The Global #Dalit , The Indian #Black : Prof Cornel West In Conversation With #Indian Dalit Scholar Suraj Yengde. Yengde and his #African-#American mentor from a long and robust tradition of Dalit-Black solidarity. #casteism #India | Outlook India Magazine https://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/story/india-news-independence...

Cornel West: Well, first, I would like to say that it is a blessing to be in dialogue with my dear brother, Suraj…that we are part of the rich legacies of Ambedkar and W.E.B. Du Bois, that we come together as voices, as figures, as persons who are willing to live and to die for that quest for truth, beauty, goodness and justice that sits at the centre of what Ambedkar and Dubois stand for. Now, we are in a unique historical moment in terms of the spiritual decay, moral decline, and relative transition of the American empire…moving to a low point, unable to regenerate the best of its democratic tradition. And the Chinese empire, ambiguous, still too repressive, still too locked into forms of domination, but escalating its economic production, trying to elevate itself against tremendous difficulties, until the pandemic hit. Then there’s the Indian and the Russian regimes, trying to sustain themselves. Brazil much further on the side. The UK and France, crucial, but in many ways remaining middling. Therefore the fundamental dynamic taking place in our moment has to do with those four fundamental regimes. All of them, of course, are shot through with forms of repression and domination. But all of them are also shot through with marvellous forms of resistance and critique. And you and I are trying to keep track of the radically democratic streams, the ones genuinely empowering those that Frantz Fanon called ‘the wretched of the earth’. This is why I think our dialogue is so very important. I'm looking at it through the lens of a Black people who have been so thoroughly exploited, degraded and dominated and yet still producing so many freedom fighters and love warriors. You are looking at it from the rich, deep heritage of Dalit brothers and sisters, right there at the centre of the Indian regimes, the ways in which Brahmin supremacy has always lost contact with the humanity of Dalits.


Suraj Yengde: It's very interesting, even looking at the past century. I see Du Bois as someone who really fashioned twentieth century political thought. That man never stopped, his pen never stopped…you would have needed an industry to provide him ink!

Cornel West: (Laughs)

Suraj Yengde: And now, in the modern era, in the 21st century, what we see is the politics of Ambedkar and Du Bois resonating, almost 100 years later. I look at this era as someone who has lived a few decades of the 20th century, linking up to the arc of their inspirations, their energies…now that needs to be carried on to the next century. It is no accident that Du Bois and Ambedkar carried so many resonances, though it couldn’t come to fruition as much as we might have expected. But now, if they were to relive, the possibilities and connections would be so strong! Not only because there are vocabularies that can connect us more confidently, but also because of the unfinished business of love that they, our ancestors, inaugurated. One of the parallels we see is of course the Dalit and Black Panthers…the civil rights spirit that the African American public sphere as well as private sphere brought to us, and similarly, the land rights movements led by Dalits. The Dalits are the most landless people of India, 77 per cent of them don't own any land, which means they have been virtually permanent refugees in the Indian nation.

The Sanskrit word "varna" means "color, tint, dye or pigment" in the Mahabharata. Varna contextually means "colour, race, tribe, species, kind, sort, nature, character, quality, property" of an object or people in some Vedic and medieval texts. Varna refers to four social classes in the Manusmriti.

The Europeans translated "varna" to "caste"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varna_(Hinduism)

For 70 years, #Dalits have been denied freedom of religion through 1950 Presidential Order that denies job/education quotas to #Muslim or #Christian converts despite ample evidence that they suffer hardships equal to #Hindu untouchables. https://scroll.in/article/970613/for-70-years-dalits-have-been-deni... via @scroll_in

This month marks 70 years from the passing of the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1950, which aimed at ensuring that Dalit communities would be able to fully enjoy the fundamental freedom and rights protected under the Constitution of India. However, Paragraph 3 of the 1950 Presidential Order prevents Dalits communities from exercising one of the most basic of human rights, the right to freedom of conscience and belief.

The 1950 Presidential Order identifies the caste communities who have experienced extreme social, educational and economic backwardness arising out of the traditional practice of untouchability. These castes are also referred to as Scheduled Castes or Dalits.

These Dalit communities were singled out for deserving affirmative action benefits under various government policies, including education and jobs. Dalit communities also have special protections under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 and political reservation in various forums.

Paragraph 3 of the Presidential Order, however, limited the classification of Scheduled Castes initially only to Hindus. Due to the political activism of Sikh and Buddhist communities, the 1950 Presidential Order was subsequently amended to include Sikhs in 1956 and Buddhists in 1990. The 1950 Presidential Order, however, continues to leave out Dalits who converted to Islam or Christianity from its ambit, despite ample evidence that they suffer equal hardships as other Dalits communities.

The rationale seems to be that Islam and Christianity are more egalitarian religions and therefore a Dalit would not face the same discrimination in their new found faith. Sadly, however, Dalits converting to Islam and Christianity found that their “Dalitness” clung to them and followed them, even after their religious conversion.

In May 2018, Kevin Joseph, a Dalit Christian youth, was murdered by his wife’s relatives in Kerala. His only crime was that he had dared to love and marry an upper caste woman. Principal sessions court judge C Jayachandran noted in the judgment that the motive of the murder was caste prejudice. Sadly, this was but one of many incidents.


In the 1992 landmark judgment of Indra Sawhney and Others v Union of India and Others, the Supreme Court noted:

“Though Christianity does not acknowledge caste system, the evils of caste system in some States are as prevalent as in Hindu society especially among the converts. In Andhra Pradesh, there are Harijan Christians, Reddy Christians, Kamma Christians etc. Similarly, in Tamil Nadu, there are Pillai Christians, Marvar Christians, Nadar Christians and Harijan Christians etc. That is to say all the converts to Christianity have not divested or set off themselves from their caste labels and crossed the caste barrier but carry with them the banners of their caste labels. Like Hindus, they interact and have their familial relationship and marital alliances only within the converted caste groups.”

Why is the RSS supremo always a Brahmin?

https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-RSS-supremo-always-a-Brahmin

Pralip Narzary, Have researched RSS.
Answered October 29, 2016

Because people in senior cadres are mostly higher caste Hindus. They were the first people who took up the cause of uniting the Hindus. They have been at the forefront right from the birth of Hindu movement - for example Savarkar, Hedgevar both were brhamins. Higher castes have been influential everywhere - just have a look at the list of PMs of India - Modi is probably the second non-Brahmin PM. Look at the caste composition of your teachers - I am sure more than 70–80% would be from higher caste - so its not that the RSS does not let anyone else become supremo, Prof Rajju bhaiya did become RSS supremo. So it is all about availability of able people in the top cadre. Modi worked hard and now he is the PM. Had he not worked hard and Advani or some other higher caste BJP guy become PM, people would be asking question, why is BJP’s PMs are always higher caste - but the same question has never been asked from Congress, despite the fact Congress’ PMs and Presidents have always been from higher castes. I think once OBCs or SCs or STs are in majority in top cadre, you will witness a dalit or OBC or adivasi heading the RSS.

Unrepresentative US Congress dominated by old white male millionaires. #democracy #UnitedStates #Congress #Elections2020

https://twitter.com/haqsmusings/status/1301243188934443013?s=20

Millionaires: Congress 51%, US Population 5%

White Men: Congress 77%, US Population 31%

Women: Congress 20%, US Population 51%

Over 55 Years: Congress 67%, US Population 28%

#Dalits bear brunt of #India's 'endemic' sexual violence crisis. #UttarPradesh has the highest number of reported cases of violence against Dalits but there's been a spike during the #COVID #pandemic. #untouchables #Caste #BJP #Hindutva https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/16/dalits-bear-brunt-of-...

A spate of brutal rapes and murders of young girls in a single district of India over the past month has provoked outrage and exposed the ongoing use of sexual violence as a tool of oppression and revenge against lower caste communities.

Over the past month, the Lakhimpur Kheri district of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh has witnessed four incidents of girls being raped and brutally murdered. At least two of the girls were Dalits, the lowest caste in the Hindu system of social hierarchy, who were previously referred to as “untouchables” and cast out from society.

Last week, a 14-year-old girl Dalit girl was found hanging from a tree in a village, having been raped and murdered. Just a few days before, a three-year-old girl was raped and strangled to death.

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On 14 and 24 August, two girls, a 13-year-old and a 17-year-old, were both raped and killed in Lakhimpur Kheri.

