The Dance of the Damned

Re: # 92
Dullya,
I object to this comment, perhaps your interaction was with ``Fokras``.
You need do Sangat with a ``Nitnemi``, who is sabit soora.

Please verify these Khalsas by observing them closely and then befriend. I know many inspiring people on East Coast who are truly Gurus Khalsa.

#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.

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!!

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

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

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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.........

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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......

Romair

Re: # 88

interesting post.... if hamidm is not sending his son/daughter to Iraq and Urstruly isn`t sending his son/daughter to a madrassah.... they have no right to applaud offensive institutions and policies. there is no point in taking them seriously

by the way, i heard on npr that army recruitment officers are facing the music for their brainwashing tactics. who knows how far that will go. not that far under the current government i`m afraid.

captain romair,

..... so i take a day off from chowk and you want me to send my poor daughters to iraq ! ........ actually, i wouldn`t mind if one of them got into westpoint or annapolis - it is a great career and pays huge dividends in the corporate world too .......... but we do thank you for putting your life on the line for pakistan ..........

...... having said that, everyone in my ``immediate`` family is/was in the military ........ my father was in the army for 30 plus years and singlehandedly fought the biggest and baddest villians of the twentieth century : hitler in north africa, hirohito in burma, shastri in chamb and that horrible woman, indira gandhi, in rajastan ........ for his efforts he earned a chest-full of medals, dinner with the queen and a plot in islamabad (we are all grateful for the last one in particular !)..........

...... now what is all this nonsense about not being able to support a war unless you are in it yourself ?....... what kind of silly logic is that ?.........everyone can`t go to war, someone has to stay home to take care of business ........... that is why you have a volunteer professional army ..... no ? ............

p.s. which course were you in at risalpur ?........ just curious ........

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.

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.

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!

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...

Re: # 80

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

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............

Right. So, what is new about this? A look at some interacts would tell you that it is important to bring this up. I really wish there was a little less ridiculousness manifested here by some respondents. If they had their say, then they would like to assume that in all probability the Dalits burned their own houses in Gohana to get the attention of Pakistanis. (And to think there is an important dialogue taking place here between a few Pakistanis and mostly Indians.)

I avoided the discussion on reservations and wanted to highlight the violence, overt (Gohana) and covert (Tupe).

pmishra2:

Thank you for the additional information on Uttam Bandu Tupe; I did not want to get into too much of his literary oeuvre as it would not be accessible to a non-Maharashtrian reader. I am pleasantly surprised that you know so much about him. I did, however, want to introduce a new voice here. Does not seem like anyone is interested.

However, some extremely important points have been raised.

First, let me quote Dr. B.R. Ambedkar on the four varnas (Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, Shudra), “It is the very soul of Hinduism. Without Varna Vyavastha there is nothing else in Hinduism to distinguish it from other religions.”

Stuka:

Most of your posts have shed light on the caste-class differences. Let me give my version from what I know…

Varnas are based on birth-based class; Jati on inherited occupation. There is another codification based on periods in one’s life – the ‘ashramas’: brahmacharya (student-celibate), grihastha (householder), vanaprastha (literally forest, but the phase of introspection/seeking), sanyas (renunciation). I mention this because the lower castes are not bound by the first (for obvious reasons) or the last (if they do not have the benefit of study and seeking, what do they renounce?) codifications; they are only jatis.

We must understand that this might make it simple to tell who is a ‘backward’. Not so. I know of at least one case where a harijan, despite being exempt from it, had to pay his son’s fees due to a technicality. He had registered his caste as ‘halalkhor’ – conservancy worker, but this did not figure in the list. Therefore, even when we talk about reservations there are many categories and barriers to be faced.

Dostmittarji:

[Just a technical correction about ``sanskritisation``. This was not about backward castes moving to urban areas but of some backward caste villagers who had improved their economic status - if the economic fortunes of their caste occupation improved - mimicking the upper caste customs, for example shunning meat and wearing the sacred thread. This happened mostly among OBCs in the South.]

I think both of us are right. There have been cases of these people moving to urban areas, for caste is not only about economic growth (Dharavi in Mumbai has many such cases). Had they decided to stay back in their villages they would be easily recognised.

Since someone brought this up…while there is no caste system among Muslims, IMs do have a stratified economic gradation. And a similar process of ‘sanskritisation’, if you will. Take the example of the Ansaris, cloth weavers. They moved from the mofussil areas into the far suburbs of Mumbai and merged into the larger group.

- - -

Re. Jamia Millia and Aligarh Muslim University, they are not exclusively for Muslims. Both are considered among the premier institutes of learning. (Although, the names may initially act as a barrier, as much as Benares Hindu Uni, Khalsa College, St. Xavier’s or the institutes run by the Hyderabad Sind Trust could.)

I would like to mention that when there was a move for 50 percent reservations for Muslims in the later, there was a mass protest.
From http://www.keralanext.com/news/?id=208380:

[Dr. Suhaib Sherwani, a professor of the Department of English, AMU said the decision was dubious. ``Aligarh Muslim University is a central university. The university is fully funded by the Central Government. So fifty per cent reservation for a particular community is a debatable issue. We are really not happy with the decision. At any point of time, in any case AMU will have a strength of fifty percent of muslims not less than that. So,I can`t figure out what they want to achieve by implementing such a decision.``]

PS: Someone had the gall to suggest that I am a Muslim, therefore this was written. Yes, the BBC and CNN have also made a mention of this. They too are Muslims.

Need I have to constantly remind people that this article was written by an Indian who lives in her country, there is no mention of any Muslim in the entire article, no word against Hindus? Just shows how insecure some of you are…

For once I thought the article was about Gohana and was sure that some very important issues would be raised..........but here I find that it is about a writer called Tupe who writes on Dalit themes and issues..................I would have to first look for some translations before I can say anything on his writings and comment on how much it `mirrors` and how much it `fictionalizes` reality..........

Rathar than Tupe I would prefer to discuss the obnoxious burning of homes by the Jats and would compare it to Godhra symbolically minus the loss of dalit lives which could have also happened had the dalits not evacuated their homes.........................and the fact that some SOB BJP MP was behind this is not a surprise to me..................I recall watching the burnt Washing machines and TV-s and some of the locals Jats complaining before the camera that the Dalits could not have amassed their riches without indulging in anti-social activities (as if the local Jats are paragon of virtue!)...........so there is a lot of jealousy amongst the populations of local Jats against the Dalits who appears to have done economically better that a lot of Jats and appears to be a chief cause for this rioting by the Jats..........I feel that this could be the turning point in the Haryana politics.............and this requires a careful analyses.............