seperate gods,thier women are raped,their children are made bonded labourers for life and noone cares.,
but we still try to 'uplift' them by teaching them 'english',asking them to wear jeans and work on computers.
Casteism is in our minds,till the day we understand that every human is one cast,noone is superior to the other,it will remain.
The next generation should marry from different races,casts,religion and bringforth children of a new breed who are just humans,nothing more,nothing less.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
vision to be realize ..........new breed who are just humans,nothing more,nothing less.
ReplyDeleteall are not equal - the caste, creed, tribe, class etc. prevails in this world with some objective. but the problem is superiority & inferiority complex amoung men.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeletevery gud interaction,i agree on the above comments only on one aspect that the lower castes have an inferiority complex,but its is forced on them by generations.
ReplyDeletewhen we comment on such delicate issues,we must take the crossection of the world population and relate it to the subject.If you are aware,in the last ten years the percentage of poverty was reduced max. by brazil,second by china and third by india.although the GDP growth as its shown is grown by 7.9% in india and is the highest in this quarter by any nation far away from brazil.but even then, the disparity between the rich and poor is greater in india and the UNO has figures to show,this mainly because of the caste system prevailing in india,inspite of the efforts by the government.Just take the issue of growing maoism in the easern states,they are becoming powerful because there is asupport from the locals who have been oppressed by generations by the uppercstes.(reference,Read arundathi's article on the same),they dont have any options other than taking arms.
Consider a fact of the life prevailing that a lowercaste is not welcome in any hosuehold even today as any person from uppercaste.Even in schools its prevailing they are seperated>i am not talking about any schools in kerala,this a general fact and I have seen it.
i ve not mentioned eating tribal food is taboo.if the same food is made available in 5 star hotels,people will rush,thats is fashion.I am talking about food prepared by a person of a lower caste.!!
ALL are not equal,but are the opportunities equal????
new generation of people without casteism is a reality which is not prevailing, only in india.that is why here the poor is becoming poorer. There is no such wide caste system anywhere in the world.
Tribals are not ready to change to anything,they are happy if we give them enough space in their own world.educate them about the modern world and its sophistication,but dont convert them to become 'us',thats all.
Casteism is not only in the minds of lowercastes its more in the minds of uppercastes.
we lived in our state,maybe 70 80 years back when people of lower castes were not allowed to enter in temples,remember??1924 Vaikom sathyagraha,which changed all that?women of lower castes were not allowed to cover their bosom in front of any uppercatse person,remember that??I'm not talking about Bihar or orrisa,where still the situation is worse.
debate can go on,but we are contributing only when such debates arise..so comments are welcome.
(All opportunities are not equal) first the caste based reservation system should be abolished. it is the tag which keeps all the barriers. why the goverment /politician mark some people as 'backward caste' ?? and allows them to be in the same profile/position?? (foolish people belives that its a great right for them, but they dont undersntad its the main obstacle!)
ReplyDeletereservations were proposed as a step to uplift the socially backward,but now,after years there is no ammendment made to the law and that has enabled the generations of the benefeciaries to enjoy the benefit and even though the opportunities are available now with better living conditions and social status their children are enjoying the same benefits and are not competing with the mainstream.its a disaster but thats how a democratic country like ours operate.the politians get power on the votes of promises made and they wont like to lose power.thats why i mentioned another caste taking shape ,a caste of people with power and money.
ReplyDeletei still feel people are different in their capabilities and cannot be measured with same parameter. we should accept that. We cannot make all doctors or engineers. We need coblers, butchers, undertakers etc.. to run the society.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteabsolutely..i think we are not understanding the discussion yet.We need people who do all kind of jobs,that doesn't or shouldn't relate to any lower or uppercaste.thats y i said in my first post,dignity of jobs,which is unfortunately not there in India,because the origin of caste system is related to the jobs people used to do.Y is that a brahmanan is only allowed to do the priesthood in a temple?? A brahmanan as in vedas is a person who has brahma gyanam and never is it associated with a particular caste.but noone else were allowed to learn vedas.
ReplyDeleteAnd..for your information hinduism is the only religion which is having this caste system.we are not to confuse caste with race.A negro is a race.not from 1960's negros were slaves from centuries and you forget an aborgini,the american Indian who are the natives,all the white people migrated from euorope.
So you agree a race of negro was oppressed in America and were ill treated but you don't agree our people still being ill treated in the name of a caste,even though their colour of skin is the same.isn't it sad?/
You talk about pakistan.Pakistan is a muslim country there is no uppercaste or lower caste among muslims,there are only shias and sunnis ,they fight for the superiority.
Repeating what i said previously that reservations were formed to give better opportunities to the underpriviliged and i also mentioned the ineffeciancy of executing the reservations properly have resulted in an imbalance,in my last post.
to remove the caste from the minds we have to take a step right from schools.there should be a mention of caste in the application form itself,so that there is no discrimination and kids will be just kids,no son of chamar,no daughter of 'paravan'.And the system of reservation should be modified,so that a person from a lower financial situation get the benefit and it should be fool proof too,which is the responsibilty of the governance.
