The Dance of the Damned

``First of all, I have always wanted to ask you, how did you chose the nick, ``Scout.`` ``

The main protagonist of the famous book `To Kill A Mocking Bird` by Harper Lee was a little girl called Scout.

thanks stuka..
my opinion is that although caste system is associated with hinduism, no one is aware of theological premise. all this stuff about ``varna`` and ``jati`` etc is rubbish. most practice of castist behavior is just bigotary absorbed thru osmosis...no theology whatsoever. no wonder castes of converts dont go away..sometimes even after generations.

so while acknowleging origins in hinduism, bigotary cannot be combated by attacking hinduism. all that can be done is forcing social abolishment..like temple entries or job (access to common resources) discrimination. let bigotary of mind exist as far its not expressed..it will likely affect the bigot far more.

(salim i used affect)

aman: mainu thorha Tapla lagg giya....rishtedaari ghalat kadd lai....hunn pata lagga tusi kuRi oh te sandhu naal viaahi O thats why sandhu in your name now after marriage...rishtedaari accordingly set kar lo:-)

dilliwale: Khalsay vi aithey matlabh de ne....do do foot daahRiyaN wadhaa ke lokkaN naal InsuranshaN diaN hera pheriaN karde phirday ne. Guru da khalas Khalsa te labhna hor vi aukha...sabh phulkay toRi jugaaRh ay.

Re: # 90
Oye Aman, kitho ?
Waryam da Chota brother te nahee?

Re: # 89
Dulla PahJee,
theek hi Gull akhdey ho.
Ithay Amreeka de vich kithey Ki JuttPana te Ki Punjabiyat reh jaande hai?

Keval Ek Khalsa hi hai Jerra sir uthay ke Jee sakday hai, saarey dhartee te. Baake Saarey Matlab de yaar ne.

Es gull di SamuJ Tah hi lagge jaddon Guru Maharaj de Charna`ch Aaye si. Hun Sannu kissey da koi Darr Nahee.

Singh Sajjo te Beparvah ho Ke Shera Wango Jindgee Jeeyo!!

#84, aman p`aah....from the information you gave in the post...you are meraay maamay da putt bhra..te teri vauhTi meri bhehn laggi.;) hor sunao? aithey te jatt dharti putteyaN nai labhda...saare syed qureshi te pata ni ki ki baney phirday ne.:)

my comment ``phook nikal jaandi ay`` did not mean they become cowards..it meant that once they move to bigger cities with mixed people their ``dhauNs`` of superior caste that they had in village is no more valid.

pinD jinna de gaDDay challan, khoohaN te sardaari.
Shehar ch aa ke bann jaanday di bus di ikk sawaari.

scout #80/hamidm mian: the `dalits` here are the poor blacks who are marginalized and forgotten and the poor whites who are lured by promises of a better future and sent off to Iraq to die``

First of all, I have always wanted to ask you, how did you chose the nick, ``Scout.``

Your comments, by the way, are very valid. I read somewhere that, out of the whole Congress - of hundreds of representatives - there is only one person who has a son in Iraq! I think there should be a law, that any representative, in any country who is going to vote to send other people`s children into offensive wars, will first have to send his own son/daughter into the same war. I wonder how many Congressmen would have voted in favor of Iraq if such a law existed?

It is, no doubt, the poor who are sent into war in any country. Be it Pakistan, India or USA. They constitute the cannon fodder enlisted base of all militaries. They are recruited from poor areas, where jobs and/or agriculture are limited.........

There is a military term called Chickenhawk - a Chickenhawk is someone who is very hawkish about war, but will do anything to avoid going into the war personally, i.e he is hell-bent on sending other people`s kids into war, but never his own, nor himself.......

