The Dance of the Damned

Re: # 55

in addition to #64

why didn`t bjp/rss say to the shankarycharya that he was wrong when he said that he would construct a separate temple exclusively for the dalits.

Re: # 40 hamidm

``every time someone mentions the dalits the upper, and not so upper, class indians on chowk start talking about the injustice of reserved seats and the quota system ........... shame on you!.......... ``

one more excuse is `` initially, the caste system was based on division of work and later on it became corrupt and people just stayed at that level``.
Who the $$$$$$ cares how it was started. Just stop/eradicate this dehumanizing practice.

Jang: I actuually started reading up on political implications of Caste during and after the Mandal issue. Some knowledge is from elders but I realized that they tell stuff that is a mixture of fact and perception. Some is from websites as well but I avoid politically motivated ones like Dalitistan etc.



HamidM: There is wide spread support for affirmative action in India. The difference in opinion is on the basis. Should it be economic, caste based or a combination of both?

hamidm sahib...BTW I drove from Toronto to Chicago a week ago and apssed through Flint. I had no idea where Flint is but it happened so that Yahoo maps gave me directions to go thru Sarnia rather than Windsor....it somehow landed us on the toll Highway 69 taking us through Flint. As soon as I saw the Flint sign your name rang in my mind.:-)..well also Michael Mores.:-)

Many people will be unhappy with caste-based reservations. Many who get the assistance will not need it. Many who need it will not get it. Many who get it will not benefit from it. There will be wastage, greed, misuse, and all kind of political stunt(wo)manship.

Those and many other problems are all natural to any huge social effort. But we are not yet at a place where we can do away with reservations.

Netizen #:`` Mostly, its the last name.
infact some of my tamil brahmin friends forsaked their surnames to avoid reverse-discrimination, in tamil nad.``

Thanks for the response....

Why don`t people just change their names and build a new family history? There is kind of a caste system in Pakistan. One can call it baradari system. Or lineage system. Syeds sit on the top. And then you go down the list. Rajas etc. I believe are in the second tier. And then others, until one gets down to Jats etc.

People actually do marry generally one level above or below. I don`t know if it holds today, but generally it was loosely followed. My mother`s side of the family is thorugh out and out Rajput. Uptil my mother`s generation, they actually took phairas at marraige etc. Even my marriage was righ out of a Rajastani (I think) wedding, with the pink long pagri type things etc. My mother would have had a fit, had I not married within her family`s level of baradiri (read, caste). I actually married one level above, which my wife never ceases to reming me off. Apparently her Pathan/Central Asian ancestors kicked the ass of my Rajput ancestors.....She (her family) is a migrant into South Asia, while I (my family) was the resident converts.....

However, there are two ways to break this baradari system in Pakistan. One was to get rich, in which case, all baradari tend to be forgotten. The other was to change your last name. If you are a Jat, declare yourself a Raja or Syed. The third way is that Jats etc. are now running the various areas, since they have the most votes. Most of Pakistan`s ruling elite (in Punjab) is now of lower baradari - Nawaz Sharif is a low caste Kashmiri. Most others are Jat traditional labor families. But now they are on top. So just become more successful than others....

In Sind and southern Punjab and Baluchistan, due to traditional tribal and feudal systems, the family hierarchy has still not been broken.........

My guess is many, if not most, of the Syeds in Pakistan are fake. How could so many descendants of Arabs end up in South Asia? This means they changed their names, when the crossed the Indus, on their way from Iran. Similarly, a lot of the Hindus who converted and were perhaps were Dalits etc., changed their names and were given somewhat, ``high`` sounding Muslim names, like Qureshi etc. A lot, if not most, of the Urdu speaking folks in Pakistan tend to have a, ``choti yay`` at the end of their names. Most, ``choti yays` migrated to from India, or switched names.......Ansari, Qureshi, Siddiqui etc. Some are Irani names like Hamadani, Kayani, etc.

Others, like my family, may have been somewhat upper casts. Hence, apparently, they kept their last name, as a Hindu name. This is common amongst Sindhi, Punjabi and Baluchi Pakistanis. Due to this, you will find uncountable families in Pakistan that have last names, which are Hindu names. I assume they must not have been lower caste, when they converted and kept their names to keep the status in society. Though I am not sure where last names like Gill, Sethi, Warriach, Rao, Rana, Randhawa, Talpur, Bhutto (?), etc. ranked on the Hindu caste hierarchy

Romair, caste system you are talking about is not exactly same as Hindu caste system....a shudra is a shudra whether he is living amongst 90% brahmins or 90% shudras...unless he hides it..that is if he is capable of hiding it......A Raja is a high caste when he is amongst majority Rajas region..,,,as soon as he crosses to majority Randhawa tribe he turns into not so high caste.....e.g. jatts are ``highest castes`` in most central Punjab villages...but as soon as they move to Banglore or Karachi, or even Lahore and chandigarh ohna di phook nikal jandi ay. another example is Minhas and bhattis being Rajputs in West punjab...but in East Punjab Minhas` are considered jats but poor Bhattis trying to fit in as jatts but somehow can`t. This caste beast camaflauges (sp?)itself as time and place changes.