“These cases of extreme sexual violence are more examples of the dominant caste wielding power over Dalit women who are perceived as weak and vulnerable and available,” said Manjula Pradeep, director of campaigns at the Dalit Human Rights Defenders Network.

She added: “Dalit women are seen as impure and deprived when they access basic amenities but their bodies are also used as objects to take revenge on the Dalit communities and keep them oppressed. With more Dalits demanding their rights, these kinds of incidents we have seen in Lakhimpur Kheri are increasing.”

Local activists said the assaults carried out against the Dalit girls went ignored by police until the issue was raised by activists and members of the opposition political party, who said the incident of the 13-year-old had “shaken humanity”. Activists have also struggled to enter the village to intervene in the cases as upper caste members of the village had reportedly blocked access.

The state of Uttar Pradesh already has the highest number of reported cases of violence against Dalits but during coronavirus lockdown there was a reported spike of attacks on Dalits by upper caste Thakurs. However, no arrests have been made.

“The recent spate of rape and murder cases in the Lakhimpur Kheri district indicates an endemic problem of sexual violence and the state government needs to do much more to address this crisis,” said Divya Srinivasan, a south Asia consultant for women’s rights organisation Equality Now.

“In many instances, sexual violence committed against Dalit women and girls is perpetrated by men from dominant ‘upper castes’, who use sexual violence as a tool to assert power and reinforce existing caste, social and gender hierarchies,” said Srinivasan.

Srinivasan emphasised that these entrenched hierarchies of power gave attackers of Dalit women a worrying sense of impunity. Assaults on lower caste women were rarely investigated or prosecuted, and in the case of Dalit victims, rarely prompt much media coverage or public outrage.


'If you saw her body, you will never sleep again': despair as India rape crisis grows
Read more
India remains the most unsafe country for women in the world, with a woman raped every 20 minutes. Lower caste women in particular bear the brunt, with little to no access to justice. It first came to light in a 1999 report by Human Rights Watch that documented how Dalit women in Bihar were raped and then had their breasts cut off and were shot in the vulva.

Official statistics show that at least four Dalit women are raped in India every day, though the real number is thought to be much higher as the communities often do not report the rapes due to pressure from higher castes or because police refuse to file the cases.

#India's #caste system is ruining lives in #SiliconValley. Over 90% of #Indian techies in #US are upper-caste Indians and they are making life hell for over 250 Dalit techies working in firms such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple & Netflix. #Hindutva https://zd.net/2RQNg05

It may seem bizarre that the caste system, a centuries-old system that organises and stratifies human society, continues to play a heavy role in deciding which Indians prosper and which don't within a space many consider to be an uber-meritocracy -- the US tech landscape.

A recent lawsuit against two Indians, filed by California's Department of Fair Employment and Housing on behalf of another Indian, has made waves over the past few months for all the wrong reasons. It has illuminated how the Indian caste system has terrorised one of the most marginalised groups in India.

Except, this time, it is happening in the US tech industry, a place that people normally associate with egalitarianism and a thirst for talent regardless of colour, race, religion, or any other creed.

Caste is a 2,000 year-old system for classifying society in the Indian subcontinent -- or whatever other definition that can be used for the geographic spread that was depleted and then amputated by British colonial rule.

In this stratification, the priests -- or the "Brahman" class -- were at the top, the warriors or "Kshatriyas" came next, the merchants or "Vaishyas" formed the third tier, while labourers, artisans, and servants, known as "Shudras", came last and essentially served the other three castes. Of course, it's not so simple -- in reality, there are over 5,000 castes and over 25,000 sub-castes in India, spawned by sheer geographical, cultural, and religious diversity.

What is homogenous across the country, however, is another category that exists completely outside of the caste system, on a rung so low that if you were forced to come up with the worst moral and physical degradations that you could think of, they would in all likelihood pale in comparison to what has transpired in India over centuries and continues to do so today.

These people that are deemed to be on the lowest rung are the Dalits. Self-named, Dalit means "oppressed", but they are also referred to by Indian society as "achoot", or, "untouchable". Dalits have historically been involved in occupations such as working with leather, cleaning sewers, or killing rats and were therefore considered "spiritually impure".

Not so long ago, if a Dalit saw a higher caste walking down the road, they would have to flung themselves to the ground to not contaminate the upper caste (UC) person with their shadow. Violaters would be beaten, often to death, and incredulously, they still are today.

All across India, Dalits -- who comprise at least 25% of the population, or a staggering 400 million people -- are barred from drawing water from the wells of UCs. Dalit children are either denied education or cannot study with UC peers; their villages are separate and hence, they are forbidden from walking through upper caste ones; they cannot eat where UCs eat; they cannot pray where UCs pray and God help them if they marry out of their caste. Their woman and children are physically and sexually abused on a serial scale.

If a person is born as a Dalit, they will die a Dalit, and their children are almost certainly destined to a life with no upward mobility.

While many scholars contend that the caste system became more inflexible under the British, who transformed it into a rigid, more easily governable structure that privileged Brahmans even more, others say this narrative is just an attempt by upper-caste Indian Americans to rewrite history books and erase any mention of Dalit oppression. While the British Raj did have a complex, destructive effect on caste, India's pre-modern history was also most definitely defined by castes.

Caste discrimination: India must disown parts of ancient texts that contradict the Constitution
Just as the West is re-examining its colonial and slave-running past, India should identify treatises that are anachronistic.

https://scroll.in/article/976824/caste-violence-india-must-disown-p...

The ancient Varna system separates the three twice-born (Dvij) groupings – Brahmin, Kshatriya, and Vaishya – from the Shudras who constituted the lowest rung. All ancient authorities concurred that caste was assigned to a person at birth and could not be changed; with each caste was associated a profession; and all castes were arranged in a hierarchy.

All the Dharma sutras and Dharma shastras asserted that the main task of the Shudras was to serve the twice-born (Apastamba Dharma Sutra I.1.1.7-8; Mahabharata, Shanti Parva 60.28). To assure their servility, they were assigned a low ritual status. While a number of sanskaras or rites of passage, from conception to cremation, were prescribed for the high-rankers, they were prohibited for the Shudras who were not permitted to chant Vedic mantras (Manu Smrti X.127).

They could recite the phrase “Namah Shivay” but were not allowed to prefix “Om” to it, notes P V Kane in his History of Dharmasastra.

If a Brahmin committed adultery or rape, merely a fine was imposed on him (Manu Smrti VIII.385). However if a Shudra had sexual intercourse with a Brahmin woman, he was to be executed no matter whether the act was consensual or not (Vasishtha Dharma Shastra 21.1). If a Brahmin reviled a Shudra, he paid a small fine (Manu Smrti VIII. 268) or nothing at all (Gautama Dharma Sutra XII.10). But in the reverse case, a Shudra’s tongue was to be chopped off (Manu Smrti VIII. 270) .

In the case of killing a Dvij by a Dvij , reasonable prayashchit (atonement) was prescribed. For killing a Shudra the prayashchit was the same as for killing a frog, cat, dog, mongoose, or owl.

As the Hathras case demonstrates, the practice of degrading the lower castes has continued into the present.

In 1848, Jotirao Phule was insulted by Brahmins for being a part of a marriage procession notwithstanding the fact that he had been invited to it by his Brahmin friends. In school in the 1890s, Bhimrao Ambedkar was not allowed to sit with the other children inside the classroom. He had to bring a gunny sack from home and sit on it outside. In the 1910s, Meghnad Saha, who would grow up to become an internationally acclaimed astrophysicist, was not permitted by upper-caste fellow residents at the Calcutta’s Government Eden Hindu Hostel to dine at their table and participate in the annual Sarasvati Puja.

The economic exploitation and oppression of Dalits and crimes against Dalit women are facilitated by the low ritual status assigned to them. Just as the West is re-examining its colonial and slave-running past, India should also identify those parts of ancient texts that are now anachronistic. It should treat them as archives and disown them as living heritage.

How Big #Tech Is Importing #India’s #Caste Legacy to #SiliconValley? Jatav’s #IIT classmates quickly identified him as #Dalit. He’d been educated in Hindi-language schools, and his English was poor. His clothes were shabby. He didn’t have a smartphone. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-03-11/how-big-tech-is-...

For all the IITs’ proficiency at training and placing students, though, the coders, programmers, product developers, and engineers fanning out to global tech bring with them the troubled legacy of India’s caste system. On campus, students are surrounded by—and in some cases participate in—a culture of discrimination, bullying, and segregation that targets fellow pupils from India’s Scheduled Castes, also known as Dalits. The IITs officially discourage such harassment, but the prejudice against these students remains quite open.