The current Republican and neo-con group is nearly all Chickenhawks. Interestingly, so are the right wing prominent Republican media people. These guys used every legal and illegal trick in the book to avoid Vietnam. Yet now they are so gung-ho about all other offensive wars. There is a, ``Chickenhawk database`` at the following address, do check it out:

http://www.nhgazette.com/cgi-bin/NHGstore.cgi?user_action=list&category=%20NEWS%3B%20Chickenhawks

Following are from the long list of Republicanly inclined Chickenhawks:

George Bush - used his father`s contacts to get himself out of the draft and jumped out of line in the National Gaurd. Thereby sending some other poor kid into war in his place. And then he didn`t even attend the Gaurd training

Dick Cheney - used various referals to get out of Vietnam. One of which was having a child at exactly the right time

Paul Wolfowitz/Richard Pearle/Scooter Libby/Tom Delay - all used various forms of college deferals

Rush Limbaugh - was in line to be drafted for Vietnam, when he dropped out of college, but came up with two medical excuses of a cyst and a bad knee, through private doctors to avoid draft

Bill O`Rielly - used college deferall to avoid draft and even spent time in London (like Clinton) during the draft

Michale Savage - used medical deferal to avoid draft

---

All these guys scream at the top of their lungs for the Iraq war, and any other prominent USA war, yet weaseled their way out, since they were Brahmins of USA, when they should have served. Interestingly the only prominent person of this whole regime who did serve in Vietnam, is Colin Powell. And he was opposed to sending other people`s kids into Iraq. All the Chickenhawks ganged up on him and kicked him out. Even Donald Rumsfeld, conveniently, served his two years in the Navy, after the Korean war was over. During which time he was in college. The only Republican I can think of who supports Iraq and did serve exensively is John McCain. And he couldn`t even get a Republican nomination..........The Republican Christian Right base voted for draft-dodger Bush, instead of him.........

---

We have our own Pakistani Chickenhawks on this site, as well......Prominent amongst them:

Hamidm mian - never volunteered serve a day in uniform in Pakistan, nor in USA. Nor did his immediately family member. Yet is very gung-ho on every US offensive, in which other people`s kids get killed.

Urstruly - never volunteered to serve a day defending Pakistan, or the, ``Ummah`` in general, yet is gung-ho on every jihad, while sitting comfortabley in the USA.....

So, as you said, the Dalits - be in Pakistan or USA - do get the short end of the stick. The same is the case in China, regardless of what the price of tea there, maybe......

Re: # 76
I think problem here is that you are always picking on India, perhaps not Hindus as much. That is why it sounds more like official Pakistani media News.

You started by picking on Tulsi`s Ramayan quoting a Shlok about Woman and low caste. What was it? It sounded like ``O Look their Ramayana says so and they practice it, how terrible``.

How would you feel if others started writing about Muslim social issues and quoting from Quran and Shariat being responsible for them?

I am neither a Hindu nor Muslim but I take pride in knowing a lot about Hinduism as well as Islam. Even I am perplexed by you giving a religous color to this shameless Caste Violence and quoting Ramayana, how many villagers in Gohana have read Tulsi`s Ramayana? I have been to Gohana and know some people there, it is just another Hariyanvi village with low employment and typical rural Indian life.

If you are claiming that you are just an investigative reporter writing about Caste Violence, fine it is. Then why do you bring Hinduism and India into it, rather than residual modern day Caste Evil that is more pronounced in poor villages(mostly Hariyana-UP-MP belt).

It would amount same to say, when a woman gets raped in Pakistan and there is justfication from Quran or Shariat for four witnesses present, and criminals are let go.

Bibi, your writeup has communal tone to it. You will be more respected if you came in open and wrote exclusively against India.

Ref scout #80

[so when is someone writing an article about the Republican caste system in the US]

It is not for nothing that they call the East coast uppercrust the ``Boston Brahmins``!

I was in Montrose, Colorado, a non-descript little farming town when the news came that a 21-year-old Marine from that town had died in Iraq leaving behind his 19-year-old wife and one-year-old child. That story was to be repeated in hundreds of small towns and villages in rural America where jobs are scarce and where the Armed Forces find fertile recruiting ground so that they could give a `bye` to Dubya and his cronies.

Made me sick to my stomach.

Re: # 83
> in hindu caste system, knowledge is given more importance then military strength.
> Hence brahmins is above kshatriys, irrespective of the community.

thats interesting. This behaviour seems quite at variance from some peaceful cults .... hmmm

-SN

dullabhati,
i find your comments on jats quite amusing, i have yet to find a coward jat. by the way i am a randhawa married to a sandhu. also, minhas is considered a rajput caste in east punjab too. incidently punjab is one state in india where dalits fare better and though they too face problems from time to time but nothing on the scale of bihar etc.
the indian government has miserably failed the poor, they may be of any caste or creed.
in punjab you find jats sikhs, the so called upper caste, with a land holding of 2-3 acres, and the future of their children is even bleaker. poverty does not discriminate between
caste and creed and it is a big curse. the biggest problem facing india today is poverty.

