Upper caste pays the price of social injustice

[suchandra 1]

Upper caste pays the price of social injustice

http://www.merinews.com/catFull.jsp?articleID=156773

We stand to lose credibility worldwide when each personal bio-data shall reek of caste or sub-caste. But should the bearers of culture and learning be subjected so much ‘unconcern’ due to an unfounded premise that they were upper caste exploiters. .

 

THE OTHER day I passed by the neighbourhood ‘nursing home’. A man, very happily, was mopping the floor with his pedestal mounted swab. Good menial jobs are becoming high-tech and new-fangled! But the nature of the job remains the same. What is his qualification caste or talent? Now the man doing the menial job at the nursing home could be a poor Brahmin. But he has to bear the price for his brethren. Why is it that the ‘Manuvadis’ are suffering from persecution complex as the exploited lot?

The famished Brahmin, Lord Krishna’s friend Sudama is archetypical of the community that survived on the margins and survived on the ideology of ‘simple living and high thinking’. Many a times they were subjected to public ridicule due to their impoverished bearings. Chanakya’s case ― of his ridicule at the hands of the Nand ruler when he was seated among the high-ranking officials, at the behest of Shaktar, King Nand’s minister, is a case in point (source ‘Mudra Raksha’ by Vishakhatt Samant). His heart rankled with rage due to the treatment meted out to him. But should the carriers of knowledge and repositers of culture and learning be subjected so much ‘unconcern’ due to an unfounded premise that they were the high-brow exploiters.

A rare kind of dedication, discipline and training in phonetics and clarity of diction was required to preserve the esoteric texts of Vedic learning preserved through the oral tradition. We find callousness and arrogance in most people in the corridors of power, be it the erstwhile underdogs who now hold sway by riding on caste bigotry. As the cliché goes power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. So people should not be categorised as such. People are either the perpetrators or the exploited. There is no third category in the Indian game of politics which now is rife with only dirty politics of ‘authoritarian’ caste agenda. People seem to react with no enthusiasm at all and ignore the fact on how the Other Backward Class and Scheduled Caste students have notched about forty high ranks among the first hundred ranks in the Uttar Pradesh Board Exam this year; a fact which establishes the Supreme Court order that beneficiaries should be the economically weaker sections. At grass-root level the benefits should trickle down. We are creating a marginalised people on the basis of a premise which does not hold good any more. Most of the neighbours do not care to see who lives next door…it could be any person with the money to afford that kind of living, most of my neighbours with impressive-looking houses belong to the much-politicised and politically-empowered ‘reserved’ category. Are these economically sound people contributing sufficiently to uplift the people with negligible resources? The government is doing its bit by creating a rift; the squabble will only increase. Could I join the cause without an authenticated birth certificate? A cult is rising in order to exploit the sentiments of the people. They are not championing the cause but only championing the champion. They keep the divide open. They are beating the corpse of class consciousness. The sporadic semblance of reason is hushed by bigots and non-conformists who refuse to accept change, and browbeat all efforts of social ironing out of differences. How can you chastise the myopic mentality. We need not be reactionary but be reconciliatory.

Mahatma Gandhi has been refused the credit as the benefactor who assiduously worked for Dalit uplift. He accelerated their social acceptance. He acknowledged the dignity of labour and that gratitude towards these people should be the norm. His detractors beat the dust to blind every eye that could not assuage any hurt. We stand to lose credibility worldwide when each personal bio-data shall reek of caste or sub-caste (Prajapati, Ahir, Yadav, Bhil, Gujjar etc).

We have a responsibility to build the nation and consolidate trust among different people. There is no ‘grabbing game’, no treasure trove to covet. This might be a social eye-opener for people to learn that among the people of indigenous residents of Kashmir no well-defined social hierarchies existed, by and large there were the Dogras or the Pandits, that too the Dogras were by and large concentrated in Jammu region. The eagerness with which most sectarian groups claim reservation sets a vicious chain reaction. There are many officious angels of this ‘masala’ tear- jerker.

In the age of self-defying politics the problem gains seismic momentum. When will we become sound of judgement? Why do people who fired public imagination of the masses… need memorials? No memorials are ever made to commemorate the masses! The masses need that public faith in a system should be restored, the elected politicians should be national leaders and not self-seekers.

Do we need self-seeking icons, self-gloating leaders who tower in advertising cut-outs declaring “I have arrived.” This is happening in the state of UP, which boasts of so many achievements, one more memorial may be bestowed to the Capital territory with most expensive ‘chaurahas’ and the fastest emerging statues in history. The lords of the rings have monumental marble elephants covering hectares of land and downing crores of rupees on each elephantine nightmare.