Caste in India speaks, as race does in America, to centuries of social, cultural, and economic divisions. Unlike in the U.S., though, India has since 1950 had a national system of affirmative action designed to undo the legacy of bias. Among its provisions are ones that help Dalits and other oppressed groups get into and pay for college. For nearly half a century, IIT admissions have been subject to a reservation system that’s still hotly debated on the campuses. In recent years, the schools have opposed attempts to extend affirmative action to faculty hires, arguing it would dilute the quality of the applicant pool and undermine their meritocratic image.

The IITs are notoriously cutthroat, starting with the admissions process. Some 2.2 million people have registered to take the 2021 entrance exam, to vie for roughly 16,000 slots. About 15% of those are allotted to students from the Scheduled Castes (SCs) and another 7.5% to applicants from the Scheduled Tribes (STs), indigenous people who’ve faced marginalization and whose status has also been formalized by the constitution. To fill those slots, universities sometimes offer seats to students with test scores below the cutoff point—though not as far below as is commonly assumed.

Caste-based resentment at the IITs can run high. In one video posted on YouTube in 2018, a student poring over a pile of books is labeled “GEN,” for general pool, while the two students sleeping nearby are identified as “SC” and “ST.” In another post circulated widely among IIT groups last year, a student suggested Covid-19 should also give preferential treatment to the marginalized groups. “My dear Corona,” it said in Hindi. “In every sphere SC/STs get first preference. So if you can, please look into the same.”

Dalit IIT graduates who’ve managed to land jobs in the U.S. say that such attitudes can be found there, too. Last year a Dalit graduate of IIT Bombay filed suit in the U.S. against Cisco Systems Inc. and two of his fellow alums, saying he’d experienced caste-based discrimination at their hands while the three of them were employed at the company. The accompanying publicity prompted a wave of complaints about caste discrimination in American tech—allegations that seemed to blindside the industry.

Amit Jatav, a Dalit from Karauli, in the northwestern state of Rajasthan, remembers catching “the IIT bug” in high school, where he excelled in chemistry, physics, and math. His father, an elementary school teacher, and his mother, a fieldworker, scraped together money from relatives and local lenders to send him for a year of test prep. He took the entrance exam in 2017 and got into IIT Delhi on his first try.

Jatav’s classmates quickly identified him as Dalit. He’d been educated in Hindi-language schools, and his English was poor. His clothes were worn and shabby. He didn’t have a smartphone. In an environment where entrance exam scores are status symbols, Jatav had placed relatively low, marking him as a “quota” student. He heard loud comments saying he was at IIT only because of his “category” instead of “earning it rightfully.” He wasn’t invited to study groups, dinners, or social events.

Swami Shashi The political Hinduism of Shashi Tharoor – Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd



http://www.kanchailaiah.com/2018/05/28/swami-shashi-the-political-h...

Traditionally, the basic work of the Nairs, as of many Shudra castes, was agriculture, but the caste system that allotted them this work also denied them land rights. Over the centuries, the Nairs moved away from their typically Shudra occupation, and under the influence of Brahminism entered into a unique relationship with the dominant Nambudiri Brahmins. Well into the nineteenth

century, Nair women lived in sambhandham with the Nambudri Brahmins’ younger sons. This was a form of sexual slavery, with the women denied marital rights and the men freed from obligation towards any children of the union, and it had full spiritual and religious sanction under the caste order.



Like other oppressed castes, under Brahminical hegemony the Nairs were also denied the right to education. That restriction was loosened with the arrival of British power, but with that control over education in Kerala fell largely into the hands of Syrian Christians. In 1914, the Nair leader Mannatthu Padmanabha Pillai established the Nair Service Society, with a view to gaining educational autonomy. The organisation runs a number of institutions of learning to this day, and has been crucial to making the Nairs the most educated Shudra community in India today.



Pillai was a reformer of the Nairs, but not a reformer of society as a whole. In response to the Nair’s historical oppression and humiliation, the Nair Service Society chose not to reject Brahminical social organisation but to further Brahminise the Nair community. The organisation asserted that it was a Hindu group, and aggressively propagated the religion. Tragically, the Nair Service Society never helped in the uplift of other oppressed castes. Instead, Nairs have participated in those castes’ continued persecution, and have played only a marginal role in anti-caste movements. Tharoor is a carrier of this legacy.



“I am the product of a nationalist generation that was consciously raised to be oblivious of caste,” Tharoor writes, recounting that his father dropped “Nair” from his name, “moved to London and brought his children up in Westernised Bombay.” He congratulates himself for how even after he entered the “caste-ridden world of Indian politics … I did not deliberately seek to find out the caste of anyone I met or worked with; I hired a cook without asking his caste (the same with my remaining domestic staff) and have entertained all manner of people in my home without the thought of caste affinity even crossing my mind.” He recalls his “own discovery of caste.” While he was at school, an older boy cornered him near the toilet to ask “what caste are you?” Tharoor replied, “I—I don’t know.” The other boy continued, “You mean you’re not a Brahmin or something?” Tharoor writes, “I could not even avow I was a something.”



Tharoor acknowledges that he holds a privileged position: in today’s India, only great wealth and social advantage, combined to permit a private Englishlanguage schooling, can allow anyone the pretence of being innocent of caste. In Tharoor’s case, it exposes his social ignorance, while his roundabout treatment of caste suggests an unease. If he had been a Brahmin, it is likely Tharoor would have owned up to it matter-offactly. By disregarding his Nair heritage and his caste’s struggle against subordination in the Hindu order, he obscures how he came to be in his privileged position. As a result, he makes it seems as if caste can be shrugged off, where for the vast majority of Indians the attempt to break free of it has been, and is, a bloody struggle. To write in this way about the religion that created the caste system is unethical.

“It is difficult to pretend that Hinduism can be exempted from the problems of casteism,” Tharoor states at the start of a passage examining caste in general, yet taken as a whole that is exactly what the passage does.

#Hindu youths taunt an #Indian #hockey player's family in Uttarakhand, saying #Dalits in the team were to blame for the bronze-medal play-off defeat. India’s 200 million Dalits are regular targets of discrimination and often deadly abuse.
https://aje.io/k4zgmy via @AJEnglish

India’s hockey captain Rani Rampal has criticised the “shameful” racist abuse of a team member’s family, saying it was damaging the country’s quest to boost its sporting image.

India saw a hockey renaissance at the Tokyo Games with the men taking third place – their first medal in 41 years in a sport where they have won a record eight Olympic gold medals – while the women were narrowly beaten by Great Britain in their bronze medal play-off.

The women’s best-ever Olympic performance was tainted by abuse of the family of Vandana Katariya, from the so-called “lower-caste” Dalit community that has faced generations of discrimination.

Youths taunted the family at their Uttarakhand state home saying the Dalits in the team were to blame for the defeat. The family has said that threats were made, too.

“It’s such a bad thing,” Rampal told reporters. “We put our life and soul into it, struggle and sacrifice so much to represent our country and when we see what is happening – what happened to Vandana’s family – I just want to say to people please stop this religious division and casteism.

“We have to rise above this. We come from different religions – Hindu, Muslim, Sikh – and come from all parts of India. But here we work for India.”

The 26-year-old Rampal, whose own father pulled a cart to feed his family, added that it was “such a shameful thing when we see that people behave like this”.

While the team had felt “so much love from people” despite not winning a first medal, she said that lessons had to be learned to end such abuse “if we want make our country a sporting nation”.

India’s 200 million Dalits, once known as the “untouchables”, are regular targets of discrimination and often deadly abuse.

#Modi opposes #caste census in #India. A caste count could cause fissures in the #Hindu vote, which the #BJP has managed to consolidate in recent years, despite deep divisions that underpin the party's plank of Hindu unity. #Islamophobia_in_india https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-58141993

Major opposition and regional leaders have met India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi to argue in favour of counting caste in the country's census.

"A caste census will be a historic, pro-poor measure," Tejashwi Yadav, a leader of the regional Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), was quoted as saying by the Press Trust of India.

Mr Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party's decision not to do so has sparked a political maelstrom.

Hinduism's deeply hierarchical and oppressive caste system, which dates back some 2,000 years, puts Brahmins or priests at the top, and Dalits (formerly untouchables) and Adivasis (tribespeople) at the bottom.

In between are a multitude of castes - it's hard to even say how many because there is no list that has enumerated them all.

