My Last Chappu

Ref AAmir #: 78

[A SECOND-year MBBS student of Grant Medical College was found dead last night in his room at Apna Boys Hostel in the J J Hospital premises.]

Now, headshrinker, why couldn`t you have followed this student`s example?

[Another student said Vijay had problems and was seeing a psychiatrist.]

So much for that branch of quackery!

well, case of - Alls Well That Ends Well or Much ToDo About Nothing ??!! Bit of both i guess.

And on htat note - a very happy long weekend (much much deserved reprieve) to all.

aicha

RSaxena

re: #70

I agree that Asians and South Asians suffer the consequences of ``model minority`` quotas. Your point that usually applicants in the U.S. can look elsewhere if the designer university of choice is booked up is well taken.

Affirmative action is received with such ambivalence in the U.S..Didn`t Florida recently follow Georgia`s lead in striking down Affirmative Action?

I finished reading a book called Multicultural Citizenship in which the author Will Kymlicka argued that there should specific special provisions given to groups that are indigeneous to North America or who were brought as slaves. His argument is that they have suffered unparralleled systemic discrimination on all fronts of culture, economics, land ownership, political engagement, etc. In fact, he suggests that certain areas of land be given over to Native American and African American populations and that programs that would specifically aid in the re-development of these groups are a moral responsibility of the North American govt.

Kymlicka makes a distinction between these communities and immigrants who have moved to North America voluntarily. (Exiles are a separate and special case). According to Kymlicka, immigrants, first and second generation ethnic Americans can use race situationally to their advantage, (i.e.affirmative action) but to be fair, aa is really meant for colonized and enslaved peoples.

Could these ideas be applied elsewhere?

regards!

Admission criteria are supposed to be predictors of success at a particular academic or professional level. The whole debate about affirmative action goes out the window when folks who ostensibly owe their presence to affirmative action do as well if not better than the regular joes in the so-called tough disciplines. If that is not the case then the only downside is that entrance seats that may have been taken up by more `suitable` candidates went abegging. A small price to pay for some retribution for the sins of the forefathers......

There is a roaring debate about considering the SAT as a criterion for admission into schools. Many major schoold have either dropped the requirement or made it optional. SAT scores except for the first semester or two have no correlation with ones performance in school. Actually there are many who argue that the quantitive personality types running corporate America today that have been spawned by the `meritocratic` American education system has made American business so devoid of the human and `touch feely` dimension that it has reduced managers to largely being spreadsheet fiddlers. Hence the ample availabilty of `visionaries` like Scott McNeely,John Chambers and Carly Fiorina.

If schools or other state institutions are using ones caste or color of skin in decision-making and these candidates are doing well(passing exams,earning professional affiliations etc.) then what`s the harm? The larger benefits of social integration can be argued for to allow the Shankars of the world to deal with their miseries elsewhere. What will Shankar be complaining about next? His ever increasing bald patch and bad breath? Welcome to the luck of the draw buddy boy.

later

-sac

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts

dost-mittar #71:

I dont know whether your misspelling of Margolis into Margolas was deliberate but it was perfect. Now that I think about it, Mar-golis is perfect as is as in ``Yaar, yeh bahut Goli maarta hai``.

gowardhan #75:

Well said.

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts

rsridhan, dost-mittar

As a matter of fact, Eric Margolis is a fool who hates India as much as hobbyty. That is why the ``prestigious`` Dawn loves him. Still, we have a big caste problem. So even if it is a fool like him talking about it, I dont mind. I just dont read what he writes. I say - caste? Thanks for telling me. I know the problem better than you do. There is nothing hidden about it. In fact, caste is all Westerners know about India. For them that is the beginning and end of Hinduism even if Hindus themselves renounce it. We cant cure such people and we shouldnt even try. We should cure ourselves.

Romair,

Thats exactly my point! In my medical school class, I`m estimating that many of the guys who got in these reserved seats never really ``suffered`` the discrimination that the seats were reserved for! The ones who truly suffer are lucky if they graduate high school! Now those are the guys I feel badly for.

Sunil, for eg, was never ever personally discriminated in his life. And, I suspect that he`s not that much of an exception in this system. Its wide open for abuse.

