Straight from the title, “Hidden Apartheid: Caste Discrimination against India’s Untouchables,” you know that the new report from Human Rights Watch (HRW) out today is pulling no punches when it comes to qualifying the extent and seriousness of anti-Dalit discrimination in India today. The comparison with apartheid gained significant political cover two months ago when the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, drew the link in public remarks at a conference in Delhi. Here’s the prime minister:
Singh said: “Dalits have faced a unique discrimination in our society that is fundamentally different from the problems of minority groups in general. The only parallel to the practice of untouchability is apartheid,” he said. “Untouchability is not just social discrimination, it is a blot on humanity,” Singh said.
Calling for a “political, social, cultural and intellectual battle,” against such discrimination, the PM noted that constitutional and administrative measures alone are not sufficient. “Our government is deeply and sincerely committed to the equality of all sections of our society and will take all necessary steps to help in the social, educational and economic empowerment of Dalits. This is our solemn commitment,” Singh said.
Of course the gap between legal remediation and actual practice has been precisely the problem for 57 years, since the Constitution in 1950 outlawed untouchability in all its forms, with further legislation added over the years. The continuing discrimination against Dalits also violates the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, to which India is a signatory, as the convention covers not just what its title narrowly suggests but in fact “race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin.” At any rate, this gap between theory in practice is well known, and the problem has always been to end the actual practices of discrimination, violence, and humiliation that Dalits encounter across India to degrees that perhaps (probably) vary by region and locality but are never, ever trivial.
Consider a few choice quotes from the report’s summary (you can download it or read the whole report online here):
DalitsÂ’ fundamental civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights are routinely violated by state actors and private individuals, in violation of Article 5 of the Convention. Caste-motivated killings, rapes, and other abuses are a daily occurrence in India, resulting in routine violations of DalitsÂ’ right to security of person and protection of the state. The police have systematically failed to protect Dalit homes and Dalit individuals from acts of looting, arson, sexual assault, torture, and other inhumane acts such as the tonsuring, stripping and parading of Dalit women, and forcing Dalits to drink urine and eat feces. surveyed. …
India has failed to address the multiple forms of discrimination faced by Dalit women. Even as compared to Dalit men, Dalit women do not have equal access to employment opportunities or justice mechanisms. They must contend with threats to their personal security, including trafficking and sexual violence. In some states in India, Dalit women are forced into prostitution under the devadasi system and are ultimately auctioned off to urban brothels. This puts them at particular risk of contracting HIV/AIDS. …
The right to own property is systematically denied to Dalits. Landlessness—encompassing a lack of access to land, inability to own land, and forced evictions—constitutes a crucial element in the subordination of Dalits. Land reform legislation is neither implemented nor properly enforced. When Dalits do manage to acquire land, access to it is often denied. …
The denial of the right to work and free choice of employment lies at the very heart of the caste system. Dalits are forced to perform tasks deemed too “polluting” or degrading for non-Dalits. According to unofficial estimates, more than 1.3 million Dalits—mostly women—are employed as manual scavengers to clear human waste from dry pit latrines. Dalits comprise the majority of agricultural, bonded, and child laborers in the country. …
Manual scavengers are routinely exposed to both human and animal waste without proper protection. This has severe repercussions for their health; most suffer from anemia, diarrhea, vomiting, and respiratory diseases. In many cities, Dalits clear sewage blockages without protective gear. Over 100 die each year from inhaling toxic gases or from drowning in excrement.
The difficult thing is that much of the discrimination against Dalits is well known and considered a fact of life. This isn’t the kind of report that breaks major news that everyone can immediately mobilize around. Rather, it’s a compendium of practices and contradictions and hypocrisies that are all too often recognized individually but either shrugged away as a whole, or, just as often, so daunting in their totality that it’s hard to know what to do. Besides, the only effective political mobilization against these practices will come from Dalits themselves, which means overcoming patterns of intimidation and resignation that are age-old and surmounting a collective action problem of enormous magnitude.
The principal author of the NRW report is a desi sister. Her name is Smita Narula and she is an assistant professor of clinical law at NYU, having previously worked at HRW as their senior researcher for South Asia. You can read more about her here. She also has an audio clip in English and Hindi on the organization’s website in which she states the principal findings and the importance of the issue.
Neal,
Not to be snarky or sarcastic.
Maybe, start with reading Indian Express, Hindu, India Today on a regular basis for current debates on dalit, caste politics, reservation debates, exploitation, entitlement, etc. If that does not help, read Mahabartha with characters like Bhim, Hidmibi, Dronacharya and the thumb chopping story so Arjuna would never have a competitor – all caste connection.