But there is a swathe of lower and intermediate castes, which are roughly believed to constitute about 52% of the population, that are recognised as Other Backward Classes or OBCs.

While India's census, which happens every 10 years, has always recorded the population of Dalits and Adivasis, it has never counted OBCs.

Now, several political parties, including BJP's allies, are demanding a caste census - essentially a count of OBCs. However, the government has refused.


------------------

Caste is a crucial factor in every Indian election, from the village council to the parliament. More so in Uttar Pradesh, where the BJP's power and popularity rest on a delicately forged alliance of castes, and especially those in the OBC category.

A caste count could cause fissures in the Hindu vote, which the BJP has managed to consolidate in recent years, despite deep divisions that underpin the party's plank of Hindu unity.

The government has also argued that it would lead to the perpetuation of caste identities - but lower castes say that identity is a reality they grapple with everyday and only the privileged can afford to overlook caste.

Critics say there's another reason for the BJP's reluctance. Counting OBCs would reveal what a large proportion of the population they make up, but how little of it comprises upper castes, who nevertheless dominate politics and bureaucracy, because of centuries of privilege afforded by wealth and education.

'God has not blessed us': Low #caste #Indian boy’s response to a reporter about #schools over #temples goes viral. #education #Hindu #religion https://news.yahoo.com/god-not-blessed-us-indian-213134685.html?soc... via @YahooNews


A video of a teenage boy in India telling a reporter why classrooms are more important than temples has garnered attention online.

The clip, which has gone viral on social media, shows a local reporter from SM News interviewing a 13-year-old boy from Varanasi city, in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.

Asked what he plans to do when he grows up, the boy said he wants to serve his community by becoming an Indian Administrative Service officer.

When the reporter then asked the teen about going to temple, he talked about the merits of schools instead. “When we study, then we’ll get a job,” the boy said.

According to the young interviewee, he would “rather be in a classroom” because schools are more important.

“God has not blessed us,” he reasoned. “God will not give us anything. But education will.”

The stunned reporter then asked him about his caste, a social system that divides Hindus into rigid hierarchical groups and has long been used for discriminatory practices in Indian society.

“I am from the Chamar community,” the boy answered.

The reporter remarked: “You are from the Chamar community, and you say this with such pride!”

Under modern India’s system of affirmative action, Chamars are classified as a Scheduled Caste, the lowest in the caste hierarchy. Being called a Chamar is considered derogatory in India.

While discrimination based on the caste system has been banned in India since 1948, its existence over thousands of years continues to provide the upper castes with societal privileges while the lower castes remain repressed and limited in job opportunities.

The teen said that instead of looking up to gods in a temple, he admires Dr. Bhim Rao Ambedkar, a member of a low-caste community who went on to become a notable Indian scholar, politician, jurist, social reformist and author of the Indian constitution.

Ambedkar, also referred to as an honorific title Babasaheb, was instrumental in leading public movements that advocate for marginalized communities.

With the crowd starting to boo the reporter, he went on to ask the teen why he would want to worship Ambedkar but not the gods.

“Babasaheb gave us reservation and constitution,” the boy said. “What did gods do for us? We don’t go to a temple, we go to schools. God has given us nothing. I would rather get an education in a school.”

The two-minute clip has been widely shared across social media platforms, receiving many comments from social media users who were impressed by the boy’s response.

Only 3% Muslims are in Indian national media

https://muslimmirror.com/eng/muslims-are-only-3-in-indian-national-...


Recently, Oxfam India released a report titled “Who Tells Our Stories Matters: Representation of Marginalised Caste Groups in Indian Media.” It says; 90% of leadership positions in Indian media are occupied by Upper Caste groups with not even a single Dalit or Adivasi heading Indian mainstream media.

Exactly the same findings were made by the social activist and psephologist, Yogendra Yadav in 2006 who did a similar survey about the social profile of the national media professionals in India.

Yadav recalls the days of the Mandal II agitation in 2006 when he did this survey; “It was more a rudimentary headcount than a scientific survey but it confirmed our worst suspicions about caste, gender, and religion across Indian media.”

“We drew up a list of 40 national media outlets (Hindi and English TV channels and newspapers) and requested someone there to draw a list of their top 10 editor-level decision-makers. Then we recorded information on the gender, religion, and caste against each name. We had shortlisted 400 persons but were able to collect information on 315 only” he recalls.

Our findings were; “A staggering 88 percent of this elite list were upper-caste Hindus, a social group that cannot possibly exceed 20 percent of India’s population. Brahmins alone, no more than 2-3 percent of the population, occupied 49 percent of positions. Not even a single person in this list turned out to be from Dalit or Adivasi background. More relevant to the case in point, the OBCs, whose population is estimated to be around 45 percent, was merely 4 percent among the top media professionals. Women accounted for only 16 percent.

Yadav says that “the representation of the 14 percent Muslims was only 3 percent in the national media. He adds that brazen anti-minority headlines get routinely generated in media and the communal flare-up gets 9 times more coverage than caste conflict in India.”

Yadav says what we summarized in 2006 that India’s ‘national’ media lacks social diversity; it does not reflect the country’s social profile comes true with findings of the Oxfam report on media in India. The big picture that remains the same even after 15 years is that 20 percent of the country gets 80 percent voice in the media and the remaining 80 percent is limited to 20 percent media space.

Yogendra Yadav’s writeup “Hindu upper-caste Indian media is a lot like White-dominated South Africa” can be accessed in The Print, October 27, 2022.


---------------

Media has been perceived by the masses as a sacrosanct institution but how these are governed is a matter of mystery. While a wide range of issues are discussed, covered and aired both in print as well as on news channels, caste disparity within media houses has hardly ever been a topic of serious discussion. The deliberate ignorance of the issues that affect marginalised communities has led them to come up with their own channels.

This study is an attempt to find out the status of representation among SC, ST, OBC & DNT in different media outlets. The research team has explored the challenges faced by newsrooms, looked for existing best practices that different countries have adopted and also provided suggestions to make newsrooms more inclusive.


https://www.oxfamindia.org/knowledgehub/workingpaper/who-tells-our-...

Caste Is Suffering This is some profound existential shit. Imagine your worth and your fate are irrevocably determined at the moment of your birth. You are condemned to a life of servitude, humiliation, exploitation. You are less than human. You have no choice but to live in a caste apartheid of segregated ghettos and be denied access to schools, roads, basic amenities like fresh water. You are forbidden to speak or hear or read the language of Sanskrit, in which the laws that determine your fate are written. You are not even allowed the consolation of spiritual practice, some kind of relationship with a higher power, because you are considered spiritually defiling before God. This life sentence—because let’s be clear, this is the life of a slave, a spiritual criminal—is decreed in the scriptures that form the entire basis of your society. If it is scripture itself that condemns you to being outcast for life, who then would challenge the law of God?

As Gail Omvedt details in her classic study Buddhism in India, Brahmins used Vedic scripture to award themselves high status, sanctity, and power while circumscribing other communities in lower classes based on social function. Among the first scriptures to do this is the Rig Veda, in the Purusha Sukta, a hymn that introduces the concept of varna as part of the divine order.13 The Purusha is described as the first being from whom all other creation is derived. His sacrifice creates all life forms, including human beings, as his parts make up the origins of the universe, the elements, all the worlds, and everything in creation. The text says:

Soundararajan, Thenmozhi. The Trauma of Caste (p. 55). North Atlantic Books. Kindle Edition.

When they divided Puruṣha how many portions did they make? What do they call his mouth, his arms? What do they call his thighs and feet? The Brahman was his mouth, of both his arms was the Rājanya made. His thighs became the Vaiśya, from his feet the Śūdra was produced. The Moon was gendered from his mind, and from his eye the Sun had birth; Indra and Agni from his mouth were born, and Vāyu from his breath. Forth from his navel came mid-air; the sky was fashioned from his head, Earth from his feet, and from his ear the regions. Thus they formed the worlds.14

Soundararajan, Thenmozhi. The Trauma of Caste (p. 55). North Atlantic Books. Kindle Edition.

These verses describe a world in which all humans originate from the varnas, or social classes, that sprung from the body of Purusha. His mouth or his head was the origin of the priestly class, the Brahmins. Then the Rajanyas, or the varna that would come to be known as Kshatriyas—the rulers and warriors—were supposed to come from his arms and chest. The Vaishyas came from his abdomen and thighs; they were the merchants, artisans, and traders—tasked with being responsible for the external dealings in the world. The Shudras were the servant class, and they were his feet.