I believe you can`t eradicate Caste system so deeply entrenched in desi mind just through education. Some highly educated ones are even bigger castists....only thing that can beat it is urbanization and modernization with western stle personal freedoms.
In punjab traditional caste system is very week..it is the biradari system...slightly benign form of castism than traditional.

It is amazing to see muslims and pakistanis suddenly being so concerned about dalits and shedding crocodile tears. Who ruled India for 800 years? If muslims were so concerned about the dalits, why didn`t they convert all of them to Islam? They certainly had the means to do so for 800 years. Show me one muslim ruler who tried to do anything for lower caste hindus.

The fact of the matter is that everyone is racist in the subcontinent. The extent varies but virtually everyone has a slavish fascination for white skin and aryan features, irrespective of religion. Ordinary muslims may look like the comedian Johny Walker but believe that they have ``turkish`` or ``central asian`` blood in them and hence look down on hindus. In fact, muslims unwillingness to live with hindus in 1947 was fueled partially by the belief in their imaginary racial superiority that got manifested by slogans as 1 muslim equal to 10 hindus on the battlefield etc. Even after Paksitan got created, the racial superiority feelings of West Pakistanis led to the division of Pakistan and the creation of Bangladesh. Today millions of Bihari Pakistanis languish in Bangladesh but Pakistanis wont take them back due to their racial inferiority.

I admit that the casteist feelings among hindus, especially brahmins, comes from their belief in their imaginary racial superiority over others. It is perhaps the legacy of aryan invasions although we will never know for sure. However, muslims possess ten times the same belief in racial superiority. At least the brahmins did not want to partition India in the past and create a racially pure ``Brahministan``, but the muslims did exactly that in 1947.

The fact is that partition resulted in muslims becoming an overall more backward community in the subcontinent. They got split up into three countries. Pakistan itself got split up into two countries, both of them being weak, ineffective nations. Within India, muslims became pariahs. So the net result is that muslims find that they are now the worst community in the subcontinent irrespective of racial features. Hence the sudden feelings and touching concern for dalits. In India, upper caste hindus got the space to dominate the country again after 1947. However, it is to our credit that we Indians have at least tried to diminish those divisions, overcome our racial/casteist biases and work towards a more equitable society.

Excellent post!! Even on Chowk, we have Pakis who are not above touting their fair skin color and sharper features over the darker-complexioned and short Indians (even though there cannot be a bigger myth than this) to emphasize their racial superiority.

But then, with India having overtaken in Pakistan in virtually every aspect of life, coupled with the beating Pakistan`s already miserable image has taken all around the world, this is perhaps the only thing (albeit imaginary) that provides Pakis some succor.

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

Re: # 74

And I am looking forward to FV doing some hard investigation and analyses of the Gohana riots!!

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…

Re: #74,75:

[And I am looking forward to FV doing some hard investigation and analyses of the Gohana riots!!]

If this is what happens when FV goes soft...

Have explained in the earlier post why I used Tupe. The point is not whether you have read his work or how fictional it is...what he says conveys the trauma faced by dalits even in a non-violent situation.

PS: Am glad at least you learnt about someone named Tupe despite your disappointment over not getting your time`s worth!

Re: # 75
Nothing new in this trend.Petty issues always overshadow the basic questions and this is more than evident on FP of Chowk.

However,there are some interesting revelations which,at east,I was not aware of e.g. what stuka mentioned that there are people who even are not classified even as shudras.What I have been hearing or reading ,has been,that there are four varnas and all the so called lower castes form the shudra varna.

As you pointed out ,what Dr.Ambedkar wrote,that Hinduism basically means the four varnas.Then if all the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes are not even shudras,then who are they? Does that mean they are not Hindus?If they are not Hindus,then why have they been worshipping the same gods and goddesses as the other hindu castes and why brahmins have been carrying out their religeous rites and why the VHP and RSS want to ``bring back`` all the christian converts from scheduled castes and scheduled tribes?

Coming to the organized violence against the dalits.This has been going on in some form or the other ..the nature and severity only depends on the numerical strength and financial prowess of the dalits.For example.in Punjab,due to their large numbers and relatively better financial status,this phenomenon is not as rampant as in states like Bihar.

Triggering factors are usually inter-caste love affairs,land ownership,non or under-payment of wages, controll of local religeous shrines,Punchayat related power politics etc. but at the root,it is always the inflated ego,because of having born in a so called higher caste.With increase in prosperity of the dalits and their (paricularly the younger generation) refusal to accept the age old caste based power structure and not giving the higher castes their``due`` respect,there have been an increase in such incidences. Involvement of the politicians and partisan attitude and behaviour of the police and other limbs of the administration also act as reinforcing factors.

Dr. Ambedkar also said in the same book(which was based on his Ph.D. thesis) that the biggest maintaining factors for the caste system are marriages within the same castes and the state patronage and without removing both the factors we cant even think of caste free hindu society,and the discriminations thereof.

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

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...