Please understand the plight of the underprivilged,not by opposing just saying anything about our people.I think we should know more about our people and our country and let us be thankful to our fate which has not been so unfortunate to us.
If we cannot see how people live by going around,we must read about people and their lives.
Castesim is a curse on our society and it can be removed by the generation like us who are contributing by at least our thoughts.'cause we are those priviliged who canm at least express our views without fear.I hope you know in places like Bihar,jarkhand,uttaranchal,orissa people cannot even raise their voices against oppression far from medai coverage..
please read there should not be amention of caste is schools,i think i missed 'not'from the sentence.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteas my understanding, the theme which is in the post must appreciate. mission to a new thought to the world. there is no need of upper/lower "Separations" to people in the name of color, profession, culture or even gender
ReplyDeletejust consider they are like that.... there is criteria s we set in minds as we grow that something is ugly, or low class this is prejudice and when we ready to accept others also a human like me then the world become heaven.
I believe we are not arguing here,this is a debate,there is a thin line separating the two.and we are debating for a cause,so that we can contribute to the thought process.
ReplyDeleteI am specifically mentioning about the long standing,diversified malice of caste system in India which is contributing negatively towards the economic growth of india as a superpower.
You yourself have mentioned the converted muslims from hindus same as a converted tribal to christianity.Once they become muslim and chriatian,they are getting the social security that was not there prior to the conversion,then they become minorities not lower castes.
specially in asian countries the caste system were there,which got propogated from India,but talking about the present scenario this wide caste system,in the same form,is not prevailing anywhere.How many castes we can name among muslims,while there are hundreds among hindus
Thank you for so much of information,if we hadnt debated we wouldnt have got it.
so,a black just because he got the name'negro' in 1960,was oppressed???I didnt get that?/
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeletesince,its becoming personal,let me put my view on that.
ReplyDeleteOf!course,my opinion of marriage is very open,my children are free to marry from any caste any religion and any race.
And maybe i didnt have a revolutionized thinking,the time when i got married or otherwise i would ve done that.and marriage is just a social union of man and woman and i strongly believe that all these tags dont have any value there.
As mentioned in the actual post, the separation/division of human beings can be dated back to the Epics or Puraanas. But once we dig deep and analyze into that age, we'll see that those are the segregations not as a part of anything called caste.. It was purely based on the nature of job they did. Brahmins were the priests in temples , Khssthriyas were the soldiers, Vaishyas were the bureaucrats and Shudras were the working class.
ReplyDeleteAs society 'developed' [we call so !], somewhere down the history line , things got changed. Strong ones dominated the weak ones, as history always taught us. They crowned themselves as the superior people and labeled others as slumps.
This convention had been followed through centuries and through generations. Newton's first law of motion states that 'every body continues in its state of rest or of uniform motion unless an unbalanced external force acts on them'.. Whether a person is of the so called 'Superior' community or of the 'Inferior' one , he/she never wanted to get out of that framework which was made by some idiotic hypocrites of ancient times. We all were being the prisoners of our ancestors' crimes.
But now its the time for that 'Unbalanced External Force'. We need to get out of this social discrimination. I know this is not a simple thing as it says, rather its a mammoth task. But the best thing to start with is not by preaching but to make it work inside us.. We cannot induce our thoughts or beliefs into others. But we can have our minds get ready for a transformation. This discrimination is a cancer to the society. We need to eradicate that.
By the way, ----
The intention of this post is very clear. Sarkoo presented his thoughts in a very positive manner. I was encouraged by the comments that followed.. But at some point of time, there is a diversion from the posted topic and I found things getting pointlessly aiming to individuals rather than ideas behind them. I would like to stress the point that I'm just sharing my ideas here.. its not anything personally between [me]and X or Y or Z.. ;-) ---
Back to the Topic , with all due respect to one of the comments above , let me tell you that the eradication of caste system does not mean that there should be more inter-caste marriages. As somebody said, 'marriage is just another hectic day in your life'. Our ideas and our thought process should be focused in such a way that we should not even consider that there is a segregation based on Caste in this society. That NEED NOT be measured [only] in terms of Inter-Caste marriages. There are more big things to do, to think of.. Somebody should break this chain which came over from generations. Why not we ?
Now, Once we are clear and confident about our thoughts, then its time to pass it over to the next generation. We had a generation just previous to ours' where in people selected even their friends based on Caste or religion and then boasting of being civilized people. We never want to repeat those mistakes again.
Achieving the eradication is a differnt thing , but to trying for it shows the real courage and by that way we all will reach a level where we can atleast believe that we are Civilized !
Excellent.i appreciate the positive approach and the genuine intent shown.This is what I expected,when i posted this topic for discussion.the new generation should pave a the path for the coming generations to follow..and intercaste marriages is just one of those small tributories to flow to the ocean of humanity.lets forget the mistakes done by the bygone generations,we live in the present and onus is on us to take a lead,setting an example and creat the future for the coming generations and let them remember a legacy,a legacy of people who showed the courage to change according to their perspective,a vision which is rightfully right and bright..This new breed is thinking and thinking differently...
ReplyDelete