Veeresh:

You tell NRIs not to pass judgement about India. In that vein, what gives you the right to talk about America? What are your credentials? Interactions with Merchant Navy Americans? How long have you lived in the US? Can you match your US experience with the Indian experience that many NRIs have: 20 to 30 years of life in India plus annual visits home to India to meet our friends and family.

And yes, I have plenty Indian friends who have had high positions in corporate America and golf memberships in prestigious clubs. Are there private clubs that discriminate in the US - sure there are. But governmental discrimination is on the decline and US is very self aware of that problem. I hang out a lot with Indians in the US - is that racism? Not at all, it is just hanging out with people who have had similar experiences in life. Most first generation Indians, as opposed to immigrants, are a lot better integrated.

Re:Reply #: 68

Karakoram

I do not know who this guy Eric S. Margolis is. Yes, most of what he said in the article is true. However, he made it sound like the discrimination is deliberately practised as a state policy and GOI is looking the other way. This is far from the truth. The caste system is so well-entrenched that it will take many centuries to dismantle it, that is if an effort is made. No such effort is being made. The British did not want to rock the boat, so they left caste system alone. Those who benifit from the caste system are happy if it continues. But GOI and many state govts have done their utmost to see that lower castes are not neglected. The benefits are there to see in some states like Tamil Nadu, Kerala. Bihar is burning today since the lower castes have woken up and are retaliating. In old days, they took all the SHXT and so there was no problem.

If Margolis is an American, he should know better. The native American Indian is the Dalit of USA. What did the white American invaders do with their Dalits? They just killed them, so that few are left today. Now, these American Dalits live in reservations, preserved like you preserve some endangered species.

What did India do to its Dalits? Who were these Dalits in the first place? When Aryans invaded India (no one really knows where they came from; many scholars even repudiate the Aryan Invasion Theory and say they never came from outside), they found stiff resistance from the original inhabitants. In a fight that ensued (often highly eugolised by various writers in the past as a fight between good and evil)these original inhabitants (Dravidians)were pushed into forest while Aryans built great township for themselves. Those Dravidians who were conquered were not killed but given menial jobs befitting P.O.Ws. Remember we are talking about what happened more than 5000 years ago (even the exact date when Aryans invaded, if at all, is not known)when concept of human rights did not exist. While White Americans conveniently killed most of the native Americans and usurped their land and completely destroyed their culture and native civilisation (so much so that the remaining natives today can talk only in English, the only language they know), early settlers in India gave Dravidians a position in society, albeit low in the social ladder. These original inhabitants are today`s Dalits. Their culture is still intact. They have survived many centuries of oppression. Their time for emancipation has come now. But coming back to the original question, where are the native Americans? Only yesterday, i was reading about genocide in Rwanda in a monthly magazine called ``The Atlantic``.It talks about how USA govt knew about the genocide beforehand but did nothing to stop it. Millions died in the carnage between 2 rival tribes. America`s hands are not clean. Those who preach must also practice what they preach.

Sridhar

In an ironic instance of affirmative action at work in the US, it now appears that it is hurting some minorities while helping others. Rumors have it that being Indian or Chinese puts one at a distinct disadvantage when applying to the top graduate programs in the country. The schools will not admit this openly but it`s true.

Apparently, the order of preferred races is: blacks/native americans, hispanics, whites, followed by Indians/Chinese. Go figure. I knew this was coming when every TA I had as an undergraduate smelled either of garlic & soy sauce or garam masala.

Unlike Shrinker, I am not complaning, just pointing out the irony. Affirmative action helps those who need it more than it hurts everyone else. It is not perfect. The problem in India is that the pie isn`t big enough to begin with -- so any miniscule shift in its distribution is amplified and affects a lot of people`s lives. In the US, if someone gets squeezed out of Harvard b.c. of this, there is Yale, Princeton, Cornell, etc. etc. In India, there is often only one Harvard (figuratively speaking).

An article that looks simple, but seems to have started some heated debates, on the issues of affirmative action.