Or some original works by: a) 19th century Hindu reform movements, b) BR Ambedkar, or discussions (fights) between Gandhi and Ambedkar, c) or some early controversies during Indian constitution was framed, d) Tamil Nadu politics, caste, and DMK movement, e) neo-Buddhist movement, f) religion conversion issues, g) Acharya Vinoba Bhave, and Bhodan (land gift to landless) movement, even Naxalbari movement, h) Landless labor and dalit, their exploitation, i) Hinduvta and backward castes (some of the most powerful, diehard Hinduvta leaders are dalits – Narendra Modi being one of them), j) and most importantly the rise of dalit as a political force and a very united voting bloc in UP, Bihar***** k) new states being formed in northern india in last 20 years, where some of the dalits are in majority, and they choose to break away for the same reason l) recent alliances by dalits and muslims in electoral politics.
They are people like Ponniyan on this thread that touched the complexity of the issue but hardly anyone caught on to it. A commenter named Shiva in past has done some real insightful analysis.
Three bullet points:
a) Hierarchy of caste is a moving target in time and space in Indian subcontinent. Mixed castes in a generation or two reassert their higher one – some of it was alluded by Omkara (the movie Omkara) being half Brahmin, prevailed with power and influence as his father was the local/ regional don and a brahmin.
b) Exploitation is deeply rooted in economics, and sometimes is upward on backward, backward on backward, and rarely backward on upward castes too.
c) Rural politics in India is by numbers and wealth, like any place in the world. If Kanshi Ram has numbers and wealth on his side, it does not matter that he is lower caste. He pulls the trigger @ all times in today’s politics, he can emotionally motivate his brothers and sisters to back him up. Good for him. Does he do any good to his brothers and sisters, another question, another day.
***** In electoral politics at the federal level and beyond, UP and Bihar with their population density carry most mojo
In my opinion, somebody well versed with Tamil Nadu politics can give the best primer of caste and its complexity. I have provided some starting points, discuss away. I did my duty.
Divya (#189):
This idea (Brahminhood through works and not the pre-determination of birth) sounds very nice indeed, but caste is a relational concept: the term Brahmin means nothing without Dalit and vice versa. So, if there is a set of works that makes a person a Brahmin, then there also has to be a set of works which makes a person a Dalit. What are these?
We treat Brahminhood (and caste) as birth-based because it IS birth-based! If you go around Madurai, TN and you ask someone why they’re a Thevar or a Nadar they’ll tell you it’s because they were born into their caste, and structurally one is born into a caste in terms of how the bureaucracy works too. And contrary to what you said on another thread:
It was the British colonial regime which stratified caste into schedules in a move to establish a hierarchy for more efficient bureaucratic rule. Certainly post-independence policies have perpetuated this bureaucratic stratification, but that’s not where it originated.
Sakshi,
Thanks for the data!
C’mon guys. I’m from a tamil mudaliar family, which is considereed shudra by brahamanas, but I have heard members of my own family diss pariahs with a straight goddamn face. Casteism is real and pervasive. Yes, American triumphalism is nonsense and hugely hypocritical, and has rightly been corrected here. But it doesn’t take away from the problem. Get a grip. Be the change, and all that. As a Hindu, I find this blot doubly shameful.
Its very funny how all the defenders seem to use past tense like “history of bad behavior” as if nothing is happening in the present day. Hey atleast India is not that uncivilized enough to go and kill 600,000 iraqis so the SUVs can be fed with cheap gasoline. And India is not the one that runs guantanomo bay.
Nonsense. Educate yourself, Macaca : Srimad Bhagwad Geeta. Let me quote the words of Lord Krishna: “chaturvarnyam maya shristam gunakarma vibhagashah tasya kartaram api mama viddhi akartarma avyayam”
You can see that Krishna talks about guna (personal qualities or attributes) and karma (work) as the basis of the varna system, and mentions nothing about birth. The entire notion of Karma Yog is based upon this principle. This is why guilt-by-insinuation of Hinduism in the context of caste is such a slander.
From this article, you can find a number of literal translations and interpretations of this sloka by numerous Hindu scholars. Here’s one from Dr S Radhakrishnan, an ex-President of India and a Hindu scholar.
Literal translation: “The fourfold order was created by Me according to the divisions of quality and work.”
Interpretation:
“caturvarnyam:: the fourfold order. The emphasis is on guna (aptitude) and karma (function) and not jati (birth). The varna or the order to which we belong is independent of sex, birth or breeding. A class determined by temperament and vocation is not a caste determined by birth and heredity. According to the Mahabharata, the whole world was originally of one class but later it became divided into four divisions on account of the specific duties. Even the distinction between caste and outcaste is artificial and unspiritual. An ancient verse points out that the Brahmin and the outcaste are blood brothers. In the Mahabharata, Yudhisthira says that it is difficult to find out the caste of persons on account of the mixture of castes. Men beget offspring in all sorts of women. So conduct is the only determining feature of caste according to sages.”
