India is going through an historic moment where people’s voice has forced the leaders to stand, notice and rush towards an action. There is a debate going on everywhere today across India within the political bodies, in the Parliament and among all the Indians. All of us are worried about the corruption and how cancerous it has been to the nation. We have the numbers to prove, we have the reports to state how devastating corruption has become to our society. And today when we see an impounding victory against the corruption, being a greedy Indian I urge brave Indians again, to also stand against the much bigger and more denting an issue, which has been a primary reason for India to be in this sorry state. Do we dare to talk against it? Are we ready to take on it? Or our conscious is dead ages back?
Here I am talking about the social issue, which we all evade talking about and scared to opine on! While the world has been witnessing this strange happening a billion people failed to notice. Its weird and its strange, why? Never in the history or anywhere else in this world we observed people getting deprived and treated unequal and still they are happy to be treated so and they are happy to be contented with whatever is being forced on them. Yes you guessed it right its Casteism in India, which is foreign to us but we owned it to such an extent that now it’s more and beyond our closed ones.
Yes, it’s foreign and it was forcefully fed into our culture, though it’s largely debated on the origins of Caste system but certainly its roots are not in Hinduism, as it is perceived to be. While the Portugal and other invasions seeded it, the British drawing parallels between the casteism and their class system back home, cemented it for ease of penetration, solidification and then rule, a strategy more famously known as divide and rule. Indian society even after centuries is not been able to rise above this and still reeling under it, by the name of reservations. When we disown the british names of our cities and states like Banglore, West Bengal, why do we still keep the caste which is again foreign to us in our hearts? Why don’t we disown it as well?
Instead of finding a suitable, sustaining and amicable solution to the social menace called casteism we tried to bring in a social balance using reservations. For centuries facilities and resources was taken away from a group and stacked with another and now it’s the other way round. But the crucial part here is we don’t have standardized weights to measure the balance and in the process of making a balancing act the middle men always got benefited, if it was British earlier today its our politicians. The major political activity in India revolves around caste, Political parties are structured upon castes, and people swear on the name of caste and vote on the name of caste. Though its more cancerous to our nation every political party bets on it and supports it directly or indirectly. While few parties have been tagged to be communal and maligned, why doesn’t other parties get tagged as casteist though its nothing but obvious that they are structured in terms of caste in every state. If for any day we want to have political reforms in India, it should start with caste since our politics is deep rooted in caste, unless we have an equal distribution of power in terms of equal ground and equal opportunities we cannot talk about equality. Now its for the young Indians to decide are they content with just curbing people who have the power from corruption or they want to change themselves as well and owe not to support this social malice as a part of the new found victorious revolution.
Our jaws drop when we hear about the Indian Rupees being stashed in swizz banks. Will you believe if I say we have lost much more and infact we lost our present and future due to casteism in India, how? India had a vital share of inventions in the ancient times be it Mathematics (Aryabhatta), Science, Surgery (Sushruta), Languages (Panini) but we lost our way and we haven’t yet found our way, we hardly can now boast about our inventions in recent times. India has lost golden opportunities in terms of inventions that the world had witnessed. Based on those inventions the rest of the world cruised away while we just kept noticing, empires have been built like GE, Mercedes, GM, IBM and more while we were busy in social maligning. From a share of 25 to 30% of the global GDP we fell to 3% even then we did nothing and still we do nothing. Casteism can be directly or indirectly be related to this situation, had we allowed the bright Indians to pursue their passions without categorizing them and forcing them for caste based occupation India would have pioneered in inventions what it was before we lost our way. For thousands of years we did not allow our brains to work, we just followed caste blindly. Result of which is the present India, which was once termed to be the land of inventions and discoveries and biggest economy of the world. Yes, casteism provides a sense of security to the society in terms of streamlining the work force. But is it really worth it? We strongly know that it’s not worth it as the opportunity cost is unimaginable! We wouldn’t have had the master epic Mahabharata and we wouldn’t have had missiles now in India had Vyasa and Abdul Kalam stuck to their family occupation. Though this loss cannot be measured in any reports they should easily stuck our brain cords! How different India would have been had we never had casteism in place?
Casteism has been so deep routed in our culture now that most of us no longer pursue the same occupations but we get identified for it, why don’t we prefer to get an identity based on our occupation or for what we are rather than get an identity through our ancestors. Why do we complain when politicians pass on their legacy to their offspring, they have the right for it under casteism! We love our surnames more than our first names, strange but true in India. Its psychic that though we know its wrong and no religion or god would approve of what is being done but we still resort to it due to our upbringing in those situations. Parents in India are lot stronger in inculcating the good behavior, culture and ethics in a child but why do they teach the same child to practice a demon like caste. How correct are they in polluting the little brains? Can’t we see a nation growing above all these social inequalities and identities? Can ever we see our names without our caste being mentioned, Can we dare to? I believe in this present India that is fearless and committed for a change will dare to and there would be a day soon when this would happen!
Reservations is only a time being support, let us not consider it as a solution. Solution for cateism is within us, in the society, with the political parties and the government. With the triumph of the recent victory over the corruption, let us all once again resolute that we disown our caste; we do not approve casteism in India anymore. Let us resolute while we treat everyone as equals in our country we would also render help towards our economically limping fellow Indians in every way that we can but we are against casteism today and forever!
-Harish Bheemarthi