Soundararajan, Thenmozhi. The Trauma of Caste (pp. 55-56). North Atlantic Books. Kindle Edition.

#Hindu Nationalists have also targeted #Jewish-#American Professor Audrey Truschke with vicious threats and abuse on her various social-media profiles, including threats of #rape and #murder, as well as anti-#Muslim and #Antisemitic slurs. #Islamophobia https://caravanmagazine.in/history/hindu-right-cannot-debate-me-aud...

Audrey Truschke is an associate professor of South Asian history at the Rutgers University in New Jersey, in the United States. Truschke’s research focuses on the history of early and modern India. She has written three books on the subject—Culture of Encounters, on Sanskrit in the Mughal courts; Aurangzeb: The Man and the Myth which argues for a reassessment of the Mughal king; and the recently published Language of History: Sanskrit Narratives of Indo-Muslim rule.

Truschke has regularly come under severe criticism from Hindu right-wing nationalists, who see her academic research into India’s complex multicultural past and religious history as an affront to their beliefs. Beginning with the release of her first book, Truschke has faced a constant barrage of online harassment, hate mail, co-ordinated attacks on social media, and in some cases, even censure—in August 2018, a lecture she was due to give in Hyderabad was cancelled due to security threats, after the police received letters of opposition. The same year, she faced an outpouring of threats and abuse after she tweeted that according to one loosely translated verse in Valmiki’s mythological epic Ramayana, Sita called Ram a “misogynistic pig.” Truschke discussed this interpretation and the misogynistic response from the Hindu right-wing, in an article in this publication.

In early March this year, Truschke began facing a spike in vicious threats and abuse on her various social-media profiles, including threats of rape and murder, as well as anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic slurs. The abuse referred primarily to her scholarship on India. On 9 March, Truschke tweeted that in recent days, she had faced an “avalanche of hate speech” and threats endangering her family. She said she had blocked 5,750 accounts “and counting.” A few days earlier, an anonymous Twitter account “@hinduoncampus,” which claimed to be run by Hindu students in US universities, circulated an open letter to the Rutgers administration, describing Truschke’s work as “bigotry against Hindus.” In a statement issued on 9 March, Rutgers University called for an end to the trolling, and backed Truschke’s academic freedom to pursue “controversial” scholarship. It also promised to begin a dialogue with the Hindu students on campus.

Epilogue: Black Feminist Buddhist Response to the Trauma of Caste

Aishah Shahidah Simmons

Breathing in … I read and hold close Thenmozhi’s beautiful and courageous Dalit feminist meditation. I am left with the question: How do our solidarities allow us to move forward in the face of such relentless evil? Caste apartheid and white supremacy, along with capitalism, patriarchy, misogyny, misogynoir, audism, ableism, cis-heterosexism, transphobia, Islamophobia, and other forms of oppression, are death-dealing to millions across the globe. Is this not evil? Is this not the suffering that we must end? Caste apartheid is painful to navigate. Thenmozhi walks us through its challenging terrain, painting a detailed portrait of how the soul wounds of caste apartheid are a global pandemic that contributes to genocidal violence across South Asia. The external caste-based violence committed against Dalit communities often results in loud silences around intracommunal sexual violence, a reality that survivors of color in the US know too well.

Soundararajan, Thenmozhi. The Trauma of Caste (p. 155). North Atlantic Books. Kindle Edition.

'Brahmins represent the head of India': Manoj Muntashir's video on JNU posters

"Though India was plundered several times by outside forces in history, it did not lose everything and who saved these things from the plunderers? The Brahmins. I don't need to remind you that Mangal Pandey and Chanakya were Brahmins," Manoj Muntashir said.

"We are the kingmakers; Brahmins never hankered after power. Maharishi Vasistha never wanted to capture Ayodhya," Manoj Muntashir said adding that some people think Brahmins divided the society into castes but it is not the fact, he said. Brahmins represent the head of India and it should never be bowed down, Manoj Muntashir added.

Brahmins make up 4.3% of the Indian population, 50% wealthy, 37% middle, 13% lower.

The Indian Dalits attacked for wearing the wrong shoes - BBC
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-44517922
Jun 19, 2018 — Documenting five seemingly mundane reasons Dalits (formerly untouchables) have been beaten and killed.


Dalit man killed for riding horse in Gujarat - Times of India
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/rajkot/dalit-man-killed-fo...
Mar 30, 2018 — Pradeep Rathod, 21, was beaten to death by a group of people from the Darbar community in Timbi village of Umrala taluka.


'This Is It. I'm Going To Die': India's Minorities Are Targeted In Lynchings
https://www.npr.org/2019/08/21/751541321/this-is-it-im-going-to-die...
Aug 21, 2019 — That slogan — which means "Praise Lord Ram," a Hindu god — has long been known as a prayer. Now it's an incitement to mob violence against India's minorities.


India's Violent Mobs Are a Menace to Minorities
https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/03/18/indias-violent-mobs-are-menace-...


India: Vigilante 'Cow Protection' Groups Attack Minorities
https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/02/19/india-vigilante-cow-protection-...


Hindu Priest Calls for the Beheading of Christians in India
https://www.persecution.org/2021/10/24/hindu-priest-calls-beheading...


Spectre Of Mob Lynchings Continues To Haunt India Amid Lacklustre Laws
https://www.outlookindia.com/national/spectre-of-mob-lynchings-cont...
Apr 28, 2022 — Lynching is not defined as a crime under the Indian Penal Code. In 2017, NCRB collected data on cases of mob lynching, hate crimes etc. But it was observed that the data was unreliable.

Beaten and humiliated by Hindu mobs for being a Muslim in India

by Geeta Pandey

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-58406194

Unprovoked attacks on Muslims by Hindu mobs have become routine in India, but they seem to evoke little condemnation from the government.

Last month, a video that went viral on social media showed a terrified little girl clinging to her Muslim father as a Hindu mob assaulted him.

The distressing footage showed the 45-year-old rickshaw driver being paraded through the streets of Kanpur, a city in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, as his crying daughter begged the mob to stop hitting him.

His attackers asked him to chant "Hindustan Zindabad" or "Long Live India" and "Jai Shri Ram" or "Victory to Lord Ram" - a popular greeting that's been turned into a murder cry by Hindu lynch mobs in recent years.

He complied, but the mob still kept hitting him. The man and his daughter were eventually rescued by the police. Three men arrested for the attack were freed on bail a day later.

A few days later, another viral video surfaced showing a Muslim bangle-seller being slapped, kicked and punched by a Hindu mob in Indore, a city in the central state of Madhya Pradesh. The attackers could be heard abusing Tasleem Ali and telling him to stay away from Hindu areas in future.

In a police complaint, he later alleged that he had been "beaten by five-six men who hurled communal slurs at him for selling bangles in a Hindu-dominated area and robbed him of money, his phone and some documents".

But in a strange turn of events, Ali himself was arrested the next day after the 13-year-old daughter of one of his alleged attackers accused him of molesting her. His family and neighbours have strongly denied the accusation. They said it was inconceivable that the father of five would do something like that.

And eyewitnesses, quoted in the Indian press, said he was attacked because of his religious identity and the molestation accusation against him seemed to be an afterthought.

The two attacks were among several instances of anti-Muslim violence in August, but the last month by no means was cruellest for India's biggest religious minority group, with a population of more than 200 million.

Dalit Activist Thenmozhi Soundararajan Takes on Caste
Her debut book, The Trauma of Caste, exposes caste oppression in the South Asian subcontinent and the United States.

https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/features/a42257504/dalit-acti...

When Thenmozhi Soundararajan was 10 years old, she discovered that her Indian family was “untouchable”—they belonged to the lowest caste in Hinduism. Though abolished in India’s constitution in 1950, the thousands-of-years-old social and religious hierarchy, which classifies people into five levels based on spiritual purity, persists in South Asia and the diaspora. Soundararajan’s parents, who hailed from the state of Tamil Nadu, fled caste oppression in 1975 to become one of the first Tamil families to immigrate to Los Angeles. Though they built successful careers as physicians while raising two children, they took great pains to hide their caste from other South Asian Americans.

Soundararajan soon learned why during a playdate at an Indian friend’s house, whose family belonged to the highest caste, Brahmin. When Soundararajan mentioned that she was untouchable, a look of disgust flashed across her friend’s mother’s face. Due to the belief that Brahmins cannot share food or even eat from the same kitchenware as members of the lowest caste, she switched Soundararajan’s snack plate to a different one.