“The fourfold order is designed for human evolution. There is nothing absolute about the caste system, which has changed its character in the process of history. Today it cannot be regarded as anything more than an insistence on a variety of ways in which the social purpose can be carried out. Functional groupings will never be out of date, and as for marriages they will happen among those who belong to more or less the same stage of cultural development. The present morbid condition of India broken into castes and sub-castes is opposed to the unity taught by the Gita, which stands for an organic as against an atomistic conception of society.”
This idea (Brahminhood through works and not the pre-determination of birth) sounds very nice indeed, but caste is a relational concept: the term Brahmin means nothing without Dalit and vice versa. So, if there is a set of works that makes a person a Brahmin, then there also has to be a set of works which makes a person a Dalit. What are these?
You are spouting Orientalism here – this is Louis DuMonts Homo Hierarchus rehashed. Have you heard of the Tamil Queen who made Brahmins out of the Sourashtras? Have you heard of Ramanuja, who made Brahmins out of Untouchables? The Arya Samaj? The Bhagavad Gita? There is no untouchability in the Vedas, nor the tradittional taboos on , e.g., leather workers. In fact, some hymns demonstrate occupational mobility. The first evidence I know of of textual sanction for untouchability may be the apastamba dharmasutra and its composed a good thousand years after the first Vedic hymns.
, etc, etc…
Gujjubhai, does it matter?
“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” – Philip K. Dick
Gujjubhai, does it matter?
It absolutely does. How do you think the Supreme Court came to justify opening the priesthood? A dynamic tradition is opened to new hermeneutical interpretations – or else it dies.
Clearly, PKD had no clue about self-fulfilling prophesies :-). Nice ref, me a huge PKD fan too.
And yes, it does matter to millions of us Hindus who indeed believe that one’s varna is determined by one’s karma. I have a choice of living with the artificial construct created by whitey masters foisted upon my enslaved ancestors or live true to my belief system. Of course, I suppose we’ll have to continuously invent new castes like mix-of-penpushing-government-babu-father-and-music-teacher-cum-social-activist-mother, with all the caste purity problems that might ensue but hey, we’ll live with it :-). You know, in our own little subversive and mutinous ways, us rightie Hindu fundies do enjoy stickin’ it to the Man every now and then too 🙂 :-).
Kush (#251):
I agree there is mobility among castes, and the picture is far more complicated than a brahmin boot on a dalit face. But I was living in western UP around the time Mulayam Singh and Mayawati/Kanshiram were rising to power. I was a kid at that time, but even then I remember the general atmosphere of surprise: it was almost as if no one knew who these guys were and where they came from. That there could be people from these castes who could become so powerful. I remember there was general derision and a belief that ‘these people’ simply weren’t fit to rule(and these leaders have ruled abysmally, btw, though perhaps no worse than the ones before them). I applaud the fact that they were accepted relatively quickly, but the fact remains that till 20 years these castes were nowhere on the horizon and were given short shrift for centuries. They still lag behind on most human development indicators (#108).
Casteism is still a serious problem in India. Witness how every Chief Minister of UP changes the entire bureaucracy from top to bottom to match his/her caste as soon as they get into office. And office politics in many govt. institutions/banks in India is entirely caste-based. I once talked to a (retired) professor at Allahabad University, and all he talked about was how the Brahmins and Kayasthas clashed over university posts for decades. Fortunately the private sector is largely untouched.
Yes, we don’t need others to tell us what to do about them, but this pretension that casteism never existed in India, is getting rather obscene. I sometimes feel we get so insecure and obsessed with how we are perceived by the world at large, that we even forget the reality.
PS: You mention Kashiram in the present tense, but I remember hearing he died. I may be wrong.
PS: You mention Kashiram in the present tense, but I remember hearing he died. I may be wrong.
Yes, He died a month or two ago.
I wasn’t in India when Mulayam Singh and all emerged. I just read about them, and pay attention when I visit India.
Even before Mulayam Singh, they were Jagjivan Rams.
This may carry analogies too far, and I am not implying the status of dalits in India are equal to the black in the US, but Jagjivan Ram was more like Booker Washington, while Mulayam Singh and Kashiram were more along the lines of Malcolm X. 😉
I wonder if you have heard the famous Mayawati slogan: ‘Tilak tarazu aur talwaar, inko maaro joote char’. Well, I happen to be one of these three (never mind which one), and you have no idea how it freaked out everyone in my community.
Risible:
Ok, I see how it can be relevant to the future.
gujjubhai:
Sadly, this is not a PKD thread. 🙁
I though in India rightie Hindu fundies are the Man.
China has a cultural continuity as old and deep as India’s. But you make a good point, I’ve often thought about more or less the same thing.
Am I the only one who finds this comment repugnant? Subha, do you think our languages are markers of inhumane, oriental barbarism? I guess you’d like to see all Indians adopt English as their mothertongue and ditch their native languages completely? Well, at least this helps me put the rest of your immature comments in perspective. Siddhartha, this too should be a hall of fame statement.
