Today is Bharat Bandh…. at least Mumbai Bandh. The road outside my house is deserted. All the building kids are out playing football. There isn’t a rick to be seen. Buses are few & far between …. And, I have nothing better to do than catch up on reading.

Amongst the old headlines that I read, in my poor inflated google reader, was one that struck me as being the panacea to all problems. It was, of course, my favorite body – the Khap Panchayat – coming out with another gem. They advocate the lowering of marriage age – from 18 to 15 for girls – to prevent elopement and therefore honour killings!

Om Prakash Mann, Haryana president of All India Jat Mahasabha, said.

“By lowering the legal age of marriage, young couples can be prevented from eloping. A girl brings shame to her family when she runs away. Parents kill the guilty children in a fit of rage,” he said.

My first response was WTF, and my second was ‘what a brilliant idea’ – if we take this kind of thinking to its logical end, think of all the social problems that we can solve. I have jotted down a few, please feel free to add your thoughts to this

  • Rape – Men Rape. If men are castrated (chemically, we don’t want to cause the poor dears any pain) they can’t rape. So castrating all men – whether or not they are potential rapists will prevent rape.
  • Widow remarriage is against our custom. If we didn’t get married, we won’t get widowed/widowered … abolishing marriage, therefore, will prevent widows. and therefore prevent the socially delicate problem of widow remarriage.
  • Female Foeticide - If men are castrated, and marriage is banned, then there can be no children and therefore no female foeticide
  • Dowry – if there are no girls there should be no dowry. But, to be on the safe side, let’s ban all goods and services. And, while we are at it – let’s ban money.
  • Pollution – Industries cause pollution. Get rid of industries then most pollution will disappear.  Also, since industries produce goods, and people ask for goods as dowry – banning industry will also stop dowry …

finally, even if there are only one boy and one girl from the Jat community renaming after all our strictures are followed, we will still oppose intercaste marriage — because it is against our culture :)

And finally, to all my friends who were embarrassed by the Maulvi’s and their idiot fatwas, don’t worry  the Hindus have caught up :)

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Two very different instances of religious/caste patriarchs intervening in civil society have come to the fore in the last couple of days. Both are Anti Constitutional. And, its about time the Government and the System said religious oppression in the name of Religious freedom be damned – the Constitution comes first.

The first instance was the Khap Panchayats that has been flexing its muscles for quite some time – excommunicating and killing without consequences. They have got Navin Jindal to tow the line now.

Mr. Jindal has said

“I and my whole family respect the years old traditions and rituals of khap panchayats. My house is their own home and they can come there any time. I am just like their own child and I can never go against them; rather I always need their blessings.”

Navin Jindal, if you remember, is the man who went all the way to the Supreme Court for the right of Indian Citizens to fly the Indian Flag, and won .

Mr.Jindal has forgotten that the Indian flag represents the Indian Republic. And, the Indian Republic is enshrined by the Indian Constitution . The Indian Constitution states:

14. The State shall not deny to any person equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws within the territory of India.
15. (1) The State shall not discriminate against any citizen on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them.

If the Khap Panchayat had its way – it is not just same gotra marriages that will be nullified, but there will be penalties to anyone who breaks caste rules . And, as all of us know, these rules – if applied to their logical conclusion – will lead to the Hindus getting their equivalent of the Taliban.

I wonder if a Member of Parliament who is so ready to violate the Constitution has the right to be in Parliament !

The second instance of the Constitution being violated, is the Deobandi’s – who have declared that it is haram for women to work

“It is unlawful (under the Sharia law) for Muslim women to work in the government or private sector where men and women work together and women have to talk with men frankly and without a veil,”

If the fatwa is followed through to its logical conclusion, it would mean that Indian citizens who are Muslim women cannot be the President, Prime Minister, Member of Parliament. They can’t work in a Hospital, a Call Centre, a Hotel. They can’t teach in a co-educational school, they cannot work for a NGO, they can’t work as engineers…. This essentially means that women are barred from most professions except sweat shops where they can sit with other women and sew stuff at cut price rate.

In both cases a bunch of patriarchs want the world to bend to their interpretation of religion, and honour …. I hope that in both cases this is the straw that breaks the back of an communities that have kept quiet — and rise up to delegitimise both the Khap Panchayats and the Deobandi’s. The best way to destroy them is to stop listening to them !!

And finally – i hope everyone remembers that the reason Krishna wasn’t invited to Rukmini’s swayamwar was because he was a Yadav and she was a Kshyatriya princess.

Let us also remember that the Prophet Muhammad’s first wife was Khadijah bint Khuwaylid – a merchant who employed him.