Soundararajan was devastated. As she learned more about her caste and her family's experiences, her trauma from caste grew. Her self-esteem suffered for years. “I was haunted by the lie fed to me by caste oppression—that I wasn't human enough,” she says. “I felt dirty. I was always washing my hands, smoothing my clothes, and fidgeting with my hair. I picked apart my features and my complexion. I had a lingering sense of imposter syndrome that was difficult to shake for many years.”

I was haunted by the lie fed to me by caste oppression—that I wasn't human enough

Soundararajan has since made it her mission to end caste oppression, a journey she recounts in her debut book, The Trauma of Caste: A Dalit Feminist Meditation on Survivorship, Healing, and Abolition (North Atlantic Books). The word Dalit translates to broken and is the caste Brahmins deem untouchable. But as Soundararajan explains in the book, Dalit also represents the resilience, survival, and the pride of her people.

Caste extends far beyond the borders of the South Asian subcontinent. It impacts 1.9 billion South Asians and 5.5 million South Asians in the United States. It is also found in all South Asian religious communities. “For anyone born into a culture where caste is prevalent,” Soundararajan says, “it determines who and where they worship, where they live, choices and advancement in education and career, even personal relationships—in essence, their entire lives.” Dalits in South Asia face rampant human rights abuses and have a much lower life expectancy than dominant-caste South Asians. Speaking out about caste violence has made Soundararajan a target. “To be a woman leader today means you have to deal with endless threats, gaslighting, and very little support for your safety. We are strong on the outside, but vulnerable and tender as we work with the pain of those attacks.”

In 2015, Soundararajan cofounded Equality Labs, a Dalit civil rights organization. One year later, Equality Labs conducted the first survey on caste discrimination in the United States. It found, among other things, that two out of three Dalits were mistreated because of their caste in the workplace, one in four had endured verbal or physical assault because of their caste, and one in three Dalit students were discriminated against in education. “The results were shocking, even to us,” Soundararajan says. “Dalits have some of the highest rates of discrimination and violence of all Asian American communities.” The survey led to Equality Labs, its partners, and the office of Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal to organize the first congressional briefing on caste discrimination.

Dalit Activist Thenmozhi Soundararajan Takes on Caste

https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/features/a42257504/dalit-acti...

We are strong on the outside, but vulnerable and tender as we work with the pain
Caste discrimination in this country has made headlines in recent years. One of its epicenters is Silicon Valley. In 2020, California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing sued CISCO for discrimination based on caste when two dominant caste supervisors mistreated a Dalit engineer and paid him a lower salary than others. Soon thereafter, Apple became the first large tech company to explicitly ban caste discrimination in its employee handbook, along with race, religion, gender, age, and ancestry.

U.S. temples have also been the site of caste oppression. Last year, a federal lawsuit was filed against BAPS, a Hindu denomination, for paying Dalits far below minimum wage and forcing them to live in a guarded compound while constructing new temples. “Caste is a workers’ rights issue,” Soundararajan says. “We have to work together to make all workplaces safer for all workers and add caste as a protected category.”

The Trauma of Caste is a prescription for healing. It contains meditations on restoration, nonattachment practice, and the importance of forming connections with myriad communities. For Soundararajan, conversion to Buddhism in adulthood, following in the footsteps of Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, a Dalit scholar, activist, and drafter of the Indian constitution, played an important role in her quest for peace. “For me, becoming Buddhist was claiming my own divinity. It was acknowledging how much violence I faced in religious institutions and charting my own path as a seeker that acknowledged my beauty, my power, my dignity, and my life. Buddhism helped me find a way to make peace with the violence that has shaped me, without letting it define me.”

It is a powerful thing to return to your fellow humans and leave behind the lies
But the violence won’t end until the eradication of caste begins, Soundararajan says. Members of dominant castes must reflect on their privilege and fragility with great intention and mindfulness. “They have benefited for centuries from the exploitation and discrimination of caste-oppressed people. They must confront the histories of blood and violence that have created the conditions for their power and led to their family wealth, land, and resources.” Dominant-caste South Asians must also find ways to take direct, measurable action. “They can add caste as a protected category in their workplace, speak out about ethnonationalist violence in our homelands, and challenge caste privilege in their family and friend networks.”

An oppressive system only divides and fractures everyone. A reckoning with caste, and the pain it continues to cause, Soundararajan says, is an opportunity to restore humanity globally. “It is a powerful thing to return to your fellow humans and leave behind the social lies that have harmed all of us for too long. This is no time for silence. It is instead the time to heal.”

Hundreds killed each year for marrying outside caste: CJI DY Chandrachud

https://www.indiatoday.in/law/story/hundreds-killed-each-year-for-m...

Hundreds of people are killed each year for falling in love or marrying outside their castes or against the wishes of their families, the Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud said today while speaking on morality and its interplay with the law.

The CJI made the statement while referring to an incident of honor killing in Uttar Pradesh in 1991 as carried in a news article by the American magazine, Time.

The article shared the story of a 15-year-old girl who eloped with a man of 20 from a lower caste. They were later murdered by the upper castes of the village, and believed their actions were justified because they complied with the code of conduct of society.

The CJI was delivering the Ashok Desai Memorial Lecture on the topic ‘Law and Morality: The Bounds and Reaches’, addressing questions on the indissoluble link between law, morality, and group rights.

While talking about morality, the CJI said that expressions of good and bad, right and wrong are often used in everyday conversations.

The CJI said that while the law regulates external relations, morality governs the inner life and motivation. Morality appeals to our conscience and often influences the way we behave.

‘We can all agree that morality is a system of values that prescribes a code of conduct. But, do all of us principally agree on what constitutes morality? That is, is it necessary that what is moral for me ought to be moral to you as well?’ he asked.

While discussing what constitutes ‘adequate morality’, the CJI said that groups that have traditionally held positions of power in the socio-economic-political context of society have an advantage over the weaker sections in this bargaining process to reach adequate morality.

The CJI further built an argument that vulnerable groups are placed at the bottom of the social structure and that their consent, even if attained, is a myth. For example, Max Weber argued that the Dalits have never rebelled.

He pointed out that the dominant groups, by attacking the etiquette of the vulnerable groups, often prevent them from creating an identity that is unique to themselves.

The CJI elaborated on the same by sharing an example of clothing being one of the tools employed by dominant castes to alienate the Dalit community, where it was a wide-spread norm that the members of the Dalit community must wear marks of inferiority to be identified.

The CJI further spoke about how, even after the framing of the Constitution, the law has been imposing ‘adequate morality’, that is, the morality of the dominant community.

Prominent Indian Historian on Hindutva History

https://thewire.in/history/what-history-really-tells-us-about-hindu...

From the historical perspective, we may well ask whether the division had evidence to support it. Supposedly irrefutable evidence of division is said to lie in the Muslims over the last 1,000 years having victimised the Hindus, treating them as enslaved. Why do historians question this theory? It is claimed that when the Muslims invaded India and came to power, they victimised and enslaved the Hindus for 1,000 years. The image projected is that of violence and aggression of one against the other. Now that the Hindus are in power they should have the right to avenge themselves. However, the historical sources researched by professional historians read differently and do not rejuvenate this view of colonial historians.

The dictionary tells us that to victimise is to make a victim of a person or a specific group of people, to cheat, swindle and defraud them, or to deny them any freedom, or to slaughter them in the manner of a sacrificial victim. Politicians of a certain view and others who should know better, are known to endorse the theory. The professional activity of Hindus was reduced to a minimum, they were socially ostracised and above all forcibly converted. They also had to pay a tax as non-Muslims.


Victimisation is not unknown to most pre-modern societies. Those having access to power and wealth, resort to humiliating and harming those without either. Upper-caste Hindus have been familiar with this practice for more than two millennia. The Dalits, lower castes, untouchables were segregated, and it was claimed that their touch was polluting. They were placed in a separate category of those without or outside caste, the avarnas. This was practised among all religions in India, although records link it more to upper-caste Hindus.



It seems that even on conversion to other religions, and specially those that in theory observed the equality of all, this segregation was maintained. As a category, it may well have been larger in numbers. This is why we have Muslim pasmandas, Sikh mazhabis, Dalit Christians, and such like. Yet these are religions that formally believe in all of mankind being created equal. One difference however is that this practice was not directed primarily to a religion but was linked to caste and the absence of caste status. Many questions arise that are fundamentally important to our society. Are practices of this kind directed less to particular religious communities and more to the large numbers outside varna society? Are these actions defined more by caste than by other identities or do they change with purpose and intent? Significantly, in Sanskrit sources, Muslims are generally not referred to as Muslim but by ethnic labels such as Yavana, Tajik, Turushka, etc.