Neal,
You may have seen this before, but let me rehash it again for some clarity. Caste is an inapropriate term that mashes together two terms and concepts Jati and Varna and confuses the hell out of most people including most modern day Indians educated about caste in schools. Jati is the reality in India. There are thousands of them in every state and a jati in Tamil Nadu will not mean anything to a person in UP and vice versa. Jati is akin to extended clans and tribes that have been historically very dynamic with many going up or down in the hierarchy in their areas based on their power quotient. New jatis have been formed by amalgamation, by splitting and so on. Varna on the other hand was the four-fold ideal of societal classification as warriors/rulers, intellectuals/pundits, businessmen and laborers (kshatriya, brahmin, vaisya and sudra). As in any society laborers(sudra) were the majority in India as well. Many jatis over time based on their professions mapped themselves into one of these 4 categories, while others had it mapped for them. Many jatis did not and still do not care about this four-fold classification. That is why you have people still saying that varna is guna based and not birth based. As an example in Tamil Nadu, only the Iyers and Iyengars (two jatis) map themselves into this classification system as Brahmins. They regarded everyone else as sudras. That is why unlike in north India in Tamil Nadu for instance the societal split was Brahmin and non-Brahmin which lead to the rise of the DK and DMK and so on. Many jatis that did the so called ‘unclean’ professions like cremation, killing and skinning animals and so forth ended up being shunned at some point in time due to the ‘unclean’ nature of their jobs. There are many theories on how that came about that would be too long to go into here, but they were considered sudra as well. These jatis were added into a schedule by the British and came to be called the scheduled castes. The trajectories of these scheduled castes, are different in different states.
Let me also throw in a litle excerpt on religion I wrote elsewhere to add to the above.
Hope this helps to set up the background to further the discussion.
thanks, #265.
If it would make it easier to get across the point that I’m only interested in the current social phenomenon of caste relations (and don’t really give two hoots about their textual origins, whether pure or impure, benevolent or malevolent), I’ll use the term jati instead.
friend jati,
which forum you originally write that piece for? I really got to get out of this sepia macacahole and broaden my horizons……….. please tell me!!
Sorry about being such a comment hog, I swear this is my last comment for the day. Let me just add a little coda to my previous comment.
That translates roughly to ‘beat with shoes the brahmin, baniya and kshatriya’. As I mentioned I am one of these castes, and caste tensions were simmering in UP when I was a kid, with the sudden rise of the lower castes. I remember once while cycling to school I passed a rally by Mayawati, and in my morbid imagination I thought they would all turn and start pelting shoes on me any moment.
Now Mayawati has made a political deal with the same communities she used to excoriate, and somehow it makes perfect sense to everyone. When it comes to India, you really never know. 🙂
There, just to add a positive note.
Are you kidding? HRW does lots of original research and I know many of their researchers on the ground. They do excellent and important documentation – not ALL of it based on field research, but a lot of it is. There’s no need to replicate what has already been reported in criminal cases, sometimes, so they use secondary documentation as any researcher would.
Why do so many people feel the need to blame HRW or missionaries or someone for a problem we all know is real? I’m getting the impression here that for a lot of people this is a narcissistic issue – it’s all about “what Americans will now think of us” and anxiously proving that “we’re not like that really” or “we’re still better than Americans”? An attitude like that is more about your own insecurity and less about caring about the motherland and wanting to make it a better place. There’s too little reasoned discussion and too much identity politicking, as if theoretical discussions of whether caste is rooted in scripture or not are going to make a difference to the suffering millions of people undergo as a result of it.
risible (#256):
Sorry, could you please elaborate?
Outside criticism is always going to create a kneejerk defensive reaction, so I say skip the HRW report. There are plenty of Indian reports about castediscrimination that points out exactly the samething as HRW does. As Kush says, it’s wrong to say that this is not discussed in India, it is.
The criticism of HRW on this thread is two prong. The first one is about the HRW being a proopaganda arm of the US Government/orientalism/ colonialist attitude etc. Of course no evidence has been presented and apart from the fact that HRW agenda is set by the Human Rights Lawyer types (people with fancy law degrees who could be making a lot of money who now work for a puny salary because they believe in Human Rights) there is not much substance to the criticism.
The second one (lack of investigative reporting) has more merit and has been put forward by Kush and others.
Kush: You are right about the level of ‘investigative reporting’ that HRW does. However, HRW is not a news magazine and as such dont invest the resources in investigative work that a news organization will do.
Though I usually dont rely upon personal anecdotes, I have one which is quite appropriate. Around a year and a half back, I got a call from the HRW peeps and they wanted to know whether I could get them in touch with immigrants who were detained and subsequently released without being charged in the aftermath of 9-11. They were ostensibly going to meet up with such people as they were doing a report on the treatment of immigrants. They also wanted to interview their lawyers, organizations who work for immigrant rights. That would certainly qualify for investigative work.