Those who have proclaimed themselves as guardians of religion and tradition seem to have forgotten their own religion and tradition :(

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Sometimes, the mind is a dangerous place to get lost in.it is a place where time & space are elastic and past, present and future co-exist without any issue.And it is even more scary when that manifests itself as an almost lifelike, real event.

Amma had a nightmare a few days ago. She, appa and her kids (all 3 of us) are hauled up before a caste court, which wants to annul my parents marriage. Her father and brother (both are no more) are part of the nightmare – and speak for the caste panchayat against my parents and us. My parents and the 3 of us are in current avtaars – current age etal. My grandfather is from 30 years ago (when he died) and my uncle from a decade ago. The caste panchayat – in her nightmare – wants to try us as a family and pass judgement on our caste transgressions. My mother was shaking and visibly upset when she told us the nightmare.

When my parents got married – 1965 – they broke caste rules. They belonged to the same gotra - and they decided to get married. This according to caste rules is a strict no no. The mildest punishment was excommunication – essentially being made outcaste – and the most stringent punishment is death for the offending couple.

Thankfully, both my parents came from enlightened families. My maternal grandfather (my dada had passed away 3 years earlier), and my father’s elder brother – stood by the couple and ensured their marriage went off without a hitch. A large chunk of the family boycotted the wedding – because it wasn’t the kind of thing that was done. But, given the minor scandal that it caused – my folks got their marriage registered – because, technically – at least according to orthodoxy – the marriage was not valid !

44 years later, my mother wakes up to a nightmare that her family was going to be hurt because she broke caste rules.

Everytime there is a news report on couples getting burnt for breaking caste laws – my mother goes quiet. It never bothered her earlier – but then, she wasn’t an avid news viewer then. But for the last 5 years or so, she has been getting affected by this. One morning, about 5 years ago, i woke up and went to the kitchen to pour myself a cup of coffee – mom was talking to dad about a couple who got burnt alive in Haryana for getting married within the gotra - mom was telling dad ‘it could have been us’.

I wonder about caste at times. I wonder about its hold on people, despite its call to murder and burn alive people – because they broke some rules that lost relevance 3 millennia ago. I am curious about the kind of people who defend caste – saying it is part of our cultural heritage. I am fascinated by the power that caste bodies – panchayats – wield that gets a woman approaching 70, to have nightmares 44 years after she and the man of her choice broke the rules !

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…if people like ‘us’  (as in the elite – definitely not me ) commit a crime – even a heinous one, is it not a crime? Does coming from a certain ‘background’ absolve you of guilt ?

So why this outpouring of grief over Kobad Ghandy and Roman Polanski.

Mr.Ghandy is the member one of the leading lights of an organization that has been unleashing bloody terror in parts of  India. While one accepts that conditions in these areas are terrible, and development has not trickled down and feudalism persists, the Naxals are adding to the misery of the local populations. They are virtually holding people in areas controlled by them hostage in their squalor, extorting, murdering and terrorizing local populations.

Mr.Polanski – how does one put this nicely ? – raped and sodomized a 13 year old after drugging her.

What has been strange in both cases has been the outpouring of sympathy. I wonder why we aren’t equally ‘sympathetic’ towards
Chhatradhar Mahato. or even towards Gary Glitter . Afterall, they are in the same space of activity.

I wonder whether leading publications will publish articles on the Mr Francis Induwar I knew ?

IT reminds of something my driver told me just after 26/11 – when all those candlelight marches were happening around the Taj – He aasked “VT mein candle nahin jala raha koi”?.

Sometimes I wonder if we are some other universes’ hell. Or at least their lunatic asylum .

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This morning I was in class teaching Media Studies. We were looking at different aspects of media — especially the ‘filtering aspect’. Dennis McQuail - media theorist – defines this as

…selecting out parts of experience for special attention and closing off other aspects of experience, whether deliberately and systematically or not…

And, then i got down to explain the nature of filters. For example, the ToI does not really believe in publishing news that will impact the self image of Indians on the front page. Senior members of the news industry have told me and all of us – go to any media event like FICCI Frames – that Indians don’t like watching news on Caste murders, political maneuvers and minority harassment. It does not jell well with this notion of India – the seat of tolerance, the seat of equality, the seat of culture, the seat of living in harmony. And, anything that takes away from this image is unappealing. So, Muslims or Christains attacking Hindus will make frontpage or lead story, where as the reverse will be tucked away. An Indian taking over a firang company will make front page news, and a firang taking over an Indian company will not. The Oscars or Brangelina will make front page news, but regional films that win a National Award or Caste murders will not.