Since so much of crucial importance has happened as a result of what was projected as religious antagonism, and even victimisation, let’s just look at what were the actual relations between the two religious communities, the Hindu and the Muslim, and in the period of the last thousand years.

Starting at the level of the elites we know that quite a few Hindu royal families remained at the highest social status. They remained at the head of the administration in their erstwhile kingdoms and were given the continuing status and title of raja. The politics of administration required some continuation. Their income – agrarian and commercial – was sufficient for maintaining their aristocratic style of living.

Prominent Indian Historian on Hindutva History

https://thewire.in/history/what-history-really-tells-us-about-hindu...

Traders from Arabia and East Africa trading with the west coast of India go back many centuries, even before the birth of Islam. The extensive trade touched points along the Indian Ocean Arc – the coastline that went continuously from East Africa up the coast of Arabia, on to the coast of Gujarat and then south along coastal India to Kerala. There was considerable familiarity among traders on each side. Arab traders after the spread of Islam, settled in the flourishing towns trading along this coast. Their invading activities were limited to a part of Sind.



Some Arab settlers married locally, which is what settlers often do when they arrive in new places. Cultures intermingled. All along the west coast of India, new societies evolved. Social identities and religious sects were a mix of Islam with existing religions of the area. This resulted in new religious movements, many of which are still prominent – the Khojas, Bohras, Navayaths, Mappilas and such like.

It also led to the employment of Arabs in local administration. The Rashtrakutas in the 9th century AD appointed a Tajik /Arab governor of the region of Sanjan in coastal Deccan. A Rashtrakuta inscription records the grant of land made to a brahmana by a Tajik/Arab officer on behalf of the Rashtrakuta king. The revenue from this went towards donations to local temples as well as to the Parsi Anjuman, since many Parsi merchants were settled in the area. The majority of officers at this level of administration were members of the local elite and therefore largely Hindu, and these officers continued in the administration of the Sultans.

Appointing local persons to high office was a practice that went back centuries, providing closer control over local matters. This may well be a reason for Muslim rulers appointing Rajputs to high office. The Mughal economy was in the trusted hands of the Vazir, Raja Todar Mal, and Raja Man Singh of Amber, a Rajput, commanded the Mughal army at the battle of Haldighati. He defeated another Rajput who was an opponent of the Mughals – Maharana Pratap. Pratap’s army with its large contingent of Afghan mercenaries had as commander Hakim Khan Suri, a descendant of Sher Shah Suri. One could ask whether the battle was strictly speaking essentially a Hindu-Muslim confrontation. Both religious identities had participants on each side in a complex political conflict. Rajput clans had differing loyalties among themselves and the imperial power and therefore fought on opposite sides, and regaining ancestral kingdoms was on both agendas.


The intervention of Hindu chiefs in the politics of the Mughal court was substantial. One instance that went on for a long period was that of Mughal relations with Bundelkhand. The Bundella raja, Bir Singh Deo, who was close to Jahangir and held one of the highest Mughal mansabs /rank of revenue assignment, was so embroiled in Mughal court politics that he was linked to the assassination of the chief chronicler and close friend of Akbar, Abul Fazl.

Ramayana is anti-OBC and anti-women


https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-64556116

Ramcharitmanas is counted by many scholars to be among the world's greatest literary creations. Celebrated author Pavan Varma calls it "a deeply philosophical work" which "is akin to the Bible for many Hindus".

Composed by Tulsidas, the poem is a retelling of Ramayana, the Sanskrit epic written by Hindu sage Valmiki 2,500 years ago. It's widely believed that Tulsidas's version, which is written in Awadhi - a dialect very similar to Hindi - is what made Ram's story accessible to the masses and why it became so popular.

The story of the crown prince of Ayodhya and his victory over the demon king Ravana is performed every year during the Dussehra festival across India. He is a god who's revered by millions of Hindus for his sense of justice and fair play.

But in the past few weeks, politicians on opposing sides have been arguing over whether the text is derogatory towards women as well as Dalits, who are at the bottom of India's deeply discriminatory caste system.

This is not the first time Tulsidas's epic, written more than 600 years ago, has been criticised, but what sets it apart this time is the scale of protests by both its supporters and critics. General elections in India are due in a year and politicians from both sides accuse each other of using the controversy over the book to polarise voters along caste lines.

Since January, protesters have burned pages allegedly containing excerpts from the book - and counter-protests have been held, demanding critics of the work be arrested.

At least five people, accused of desecrating the sacred text, have been arrested and, at the weekend, police invoked the National Security Act (NSA), a draconian law that makes bail nearly impossible, against two of the arrested men.



-----

Trouble started in January when a minister in the northern state of Bihar said the book was "spreading hatred in society". At a gathering of university students, Education Minister Chandrashekhar (who uses only one name) recited a few lines from Ramcharitmanas to prove his point.

"It says that if people from lower castes receive education, they become poisonous, like a snake becomes after drinking milk," he said.

A few days later, Swami Prasad Maurya, a prominent leader of a socially-disadvantaged community known as Other Backward Classes (OBC) and a member of the regional Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh state, expressed similar sentiments.

Insisting that some verses of Ramcharitmanas were "offensive", he demanded that they be removed from the book.


"Why hurl abuse in the name of religion? I respect all religions. But if in the name of religion, a community or caste is humiliated then it is objectionable," The Indian Express quoted him as saying.

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Prof Hemlata Mahishwar of Delhi's Jamia University told BBC Hindi that "it's not just one or two lines but there are several verses" in Ramcharitmanas that are derogatory to women and Dalits.

"There's one couplet that says that a Brahmin is to be worshipped even if he's full of bad qualities. Whereas a Dalit, even if he's a Vedic scholar, cannot be respected. So how can we accept a book that's so biased?"

Some experts, however, say that Tulsidas was not a reformer and did have his biases, but the controversial lines are spoken by his characters and can't be taken to be a reflection of the author's opinion.

Akhilesh Shandilya, an expert on Ramcharitmanas, told BBC Hindi that the lines appear derogatory to Dalits and anti-women only when taken out of context and read in isolation.

But critics say that Ramcharitmanas has to be approached in the present-day context and deserves scrutiny and discussion, especially as it is a book that has such a hold on the imagination of Indians.

Why did Tulsidas ask his God Rama to punish Shudras and women not Mughal rulers?
in Life/Philosophy — by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd —

https://countercurrents.org/2023/02/why-did-tulsidas-ask-his-god-ra...

The anti-Shudra, Dalit and women language of Tulsidas in his Ramcharitamanas engendered a major controversy in North India. Its impact could also be seen in the South, which already had a strong Shudra mobilization history. He equated them with animals and drums and wanted to keep punishing them forever. The new consciousness of the Shudras, Dalits and women is not going to accept this kind of writing. They do not want their children to study these historical humiliating books in the schools, colleges and universities. It is a known fact that the RSS/BJP want to impose all such books in our educational institutions.

All over the country the Shudra consciousness is opposing such books. Regional language articles and opinions keep appearing in the South Indian languages. It will not die down soon, because the defenders of Tulsidas are not saying that such abusive sentences were interpolations, not of original writer, as they do in the case of ancient Sanskrit books that used caste cultural abusive language. They earlier were making the Muslims and colonial rulers and writers responsible for caste division among the Hindus on caste lines to sustain their political power and economic exploitation.

This line of argument was first developed by the RSS supporting Dwija writers and speakers, as there were hardly any Shudra or Dalit writers in those ranks. All the defenders of Tulsidas and his book as their spiritual grandh are Dwija RSS/BJP leaders or the saints, sadhus, who are Brahmins. No Shudra/Dalit from the RSS/BJP ranks can defend this kind of abuse of food producers, cattle grazers, pot makers, leather workers, barbers, weavers and so on. This abusive language of Tulsidas is against the nation’s wealth creators, which in essence means against the nation. The Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis working in RSS/BJP cannot defend that language, as they too have self respect.