Now of course its easier to call up in the US than it is to call up a Marsh Arab attorney in Iraq and I understand that.
I’m coming late to the discussion, maybe it’s over now. Anyway, just wanted to make a few points. First, why do discussions of Indian-vs-US discriminatory practices have to involve binary choices? Don’t they both suck? As an ABCD I feel vested in both, it seems unproductive to say that one is better than another if we all need to work at eliminating both of them.
Also, w/r/t caste issues, I can’t remember the name of my caste in India (sorry, that’s part of the “C” in the ABCD) but I know that we were low-caste farmer types in Kerala until a couple of generations ago. My great-uncle, the person who brought my dad up – and the most admirable, hard-working, decent person I have ever known – was a mechanic, and, coincidentally, as black as the ace of spades. I have to say that I have never experienced any caste-based discrimination from other Indians, either in the linguistically/culturally mixed Indian community where I grew up in the US or in India, where I spent a couple of years in boarding school with girls from all over India and abroad. Also, aren’t the lines blurring at least a bit now? My cousins seem to be marrying outside of caste/religion lines pretty freely these days, mostly people that they meet in university or at work. This is not to say that the caste bar does not exist in terrible, horrible ways, just to hope that it is maybe more porous than it always appears.
Divya,
You haven’t the slightest idea who you are talking to, clearly.
Why do you keep trying to bait me? If your passive-aggressive method of debating is typical of those people you call “refined,” I’d far rather be what you call “trash.”
.
Forget about peace. Your shit may be refined but it still stinks.
AMFD writes: The criticism of HRW on this thread is two prong.
How about I add a third prong and make a fork…
When it comes to implementing change, there are many ways to go about it, the top two being:
The second is non-confrontational, non-patronising, non-threatening and results in change that lasts longer and spreads slowly and steadily.
It’s one thing to try to remove untouchability by doctoring reports, falsifying statistics, threatening sanctions etc etc. It’s another thing to try to remove untouchability around you by inviting people from all castes for social/religious functions, eating together, working together, watching cricket together etc etc.
The same approach holds good in all situations…
It’s one thing to try to reduce global warming by making documentaries, threatening oil/car companies, threatening sanctions etc etc. It’s another thing to try and reduce global warming by car-pooling, eating local produce, recycling, reducing garbage, conserving water at home, etc etc.
M. Nam
The bottom line after reading all the above seems to be that some of the upper-caste, India-raised people simply can’t stomach the reality and truth about India, especially as it pertains to caste (and in other threads the economy). They are in denial. Hence the attacks on HRW and the USA. We have here a lot of apologists for caste as well. In my view, there is nothing wrong if you view your caste as part of your heritage or your identity…even if you want to marry within it it’s fine…but don’t be blind to the thousands of ways in which caste is used to discriminate and marginalise so many people on a daily basis. I agree that caste will fade (or at least diminish) sunstantially in urban India in the coming generations.
The second thing has been happening for the past 50 years. Ever heard of the dravidian revolution, what do you think it was about?.Here is a hint, it was not about hindi. Ever heard of seerthirutha thirumanam(progressive marriages), samathuvapuram(the equality village), and lots of social gatherings were people from all walks go and have food in many places. Things have been happening at the grassroots level for a long time. So don’t tell that as if we need HRW to tell us. They can go and do a report on 600,000 iraqis who are dead and millions wounded and millions getting displaced as refugees. May be 1 does not know 2 is happening.
Hi Seperate (sic) Plate,
My casteless desi brotehr the times when i tell people my caste is only when someone makes an annoying comment on caste, trust me i don’t go telling everyone my caste (it changes the way people look at you, some pity you, some detest you, neither good). I assume you live somewhere in the states, I don’t know much about how caste plays in north America because i don’t really live here and from what i understand there are not many ‘non-caste’ people here. in India, if you are a businessman, you are made very very aware of your caste. I speak from a totally Indian-chamaar perspective. You won’t find many of the ‘non-castes’ speaking up because most of them are afraid to, most conceal it with their life and deny their heritage, besides there is not really any heritage to be proud of. We can’t ever claim any culture as ours because we were always kept out (sometimes with bells around our necks) we did not even count as a caste. So tell me, why should i not reject the hindu society that had deemed me not good enough for them? And please do not confuse my kind (dalit) with the government created ‘scheduled castes'(SCs) and ‘scheduled tribes'(STs). These people belonged to the lowest of the castes – the shudhras. My people on the other hand were not in the picture, we were the ‘others’ the outsiders, the non-castes. This my friend is the reason i don’t take pride in Indian history. I am optimistic about modern india, but i will not see any changes during my lifetime, it’ll take much more time than that.