The example that I used was of Priyanka Bhotmange – the 12th standard girl who wanted to grow up to be someone and join the army.. she and her mother were gangraped and murdered. And her brothers were brutalised and hung. It was just another murder that could happen anywhere in the country. Somehow filtering the gory and gruesome pictures off the front pages (or even the inside pages) helped to sanitize the crime. It also seemed to make us care less. If more people saw the pictures, then maybe the outrage would have been more.

The MSM didn’t even pick up the news, until it got too big to be buried. A couple of days after the verdict that denied the existence of caste in the murder of the family .. the story is as dead as the protagonists. No one – including the judiciary – wants to admit that maybe, just maybe – caste played an issue. We will rest content knowing a family was massacred and ‘justice’ may have been done. And we move on.

And, then one of the girls piped up and asked – why is the media quiet on Orissa ? And, the answer is the same. The bulk of the population are like ostriches – we don’t want to believe that ‘our’ people will kill, burn, rape and loot. Other people do it. Not us.

There could be another reason. And that is media bias. It is that news agencies are so infiltrated by Hindutva supporters that they spike the news that is unfavourable to the cause. Either that, or they are being run by morons.

I have suggested that my students go beyond the ToI and news channels for news – and look at other sources as well. And, while the whole truth may not be represented in the MSM, it is the start point to understanding any story. Read the Indian Express, Read the Hindu, read Tehelka, Read CounterCurrents, Read Atrocity News. Read what ever you can lay your hands on. All of them will contain biases – that is natural, the only unbiased person is a dead one! The truth will lie somewhere in the middle. What else could i tell them?

do check out Shivam Vij’s blog – he broke the Khairlanji story – and has stayed with it since.
Read the Tehelka coverage on Orissa.

And, Finally on Orissa –
if you are Hindu and reading this – maybe you would contemplate sending a message to the RSS and its allies. And, that is “This is not happening in my name. As a Hindu, I oppose this violence and hatred”. Just look at countries like Iran . Ordinary people didnt’ stand up against religious fundamentalism and look at the result. I hope and pray that India doesn’t become like that!

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Nita has a good post here that looks at Mayawati and Obama, there is an interesting discussion that is also taking place. I began putting my two bits in and it just got so long that i decided to blog about it (thanks Nita, it has been a long time since i posted anything that i thought too much about :)

When we look at Obama, we need to look at him beyond his colour and see him for what he is – the child of two post graduate students, who has seen the world – not as immigrant labor or an army brat — but as part of the academic intelligentsia. His father was from Kenya – and the elite there, foreign education is not for the truly down trodden. His mother was an anthropologist and development worker. That is his background — and his value systems have possibly been shaped by that. If the US was not such a colour conscious country – they would look beyond the colour and see him as another one of the ‘upper class’ elite. If he was typically African American – he wouldn’t have got this far :) . If he was typically white working class – he wouldn’t have got this far either :)

Contrast that with Mayawati. She is the second generation to gain from reservations. Her father was a government clerk. Her origins have more in common with the mainstay of the BJP vote bank. She was the protege to Kanshi Ram – possibly one of the most charismatic leaders of India post independence. In a way she is also part of the political elite. which is why she has got this far ….. the question is whether she will go further. Will she become Prime Minister ?

For me, caste and gender are not the only defining factor here. You possibly also need to look at region. She is a UP leader. If you want to be more charitable – she is a North Indian leader. Talk to the electorate in Maharashtra (even the ‘dalit vote bank’)- and she doesn’t have too many takers, talk to them in TN – they possibly would not even have heard of her. Talk to the in West Bengal – and she possibly does not even feature in the top 20. The problem with Mayawati is not that she is woman or Dalit or autocratic or corrupt. She faces the same problem that Sharad Pawar and MGR had, that Mulayam and Lallu have — they are regional heroes. Unless Mayawati positions her party and herself beyond where there are now — she will not be the PM. It has nothing to do with being either Dalit or Woman.

The Dalits in India are as diverse as any other community – in terms of language, culture, rituals, gods, heroes and even voting patterns. Pan Dalit identity is as difficult as a Pan Hindu or a Pan Muslim or a Pan Christian or even a Pan Indian identity. Unless Mayawati or anyone else overcomes their regional & caste persona and project a national persona – it is going to be difficult to be even a pan Indian Dalit leader . And, i am not sure that she should be positioning her self that way. If she has to succeed then she has to be a pan Indian leader and the BSP has to be a pan Indian party.