In my opinion, affirmative action is a must in every society. It has to exist. However, it should be defined correctly, and be totally based on opportunities allocated to individuals. In the USA, it is incorrectly based on race and gender. Tiger Woods` son can get into a college with lower grades than a white janitor`s son. In India, according to this article, it seems to be defined on caste.

There is affirmative action of the above sort in Pakistan also. The best domicile in Pakistan is Kashmir. I have a long list of relatives, of all ages, who have gotten into the best medical and other colleges in Pakistan, just because their domicile indicated Kashmir. The fact that most of them, like me, spent only vacations in Kashmir, was immaterial. As was the fact that their parents were living quite well in Lahore and Islamabad.

The second best domicile is to be from FATA (tribal areas). They get good deals also. The third best, perhaps, is rural sind. The worst is urban sind.

While the intentions of the all these affirmative action plans are admirable. They are all open to misuse. In Pakistan, the Kashmiri seats are meant for people in Kashmir, who have not had the opportunities available to people who grew up in Lahore etc. Unfortunately these seats end up being taken by people whose parents hail from Kashmir, but who themselves lived in the luxury of Karachi`s defence society. I have seen girls with domiciles from the extremely conservative FATA who would fit more into New York than Mohmand.

What needs to be done is to put in conditions which require the person claiming affirmative action to have actually lived and graduated from school in areas/neighborhoods for which the affirmative action was created. Otherwise, these opportunities are misused by people who have all the benfits of wealthy city-dwellers, but turn themselves into poor rurals when college admissions start.

India`s `hidden apartheid`

By Eric S. Margolis

In a uniquely Indian version of Romeo and Juliette, a teenage girl and boy were publicly lynched earlier this month in rural Uttar Pradesh. The girl`s parents and hundreds of villagers watched and applauded.

The crime? The girl was a Brahmin, the boy, a Jat. The girl`s family had been `defiled` by their daughter crossing the `pollution barrier` to consort with a lower caste boy. The appropriate punishment was death. This grisly event was by no means an unusual event in rural India.

At the end of August, India, a self-professed champion of human rights, will attend the UN conference on racism in Durban, South Africa. While the US is frantically trying to shield its protege, Israel, from charges of racism at Durban, India is just as frantically trying to prevent its caste system, which is often called `hidden apartheid,` from being put onto the conference`s agenda.

For decades, India loudly denounced discrimination against blacks in the US and South Africa. But hidden from the world`s gaze, India, according to many human rights groups, continues to practise and condone the world`s largest, most pernicious system of institutionalized racism and discrimination, the caste system.

Of India`s one billion people, 160 million are untouchables, or `Dalits`(meaning: `broken people`). They are India`s poorest people, performing society`s most menial, degrading tasks. Dalit organizations in India call their people `black slaves.` Shockingly, this writer learned a decade ago that anthropologists had actually discovered a caste that was lower than untouchables. They were a small number of outcasts whose status was so degraded that they were not permitted to appear in daylight. They lived in garbage dumps and emerged only at night to scavenge.

Untouchables are barred from sections of villages inhabited by higher caste Hindus. A Dalit`s `unclean` shadow must never fall upon that of a Brahmin, lest he be defiled. Dalits may not draw water from higher caste wells, nor touch food implements of their betters. They may not enter higher caste temples, nor own land. Their children sit in the back of classrooms, or are simply denied schooling.

The ancient Hindu caste system dates back to 1500 BC when fair-skinned Aryan tribes invaded northern India. The newcomers conquered India`s dark-skinned indigenous Dravidian inhabitants. Though occupation and rank originally determined caste, over centuries caste came to be associated with skin colour. Even in overseas Indian communities, including Canada, caste still reigns. Marriage solicitations in India and among expatriate Indian communities routinely request `light-skinned` boys or girls.

Fair-skinned Brahmins, 3.5 per cent of the population, are India`s ruling elite, holding 78 per cent of judicial positions and half parliament`s seats. In recent tests, Indian scientists discovered that high-caste Hindus, particularly Brahmins, are genetically closer to Europeans than they are to dark-skinned Dravidian Indians. Caste became a rigid system whereby India`s fair-skinned ruling class kept lower and swarthier orders in their places - as labourers, landless peasants, and servants - exploiting them in the name of religion.