Re: # 70

``Why don`t people just change their names and build a new family history? ``

a person can move to a new city/town and claim whomsoever possible. It is possible. But but in the cities these differences are not much of significance. Un a village a dalit may be denied an entry in a temple as people more or less know each other, in a city these divisions get blurred. As you said if a person is rich/politically strong it makes no difference. I have seen rajputs touching feets of politically higher OBC`s. Mayawati, a dalit was served by upper castes secretaries.



``People actually do marry generally one level above or below. ``
In an arranged hindu wedding, relations are within a caste.

``Apparently her Pathan/Central Asian ancestors kicked the ass of my Rajput ancestors.....``

i don`t know how correct it is.
The only battle in which rajput confederacy was defeated by central asians was by Babur, that too with his cannons. the rest of the mughal-rajput conflict was carefully converted into a diplomatic victory by akbar, in which rajput kingdoms provided support to the empire.

also i don`t think pathans ever went to rajasthan.

its quite weird that because if some community defeated another some centuries back, they get up in the ladder. With that all of us are inferior to the whites than. also russians were inferior to japs after 1904 war but again superior after WWII?
in hindu caste system, knowledge is given more importance then military strength. Hence brahmins is above kshatriys, irrespective of the community.

Ref Netizen #64

[``the RSS folks are the ones trying to eliminate caste difference, that is why the BJP has larger ``

so why are the dalit/obc parties against BJP? why BJP is considered as a upper caste party? why RSS/BJP hasn`t won the confidence of the dalit masses?
even Shiv sens, the suppposed ``hindu-centric`` party clashes with RPI/dalit parties. has no dalit support.]

In Nagapattinam where I worked with Seva Bharathi (the domestic arm of Seva International, an offshoot of the RSS), most of the volunteers were from the so-called ``lower`` castes. The on-site coordinator (who had taken a vow of celebacy in order to dedicate his life to the organization) of the group was not a member of any ``upper`` caste.

As I sat down to dinner with Adrian Page, the Australian reporter, I asked him if he saw any visible caste discrimination. He didn`t. I asked him if he noticed that there were three brahmins who were eating the food which was cooked and being served by ``lower`` caste persons. He was not surprised at the easy mixing of various castes in a common cause. But then, unlike the Press in India which suppresses stories it doesn`t like, he knew that Seva International had been given a clean bill of health by the UK Home Secretary after being accused by pseudo-secularists of channeling money only to upper-castemen after the Gujarat earthquake and being a terrorist organization.

The RSS story of commitment to the country resonates with today`s Indians of all castes. The volunteers who worked at Nagapattinam on tsunami relief came from all over Tamil Nadu. Let the Commies keep talking about solidarity with Venezuela, China and Cuba; the RSS has more activists on the ground that the fcukers of the Congress Party.

PS. How did I know there were two other brahmins? Yeah, we have secret signals!

Re: # 80

..... and what is the price of tea in china ?

so when is someone writing an article about the Republican caste system in the US

the `dalits` here are the poor blacks who are marginalized and forgotten and the poor whites who are lured by promises of a better future and sent off to Iraq to die

and then there are people like me who take out exorbitant amounts of student loans for a better future and then have more than a third of our salaries taken back to help those poor white `dalits` die in Iraq

then there are those `dalits` whose jobs are sent overseas and they are left to sit at home and apply for a job at Walmart

then there are those thousands of `dalits` who can`t afford a decent health insurance and let their bodies and teeth rot off

i`ll think of more dalits when i get back...

I am sure this is not about whether Tupe`s literature is more `authentic` compared to Mushi Premchand`s ....and certainly not about whether a non-dalit writer can write about dalit issues and feel the pain of a dalit...from what I can see, dalit literature has made its own literary space in India and is also well supported politically........as I said I need to read him before make any comments on his works........

In my opinion Gohana riot was as dangerous as Godhra and this appears to have been missed by a lot of scribes........I can see the political implications of it in creating new fissures in the Indian polity..............but this requires a serious study and a visit to the place by the journalists since the article was actually about a Dalit writer and not about Dalit issues............