It is difficult in India to have an Obama or even a Clinton or a McCain. Our system is different. Our nation is different. We may follow the same broad principals – but our cultural variations make it impossible to project the one ……

btw – when all commentators talk about where is our Obama, he happened 70 years ago … despite the variations in culture, and the complete stranglehold of caste ……he was called Dr.Babasaheb Ambedkar…..:)

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Dr.B.R.Ambedkar in the Annihilation of Caste, 1935

The effect of caste on the ethics of the Hindus is simply deplorable. Caste has killed public spirit. Caste has destroyed the sense of public charity. Caste has made public opinion impossible. A Hindu's public is his caste. His responsibility is only to his caste. His loyalty is restricted only to his caste. Virtue has become caste-ridden and morality has become, caste-bound. There is no sympathy to the deserving. There is no appreciation of the meritorious. There is no charity to the needy. Suffering as such calls for no response. There is charity but it begins with the caste and ends with the caste. There is sympathy but not for men of other caste. 

The Indian Express, today :

In a chilling reminder of caste divisions that still run deep in rural Uttar Pradesh, an upper caste youth, pursuing a masters in social studies, has been arrested by the Mathura police for allegedly hurling a six-year-old Dalit girl into a pit of burning waste after she “trespassed into a Thakur area of Tarauli village. The child, Kamlesh, who sustained 50 per cent burns on Tuesday evening, is being treated at the Swarn Jayanti Samudaik Hospital in Mathura. Sunny Thakur, who is said to be in his early 20s and is the son of Ashok Thakur, has been charged under IPC Section 307 (attempt to murder) and under the SC/ST Act. He has been put behind bars.

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Dr.Ambedkar in Annihilation of Caste:

It is a pity that Caste even today has its defenders. The defences are many. It is defended on the ground that the Caste System is but another name for division of labour and if division of labour is a necessary feature of every civilized society then it is argued that there is nothing wrong in the Caste System. Now the first thing is to be urged against this view is that Caste System is not merely division of labour. It is also a division of labourers.

Civilized society undoubtedly needs division of labour. But in no civilized society is division of labour accompanied by this unnatural division of labourers into watertight compartments. Caste System is not merely a division of labourers which is quite different from division of labour—it is an hierarchy in which the divisions of labourers are graded one above the other. In no other country is the division of labour accompanied by this gradation of labourers. There is also a third point of criticism against this view of the Caste System. This division of labour is not spontaneous; it is not based on natural aptitudes. Social and individual efficiency requires us to develop the capacity of an individual to the point of competency to choose and to make his own career. This principle is violated in the Caste System in so far as it involves an attempt to appoint tasks to individuals in advance, selected not on the basis of trained original capacities, but on that of the social status of the parents. Looked at from another point of view this stratification of occupations which is the result of the Caste System is positively pernicious. Industry is never static. It undergoes rapid and abrupt changes. With such changes an individual must be free to change his occupation. Without such freedom to adjust himself to changing circumstances it would be impossible for him to gain his livelihood

 i wonder if the division of laborers, over the centuries is what led to so many conquests…. i also wonder whether it was this division of labour that led to a dark ages where there was no social, scientific or technical progress. 

I often wondered how 3% of the population was able to the bulk of the population subjugated for so long. Why was there never a revolution. The answer was quite simple, they didn't have to do too much. The zillion odd castes kept each other in check and ensured that the system thrived at the expense of everything else.

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On the eve of Maha Shivratri a great victory was won. Devotees, backed by the state and other institutions, ensured that the right to pray the way you want to, in the language that you understand, in the manner that you choose , was upheld

In the face of a growing demand for their dismissal as the priests of Lord Nataraj temple in Chidambaram, who assaulted non-Brahmin devotees for wanting to sing Tamil hymns inside the temple, the Brahmin priests ~ Dikshits ~ today agreed to allow worship in Tamil.
The Dikshits, who control the administration of the temple, relented after political parties, Leftist and Tamil nationalist groups threatened to agitate and make demands for a government takeover of the temple administration.
The Dikshits, who assaulted some devotees led by non-Brahmin priest Arumugasamy Odhuvar heading a Saivaite Mutt when they had come to sing Tamil hymns composed by revered saints of Hindu renaissance on Sunday, seemed much mellow today and welcomed volunteers of a few Leftist organisations who entered the temple for the same purpose.

And, this is 2008. Devotees still face the kind of threat that Tulsidas faced when he rewrote the Ramayan in Brij Bhasa and Jyaneshwar translated the Bhagwad Gita into Marathi … thereby making them accessible to all. People of all types arent' allowed to enter places of worship. some prevent women. others prevent 'other' castes – whatever they maybe. Which is why last night's reading was so much more poignant.

This is Dr.Ambedkar on the role of social status in our society.