Sepia mutiny is an American mouthpiece, with brown sprinkled on it, Caste does not really concern them and most readers of this blog, that is an Indian thing. Sometimes sepia talks about caste, thats when it gives people like me to share my barah anna. Even this thread is mostly about American values and American concerns. So yeah, you will not find much reference to caste here. And i doubt many dalits read this blog anyways. And also most online dalit presence is of militant dalits.
And don’t pass judgement on my peers and company, because they are more than most, and besides that is just a pointless personal attack on me. Your question about charity.. nope, i don’t, i never have and never will. but that is my personal politics ( i don’t like the way charities are run), that anyways doesn’t have anything to do with caste. Although i couldn’t help but notice that your reply was kind of sarcastic and cynical…. why, is it cause i is chamaar? (just yankin ya ;P )
Thanks to the rest of ya who appreciated my earlier comment, just hope you have a wider perspective now.
sorry.. the comment on top was a reply to sic semper tyrannis
Sakshi, Interesting comments @ 260. Did you get to witness Kashiram’s grassroots efforts as well? I remember reading an article in Illustrated Weekly (early-mid 80s). It was a great piece detailing Kashiram’s MO. It also accurately predicted KR’s rise to power (as in kingmaker), 10-15 years before the fact.
siddhartha,
I think you’re going overboard with Divya and getting quite vulgar at it. Please stop, immediately.
Okay then, let’s fight. A call to peace just meant something like let’s drop it now. It certainly did not mean let’s agree with each other or anything. That would be frightening to me.
This is a blog. You are what you write. I am responding to what you write and how you comment. Nothing more is required. If you’re trying to tell me you have a heart and a soul, that’s fine, but it is not particularly relevant.
I happen to be out and out aggressive. This is one example of how so-called intellectuals tend to use any old term that’s in fashion without knowing what it even means let alone considering the nuances. What’s passive about boldly declaring that one of the founders of this blog referred to himself as a brahmin while declaring in the same breath that it is of no import? What’s passive about accusing you of intellectual crudeness? What’s passive about venturing into your battlefield, among your friends and supporters and challenging you? You can call me many other things, but passive aggressive is not one of them.
In every discussion I have had with you, all you’ve done is come in to make some snide comment. There is absolutely nothing substantive you have been able to say. Perhaps you cannot, since that would mean venturing beyond your permissible safety zone and actually using some intellectual sophistication. Did you even notice the points I made in my last post? Do you realize they negate your stance a great deal? All you did was make three snarky comments in a row while accusing me of being passive-aggressive.
By the way, it is okay to have different standards of refinement and trash. That’s what an ideal society would consist in. That’s another nuance about Indian society you might want to look into before sanctimoniously pontificating on it.
And speaking of trash, no matter how divine a person or how much in the right, once you get into a fight, both sides sink into the same soul-darkening level of culpability. One of the lessons from all the great epics. So, in the interest of emerging from the trashheap I suggest peace, unless of course you have something substantive to say.
MoorNam
But all of these forms of activity are neeed, no? HRW reports arent going to change the world but they are important and helpful.
Separate plate #278,
Have you lived in India? If so, you wouldn’t say that those jatis that identify as Dalits are not in the list of Scheduled Castes(SCs). I am not familiar with the Chamars personally. But from the web, I find that they were historically leatherworkers in the Punjab and other parts of North India. If they are considered Dalits, then I would claim that they are in the list of Scheduled Castes (SCs). Can someone from the Punjab or the north confirm if that is so?
Seperate (sic) Plate,
“I assume you live somewhere in the states,” New England, my family is from Madras/Chennai and I go back now and then. I also keep in touch with my relatives who live there and they don’t feel that caste matters at all.
“So tell me, why should i not reject the hindu society that had deemed me not good enough for them?” You’re perfectly entitled to reject it. I was just curious why you’re not rejecting caste also.
“And don’t pass judgement on my peers and company, because they are more than most, and besides that is just a pointless personal attack on me.” I’m sorry but I do have to pass judgement on anyone who makes foul remarks about Dalits. People who are anti-Dalit are ignorant, even if you consider them your friends. It’s not a personal attack on you.
What’s passive about it is making a claim with no backing. That is about as passive as it can get. Why don’t you tell me exactly where I have been “intellectually crude” and why. You make all kinds of statements and accusations and you don’t affix them to anything. Forget about the other bloggers. Forget about the commenters. If you’re going to make accusations at me, have the courtesy to point to what I have said that invites those accusations.
Show me where I have sanctimoniously pontificated on Indian society. Go on, show me. And while you’re at it, show me where I have ever regarded Indians as “backward pieces of [excrement],” your original accusation that set the ball rolling on this conversation. Go ahead. Search far and wide through everything I’ve ever written here or anywhere else for that matter, and produce your evidence.