The Sikh religion and Islam both reject the Hindu caste system. Tens of millions of low caste Indians found refuge from racial oppression as Sikhs, Muslims, and, more recently, Christians. All three religions have been and remain subject to varying forms of persecution by India`s Hindu majority, which is becoming increasingly intolerant of other religions.

Dalits are forced to clean public toilets and remove human faeces, usually with their hands. They sweep up after Indians defecate in the streets and move dead animals. According to an extensive report on caste by the respected Human Rights Watch, large numbers of dalit women are routinely raped and forced to become sex slaves for Hindu priests and land owners. Of India`s estimated 40 million indentured labourers - a modern form of slavery - most are Dalit children, often sold into lifelong servitude by starving parents.

When Dalits try to defend themselves against abuse and exploitation, they are attacked by higher caste gangs and local police. Their shanties are burned and their women gang-raped. Dalits, like Muslim Kashmiris, are frequently subjected to beatings, rape, torture and arson by India`s brutal police, says Human Rights Watch. The recent case of India`s famed `Bandit Queen,` a Dalit woman who killed a score of higher caste men who had raped her, is but one dramatic example of the suffering inflicted by India`s cruel caste system, which makes South Africa`s former apartheid look benign by comparison.

The caste system has also found its way into Nepal, which just officially banned it this summer; to Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and to the Indian communities in Canada, the US, the West Indies, Fiji, South-east Asia, and South Africa. Even Indian Jews developed a caste system of their own under pressure from India`s customs.

Human Rights Watch gave their 2000 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award to Martin Macwan, founder of the India`s leading human rights movement for Dalits. Macwan calls the plight of India`s untouchables one of the world`s gravest and largest violations of human rights.

Modern India`s father, Mohandas Gandhi, struggled against caste and called for liberation of Dalits. India outlawed discrimination against untouchables in the 1950s, and has enacted affirmative action programmes for Dalits in education, voting, and government jobs. Nepal just followed suit this summer. India`s president, a ceremonial post, is a Dalit, though most of its leaders, like PM Vajpayee and Home Minster L.K. Advani, are high-caste, fair-skinned Hindus. Brahmins dominate the BJP and its `politburo,` the shadowy RSS, which was patterned in the 1930s after Hitler`s National Socialists and Mussolini`s Fascists.

`The Indian government has been very successful at manufacturing an image as the world`s largest democracy,` says Smita Narula, author of the Human Rights Watch report, ...`but none of its (anti-discrimination) laws are implemented and the constitution is not enforced.`

Delhi simply winks at the widescale oppression of Dalits across India, remembering them only at election time. India appears unlikely to make a major national effort to root out the deeply ingrained caste system until worldwide outrage shames India`s elite into taking drastic action. Durban would be a good start. India won`t achieve the international respect and great power status it so craves until the evil of caste is ended for good.-Copyright Eeric S. Margolis 2001.

Man! there are some big egos on this board.

Shankar on one side. And Harimau, Jay and RSaxena on the other.

It`s amazing how they keep attacking each other irrespective of what the other side says.

Mona,

I was merely calling for your attention...since I was referring to the discussion you Veeresh and Shankar were on to.

I do not mean to have posted it as any assessment of your stand. I am in agreement with your sentiment too, but.. and these are just random thoughts too.

Eventually, when you wait to beat the rush, you still have to join the rush that waited to beat the rush.

So, yes, the privileged reserved may not be as gracious to their less privileged brothers. That is a ethic less practiced and more preached. You see even among the dalits, there will be the fight of the haves and have nots eventually, once they have enough to have after decades of just not enough food/dignity/education/opportunity to riot over.

That is only individual. It is akin to that deadly virus called nationalism. We never saw any love for the country till Kargil happened. Then the country was not visible because love had deluged the whole country. The same way...dalits are a group/community in their fight for equal opportunities, when they have a common goal and a common enemy. But every individual dalit who benefits from reservation is not obliged to be either a role model or a torch bearer. He usually goes back to being the selfish individual...looking to get his son the reservation seat ahead of his neighbours.

Harish