That economic power is the only kind of power no student of human society can accept. That the social status of an individual by itself often becomes a source of power and authority is made clear by the sway which the Mahatmos have held over the common man. Why do millionaires in India obey penniless Sadhus and Fakirs ? Why do millions of paupers in India sell their trifling trinkets which constitute their only wealth and go to Benares and Mecca ? That, religion is the source of power is illustrated by the history of India where the priest holds a sway over the common man often greater than the magistrate and where everything, even such things as strikes and elections, so easily take a religious turn and can so easily be given a religious twist.

Take the case of the Plebians of Rome as a further illustration of the power of religion over man. It throws great light on this point. The Plebs had fought for a share in the supreme executive under the Roman Republic and had secured the appointment of a Plebian Consul elected by a separate electorate constituted by the Commitia Centuriata, which was an assembly of Piebians. They wanted a Consul of their own because they felt that the Patrician Consuls used to discriminate against the Plebians in carrying on the administration. They had apparently obtained a great gain because under the Republican Constitution of Rome one Consul had the power of vetoing an act of the other Consul.

But did they in fact gain anything ? The answer to this question must be in the negative. The Plebians never could get a Plebian Consul who could be said to be a strong man and who could act independently of the Patrician Consul. In the ordinary course of things the Plebians should have got a strong Plebian Consul in view of the fact that his election was to be by a separate electorate of Plebians. The question is why did they fail in getting a strong Plebian to officiate as their Consul?

The answer to this question reveals the dominion which religion exercises over the minds of men. It was an accepted creed of the whole Roman populus that no official could enter upon the duties of his office unless the Oracle of Delphi declared that he was acceptable to the Goddess. The priests who were in charge of the temple of the Goddess of Delphi were all Patricians. Whenever therefore the Plebians elected a Consul who was known to be a strong party man opposed to the Patricians or " communal " to use the term that is current in India, the Oracle invariably declared that he was not acceptable to the Goddess. This is how the Plebians were cheated out of their rights.

But what is worthy of note is that the Plebians permitted themselves to be thus cheated because they too like the Patricians, held firmly the belief that the approval of the Goddess was a condition precedent to the taking charge by an official of his duties and that election by the people was not enough. If the Plebians had contended that election was enough and that the approval by the Goddess was not necessary they would have derived the fullest benefit from the political right which they had obtained. But they did not. They agreed to elect another, less suitable to themselves but more suitable to the Goddess which in fact meant more amenable to the Patricians. Rather than give up religion, the Plebians give up material gain for which they had fought so hard. Does this not show that religion can be a source of power as great as money if not greater ?

The fallacy of the Socialists lies in supposing that because in the present stage of European Society property as a source of power is predominant, that the same is true of India or that the same was true of Europe in the past. Religion, social status and property are all sources of power and authority, which one man has, to control the liberty of another. One is predominant at one stage; the other is predominant at another stage. That is the only difference. If liberty is the ideal, if liberty means the destruction of the dominion which one man holds over another then obviously it cannot be insisted upon that economic reform must be the one kind of reform worthy of pursuit. If the source of power and dominion is at any given time or in any given society social and religious then social reform and religious reform must be accepted as the necessary sort of reform.

 When the religious right in circa 2008 stands up and says 'this reform is against our religious traditions, ' what they are doing is following an age old tradition of dogma. They have opposed every major social reform movement – whether it was ending caste discrimination, or rights for women, or rights for various types of minorities not sanctioned by their dogma (religious, sexual, left handers, race … what ever) . It is no different now, than it was 80 years ago… except that it is citizens pushing for our rights … where are the leaders ? 

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I am currently re readingDr.Babasaheb Ambedkar's Annihilation of Caste - It is a thin little well thumbed, book – actually a speech that is published in a book form. It

This is a book that every Indian ought to read…I read this almost a lifetime ago as part of what ever i was doing at that time. Read it fast, converted into data, precised it and forgot about it. This time around, I am going to savour it… and while doing so am going to post excerpts

As i read through it – some 20 years after I first read it – i keep nodding my head in agreement. Smiling at the humour. chuckling, when things don't seem too much different now than they were almost 70 years ago (two opposing factions. One threatened to burn the other's pandal if they held a political rally)…cringing when things don't seem too much more different now than when they were then (discrimination). And of course his wry comments…

The path of social reform like the path to heaven at any rate in India, is strewn with many difficulties. Social reform in India has few friends and many critics. The critics fall into two distinct classes. One class consists of political reformers and the other of the socialists.

I can't seem to find any copies in bookshops. But, it is online here and here 

It gives an insight into what ailed us, and what continues to ail us … caste …and more importantly deep rooted programming on caste lines. 

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