You are welcome to reply to me here or by emailing me personally off-thread.
@ Sic, Divya:
If you can dish it out, you have to be ready to take it. Accusations of intellectual dishonesty are worse than the mudslinging that sometimes happens here. I’d say there’s been remarkable restraint in the reaction to what Divya said.
I’m not particularly fond of Western mouthpieces, but attacking the credibility of the source to distract from the very valid problem at hand is more dirty/disingenuous. Now if someone brought a US report criticizing India on environmental grounds…..
It’s cuz she’s a girl.
I agree there has been remarkable restraint to what Divya has said, but it’s not because she’s a girl – it’s because people who are that far out caste-apologetic Ranvir Sena-rightwing don’t particularly want to debate the substantive issues, they’d rather just grind their favourite old axes and see conspiracy everywhere, and reasonable people don’t want to waste their time.
Pullo,
“If you can dish it out, you have to be ready to take it.” Hey, to paraphrase AMD chairman Jerry Sanders, “Never wrestle with pigs. You both get muddy and the pigs love it.” I’m a pig, so I’m loving it. Divya, however, seems like a decent, noble person, so it’s unfair to force her to stoop to our crass level.
Regarding intellectual dishonesty, hey, I’ve never claimed in the past that Siddartha was intellectually dishonest. Did I call his behavior excessive, yes. Divya also never claimed the Siddartha regarded Indians as sh**. That would be a metaphor. She used a simile (note the employment of the word “like”). Moreover, it was directed at SM not Siddartha particularly. Others have also commented on the increasing left-leanings of the site, so her remarks while passionate and excessive in their own right, were not off color.
For some balance to Smita Narula’s report, here’s a wiki page on Human rights in India in which the Govt. of India has criticized Smita Narula for her one-sidedness in reporting on the Godhra incident. To quote from the wikipage: “Although human rights problems do exist in India, the country is generally not regarded as a human rights concern, unlike other countries in South Asia” and that statement cites the U.S. Federal Research Division profile of India (which is what the CIA Factbook compilations are based on, I think).
How do you go from “left-leaning” to “treating Indians like they’re backwards pieces of shit”? Seems a false correlation to me.
Talhan seems to show that the Chamars are a powerful and well off community there and they and the Jatts, the other community there struggle for power in that village.
Dalits’ battle in a Punjab village
Chamars are listed as Scheduled castes. See below.
DATA HIGHLIGHTS : THE SCHEDULED CASTES Census of India 2001
HC verdict on quota: govt to move SC
‘Quota within quota can benefit more people among SCs’
Separate plate,
Given this, please explain what you were trying to say in #278, by denying that Chamars were not in the list of scheduled castes.
This site isn’t left leaning, or right leaning, it’s female leaning. Like take the Aishwarya marries a tree discussion. Who got all the attention? The women.
Separate plate,
Here is a List of Notified Scheduled Castes from the Census India site. What I would like to know is if the better off communities (jatis), would voluntarily give up the benefits of quota and reservations and ask to be taken off the list? No, it will not happen, not only among SCs but also among BCs, because every jati in India would like to be classified as backward so as to get quotas and reservations. So the numerically and politically dominant Jatts are classified as backward in many of these states. That is the nature of jati dynamics in India at present.
Kush, Thank you very much. Appreciation from you means a lot. You are absolutely right. Criticism of HRW in no way minimises the problem of jati/gender discrimination and violence in India. For those of us who work in our own little ways to make such discrimination a thing of the past, a report like HRW’s seems like a poke in the eye. Why for instance is there a sudden hush when we turn to Dr. Bindeshwari Pathak? Possibly the finest endorsement of its success has come out of an experiment begun recently in Alwar, Rajasthan. There Sulabh runs a training programme for women who were once scavengers. They are paid Rs.1500 per month as they learn to make and market ready-to-eat snacks. There has been effortless acceptance of their product. Now, go tell this story about India to the non-believers out there. A bemused Pathak observes: “Once their shadows were said to pollute. Now their hands make food. Once no one would eat with them. Now people eat what they make”.
OK No prizes for guessing. Which party has the most number of Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe Mps in the current Lok Sabha?
