Mostly we value the content only based on the person who delivers it and we don’t mind most of the anonymous messages. If it is not acceptable to our common sense we don’t even listen to it! But, I wonder about the level of influence it can have when it comes along with the name of God!
Even in this 21st century, we could able to witness some random messages saying “Forward this image to 11 people, it will get you good news in 24hrs” Yes, they do exist!
Do you believe, that whatever issues/crime that is happening in our society is just because of anonymous messages?
According to a report by Human Rights Watch:
Discriminatory and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of over 165 millionpeople in India has been justified on the basis of caste. Caste is descent-based and hereditary in nature. It is a characteristic determined by one’s birth into a particular caste, irrespective of the faith practiced by the individual. Caste denotes a traditional system of rigid social stratification into ranked groups defined by descent. Caste divisions in India dominate in housing, marriage, employment, and general social interaction-divisions that are reinforced through the practice and threat of social ostracism, economic boycotts, and physical violence.
In the very beginning, we all lived in communities and a certain group of people was doing some particular business and they started doing it for generations these skills transfer becomes like a family institution and these family got their family names. After a while, these family names became caste, and in a long run this caste-based discrimination grown naturally and gradually. This is the most insane story that most of us believe in!
If this is the case, this must-have happened in all the countries, right? Why only in India? No, where in the world we have this level of caste-based discrimination. The life of 165 million people is not a joke!
Every knowledge is acquirable, every skill is learnable, and every business is doable!
If caste is very specific to the business/knowledge/skill. One must have the freedom to choose their own caste right? Consider engineers and doctors are the modern castes of the 21st century, We all have the right to choose our own modern caste right? then why don’t we have the freedom to choose our actual caste out of our own interest?
By genetics, we have differences in color, physique, characters, and in some specific skills too… but how can we force someone to do something just because his/her ancestors were doing it?
People who belong to a specific caste were not allowed to enter school. They won’t get access to education. They must have dedicated their entire life serving people from an upper caste. An upper-caste person can do legal sexual abuse to a lower caste person and even killing them is not a serious crime. We can’t even able to imagine these things happening right? But it was the reality in India just before a century.
For centuries, people who belong to a certain caste were denied education, ill-treated, and defined as slaves. Here born the slavery!
The saddest part is very soon people got adopted this slavery culture and started worshiping the upper caste community. Even today if you travel to the interior parts of India you could able to find this slavery attitude among lower caste people. This is the seed for all social issues and crimes that we are witnessing today. Economical imbalance, social injustice, child labor, illiterate ratio, male dominance, sexual crime, and everything. Even in this 21st century if you take a look at all criminal cases, in most cases the victims always belong to a lower caste. That includes child sexual abuse too. Fundamentally, a certain group of people believes that they have superiority just because they born in a so-called upper-caste and a certain group of people believes that they are inferior just because they born in a particular caste. For centuries this slavery culture was a reality, they got transferred to generations and it influenced our genetics too..
Do you know who is the reason behind all these insane, inhuman, nonsense, issues? It’s anonymous!
The Rig Veda (10:90) says that the gods created it by sacrificing the primal Purusha. His mouth became the Brahmin, his arms, Kshatriyas, his thighs, Vaishyas, and his feet became Shudras. And outside the pale of the varna system were the Untouchables or Dalits.
Who said this? Who wrote this? God gave this book to whom? It’s all anonymous!
Just because it’s in the name of god people started believing it and got adapted to it. (This is not to criticize people who belong to a particular caste. But for sure some anonymous person belongs to a particular caste developed/added these inhuman mythologies and sold them in the name of God)
The people who refuse to accept this caste structure became Dalits. they traditionally regarded as untouchable. Only after the British invasion, these lower caste people got access to education in the schools started by the British. Dalits are a mixed population, consisting of numerous social groups from all over India; they speak a variety of languages and practice a multitude of religions. The Dalit population is more than 25 percent of India’s total population. only after many centuries of cruelty the Independent government of India recognizes and protects them as Scheduled Castes. The term Dalit has been interchangeably used with the term Scheduled Castes, and these terms include all historically discriminated communities of India out-caste and Untouchables. While discrimination based on caste has been prohibited and untouchability abolished under the Constitution of India, discrimination and prejudice against Dalits in South Asia remains. Since its independence in 1947, India has implemented an affirmative policy of reservation, the scope of which was further expanded in 1974, to set aside and provide jobs and education opportunities to Dalits. Many social organizations too have proactively promoted better conditions for Dalits through improved education, health, and employment.
These Dalit peoples having the privilege of reservation for only a few decades but the faced untouchability for many centuries!
Ambedkar concluded that Dalits must leave Hinduism and convert to another religion, and announced his intent to leave Hinduism in 1935. He considered Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, and Buddhism.
After publishing a series of books and articles, he chose Buddhism for the untouchables to gain equality, Ambedkar publicly converted on 14 October 1956, at Deekshabhoomi, Nagpur, over 20 years after he declared his intent to convert. Around 380,000 of his followers converted to Buddhism at the same ceremony. On this occasion, many upper-caste Hindus too accepted Buddhism. After Nagpur, on 16 October 1956, Ambedkar again gave Buddhism to more than 300,000 of his followers at Chandrapur. After which people started moving to Buddhism in huge numbers.
We are struggling for many decades just to remove all the influences it made in our society. But couldn’t able to remove it completely. Could you able to believe that a particular caste that holds around 5% of the country’s population has 70% of arts graduates, 76% of Law graduates, 71% of engineering graduates, and 76% of teaching professionals. before a few decades, this was the reality.
We all know that in ancient Indian culture there was no structured religion but there were cults. If you look back into history Tamil yogis (siththargal) opposed Vedic culture. Starts from Thiruvalluvar to Mahavir, Gowthama buddha, Vallalar, and Dr. Ambedkar, Periyar, everyone opposed this Vedic culture. Just because it’s against basic humanity. Then how this caste culture influenced our society in this brutal way. Just in the name of culture, ritual, and tradition.
I am asking myself, what is the purpose of doing something in the name of culture/ritual/tradition or whatever if it doesn’t make sense to my common sense?
Why should I safeguard my culture? while culture is something that essentially needs evolution. (In Tamil we have a beautiful word for culture which is “Panpaadu” which means “Pan pattu konde irupathu” (something that keeps evolving in a better way))
If I don’t know the purpose, what is the use of daily rituals?
Why should I follow the custom belief or way of doing something that has continued from the past, even it doesn’t make sense!
I have no choice in choosing my Mother tongue, Nationality, Community, Caste, etc., If something is not of my own choice and effort. In what way it will add value to myself?
If I do not have the freedom to choose my own belief system, what is the purpose of freedom itself?
We are living in a time where we normalized sex chats and abusive jokes. but we always use to avoid topics on religions and politics. We need to understand that religion and politics are the fundamental elements of our whole life, society, and socio-economical structure.
Most of us use to say that I don’t want to poke my nose into these creepy religions and politics. We need to understand that we are all already in it. Can you imagine a world without Law and order? Religion served as the basis of law. British law is based on the Bible. Islamic law is based on Quran. Even Indian Law is majorly based on British law, again which is based on Bible. Ultimately it all drill-downs into a belief system.