Did someone call Jagjivan Ram Booker T Washington and Kanshi Ram and Mulayam Singh Yadav Malcolm X? How incorrect can one get? Jagjivan Ram deliberately chose to work with Gandhi because of the way he saw jati discrimination – a problem that is lived out everyday-in rather than an idea that can be legislated out of existence. Babu Jagjivan Ram was moved by Gandhi’s honesty and directness and absolute lack of pretence. Gandhi believed that we cannot abolish discrimination unless we experience the problem ourselves, and unmake it with our own hands. In Gandhi’s view discrimination wasn’t simply a matter of jobs, and access to public spaces. It was a matter of dignity. Gandhi voiced all these thoughts in his own simple way by discussing them in the opne. That is what drew people to him. Jagjivan Ram was a very capable administrator and did a great job in two times over. First as irrigation minister he oversaw a crucial phase of India’s green revolution; and second as defence minister during the fateful days of 1971 delivered the coup de’grace to Pakistan. He got along famously with the senior most officers of the armed forces and is remembered as one of our best defence ministers ever. In contrast a famous OBC leader (who shall remain unnamed) unvelied Jagjivan Ram’s statue and promptly retired to his home for a ritual bath to cleanse himself! The politics of Kanshi Ram and Mayawati are not identity based and have in fact become very inclusive of late. Mayawati has been reaching out to all sections of society, last year she chaired a rally of brahmins in UP. The recent slogan is tilak tarazu aur talwar, jai jai karo inko char!
How many of you have supported Sulabh International or Udavum Karangal? I haven’t come across a single college chapter supporting either of these organisations. No 5-star musicians sponsored fund raisers, and no charity events at colleges.
No, I was way too young back then. Also Kashiram et al were initially overshadowed by the entire Ram Janmabhoomi episode in all of North India. Initially at least, mandir >> mandal. I think the 1992 UP state elections was when both Mulayam and Kashiram broke bigtime into Indian politics. So they have been around for only 15 years.
But the history of the South has been very different. There’s been upheaval for much longer.
My accusation in #___ was directed at SM in general. It is based on my subjective impression gathered over the past 6 months or so since I discovered this site. In #230 I elaborated on my earlier statement to indicate that it’s the holier-than-thou attitude that got to me. This claim was followed by an account of how the caste system has several survival mechanisms built into it that must mean that there is something positive about it. I offered a link to show what I mean. All of this was ignored by you.
Intellectual crudeness is the inability to discern nuances. Since any article on caste, invariably repeats the same stuff without delving into why it has endured over the centuries in spite of sincere attempts to get rid of it, it does not seem a very productive exercise to me to repeat the same old stuff. The catch, however, is that the minute anyone takes any stance on caste other than saying it is the most horrendous thing on the planet, they are hammered from all sides. It’s sort of like the Hitler thing. Therefore, I consider it sanctimonious pontificating – meaning that it is devoid of all meaning, does not move anything forward, and does not help anyone and in fact may be detrimental.
It is also sanctimonious because it is only people who have nothing to do with caste that talk about it. The ones who are in the thick of it cling to it for dear life. Basically, it is an example of the rich telling the poor how to live their lives without taking into consideration what those poor lives are all about.
Here’s an example of one group’s efforts to try and develop an alternate framework. For starters we need to understand what we’re up against.
“(a) Caste is an antiquated social system that arose in the dim past of India. If this is true, it has survived many challenges: the onslaught of Buddhism and the Bhakti movements; the Islamic and British colonization, Indian independence, world capitalism, and might even survive ‘globalizationÂ’. It follows, then, that the caste system is a very stable social organization.
(b) There exists no centralized authority to enforce the caste system across the length and breadth of India. In that case, it is an autonomous and de-centralized organization.
(c) All social and political regulations, whether by the British or by the Indians, have not been able to eradicate this system. If true, it means that the caste system is a self-reproducing social structure.
(d) Caste system exists among the Hindus, the Sikhs, the Jains, the Christians, the MuslimsÂ… It has also existed under different environments. This means that this system adapts itself to the environments it finds itself in.
(e) Because new castes have come and gone over the centuries, this system must also be dynamic.
(f) Because caste system is present in different political organizations and survives under different political regimes, it is also neutral with respect to political ideologies.”
Now imagine if any business had all of these qualities, in what a positive light it would be regarded. We need to look for the baby in the bathwater. We need to at least understand what caste is for starters.
You are being deceitful Gujjubhai. Thats not the ground reality of the casteism that is being attacked. You lie when you claim that hindus are judged for their guna and karma before being assigned their caste.
How can anyone avoid looking at the widespread, in-your-face human degradation and suffering in India? That you refuse to acknowledge its existence, and to even attack the motivations of those who do “see” the obvious, shows what selfish, blinkered, ostrich-like, callous, hate-filled characters you “India Shining” fake nationalists really are.
Pathetic. How the hell did you manage to conclude from that link that India is not obscenely corrupt?? Are the bureaucracies of Singapore, the scandinavian nations and dozens of others, as disgustingly corrupt and incompetent as the brahmin-dominated bureaucracy of India?
If you’re looking for an example of sanctimonious pontification, look no further than:
“This is one example of how so-called intellectuals tend to use any old term that’s in fashion without knowing what it even means let alone considering the nuances.” (Divya, #282)
And WTF is intellectual crudeness?
Subha’s comments are worth saving for posterity, principally for their immense comedic potential. Apart form that, can we keep this conversation reasonably rational (for examples see Kush, AMD, Shiva et al)?