Tulsidas wrote this book during Akbar-Jahangir rule. As information available on the internet shows that it was written in the end of 16th century. That in essence means that it was written during Akbar’s rule. Akbar died in 1605 while sitting on the throne. Tulsidas died in 1623. That was the time Shudras/Dalits were struggling with nature to bring vast areas of land under cultivation. Deforestation, agriculture expansion were the main burden of the Shudras and Dalits. The Dwijas, more particularly the Brahmins, to which community Tulsidas belonged, were not even respecting agriculture work as spiritually respectable. They designated all agricutural operations as Shudra kaam (work). It was then he was writing that “ढोल गवाँर सूद्र पसु नारी। सकल ताड़ना के अधिकारी।(ḍhōla gavāomra sūdra pasu nārī. sakala tāḍanā kē adhikārī). “A drum, an illiterate, a Shudra, a beast and a woman — all deserve punishment”.

Punishment by whom? Punishment by his God Rama and by the Mughal State, which was imposing heavy land taxes on the Shudra farmers. Agrarian masses- men and women–were starving. But the Dwijas had protective valves in Akbar’s administration.

Tulsidas knew that the Mughal state during Akbar rule was run by Birbal and Todar Mal. According to Wikipedia Birbal, was a Saraswat Bhatt Brahmin advisor and main commander (Mukhya Senapati) of the army in the court of the Mughal emperor. . He had a close association with Emperor Akbar and was one of his most important courtiers, part of a group called the navaratnas (nine jewels).

Lying in Hinduism

https://vedkabhed.com/index.php/2014/05/14/lying-in-hinduism/


Krishna said,
Brahma Vaivarta Purana, Krishna Janma Khanda 98.38-44 ”…Hari began to laugh and thus addressed Uddhava, using words of good import and worlds sanctioned by the Vedas, ”O Uddhava, untruth spoken to women or on the sporting ground, or in an emergency which endangers life or for the good of the vows or the Brahmin is not contemptible…” Tr. Rajendra Nath Sen

Matysa Purana 31.16 ”Sarmistha said:- ”King! there is no sin in speaking untruth at the time of indulging in sexual pleasures, on the occasion of marriage, when life is in danger, wealth is at stake, and in joke. Lying on these five occasions is venal.” Tr. Various Sanskrit Scholars, Edited by B.D. Basu

Mahabharata 8.69 ”In a situation of peril to life and in marriage, falsehood becomes utterable. In a situation involving the loss of one’s entire property, falsehood becomes utterable. On an occasion of marriage, or of enjoying a woman, or when life is in danger, or when one’s entire property is about to be taken away, or for the sake of a Brahmana, falsehood may be uttered. These five kinds of falsehood have been declared to be sinless. On these occasions falsehood would become truth and truth would become falsehood.”

Mahabharata 1.82 “Sarmishtha then said, ‘It hath been said, O king, that it is not sinful to lie on the occasion of a joke, in respect of women sought to be enjoyed, on occasions of marriage, in peril of immediate death and of the loss of one’s whole fortune. Lying is excusable on these five occasions.” Tr. K.M. Ganguli

Vasishtha Samhita 16.35 (Men) may speak an untruth at the time of marriage, during dalliance, when their lives are in danger or the loss of their whole property is imminent, and for the sake of a Brâhmana; they declare that an untruth spoken in these five cases does not make (the speaker) an outcast.

Gautama Samhita 23.29 Some (declare, that) an untruth (spoken) at the time of marriage, during dalliance, in jest or while (one suffers severe) pain is venial.

Dalits, who account for about 20 percent of India’s population, in many cases remain stuck at the lowest rungs of society. Although India has made large strides in helping the poor, almost a third of the Dalit community, or some 100 million people, still live in poverty, according to the United Nations.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/06/world/asia/india-caste-discrimin...


The Hindu nationalist party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Bharatiya Janata Party, has courted and increasingly drawn a bigger share of the Dalit vote. But it has done little to persuade the religious ideologues among its support base to let go of a centuries-old Hindu social order that relegated Dalits to the most undesirable tasks like cleaning toilets, skinning animals and disposing of dead bodies.

Ms. Kotwal had no business plan for The Mooknayak, but she knew there were millions who desperately needed their stories told. She hired Dalits, Indigenous people and women as reporters, editors and video journalists. Publishing articles and videos in Hindi and English, they aspire to cover everything from individual injustices to policy debates.

“I want the marginalized community to be able to say, ‘We have our own media, we report on all kinds of stories, and we raise issues that haven’t been raised until today,’” said Ms. Kotwal, 33.


The Mooknayak’s audience has grown steadily and now draws nearly 50,000 unique visitors a month to its website. It runs on crowdfunding — readers have donated phones, small amounts of money, even a motorbike — and grants. The Mooknayak has received more than $12,000 from Google and roughly $6,000 as part of a training program led by YouTube, which helped fund salaries for a team of 11, as well as to pay for a teleprompter and office furniture.

Its growing influence allowed Ms. Kotwal to nab an interview with Rahul Gandhi, scion of a once-mighty political dynasty who is seeking to challenge Mr. Modi in next year’s election. Her rising public profile, though, has also brought her multiple rape and death threats.

Even making it this far as a Dalit woman is a victory in India’s caste-ridden society. Born to manual laborers, Ms. Kotwal grew up in a Dalit neighborhood in New Delhi. Before leaving for school each morning, she stuffed her notebooks in a jute sack, which she also used as a seat on the ground. Her family’s meager earnings meant that as a 16-year-old she needed to work to pay for both her education and her personal needs.


Soon she was pursuing a degree in journalism, a path where she had few role models from her community, which still faces rampant employment discrimination.

But her persistence paid off in 2017, when Ms. Kotwal strode across the Italian marble floor of a tower in New Delhi and started work as a broadcast journalist for the BBC’s Hindi-language service. The job and its trappings left her and her family in awe. “Do you sit in a swivel chair? Are you served tea at your seat?” her mother, an illiterate laborer, asked.

The honeymoon did not last long. A dominant-caste colleague nudged Ms. Kotwal to reveal her own caste, she said, and then outed her to colleagues. It was the beginning of what she described as public humiliation and discrimination at work.

Her bosses brushed off her concerns. One used a refrain often heard from people of dominant castes, telling her that Dalits no longer existed in modern India, according to messages viewed by The Times — denying not just her complaint, but her community’s very existence.

After two years on the job, she filed an official complaint with BBC officials in London. The company reviewed her claims of discrimination, according to an internal document, but ruled that her grievances were without “merit or substance.” Her contract, due to end soon, was not renewed.

I won a birth lottery on caste, but learned fortune need not mean cruelty
Shree Paradkar
By Shree ParadkarSocial & Racial Justice Columnist

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2023/04/15/i-won-a-birth-lotter...


I come from a Brahmin family. This means I won a birth lottery. It means that while other identities may pose barriers, caste is never one. In fact, in certain situations, it is the secret handshake that opens doors, sometimes literally.

Caste privilege looks like — among many things — never hesitating to say your last name, being considered to come from a “good family,” having a higher chance of a sheltered upbringing (innocence is prized but not granted to all women) and being treated with deference in public spaces.

Brahmins around me insist they are not casteist. They say they don’t even think about caste let alone know the names of various castes, yet their social circles are almost entirely made up of fellow Brahmins. They say that caste oppression is now reversed and that Brahmins are now the real victims, sidelined in the caste system.

These are debates without empirical data, backed up by an anecdote or two about an undeserving “lower caste” person getting this job or that. (For a Brahmin, everybody else is “lower caste.”) By various counts, Brahmins, who form about four to five per cent of the Hindu population, comprise half of Indian media decision-makers and at least a third of bureaucrats and judges. Meanwhile, according to Oxfam, Dalits’ life expectancy can be up to 15 years less than other groups.

If forced to discuss caste, Brahmins will often claim the orginal varna system was fluid at its founding thousands of years ago, again with no evidence that Dalits could ever have educated themselves enough to then be considered Brahmin. As Indian social justice advocate Dilip Mandal noted recently on Twitter Spaces, a discussion on caste is neither theological nor historical nor abstract. It’s about lived experiences today.

Being ignorant of caste is a marker of privilege. I, too, only learned of the details of the caste system thanks to the tireless advocacy of Equality Labs in the U.S. Understanding anti-Black racism awoke me to caste-based brutality. Of course, learning that one’s gloried background is the carrier of such cruelty causes harsh cognitive dissonance. Reckoning with this reality is painful, but that discomfort pales in comparison to the generations of trauma inflicted on the marginalized. There is also little point in guilt or self-hatred; both emotions, while wrenching, simply continue to centre on the self.

None of us are born with a ready-made analysis of oppression. None of us choose to be born into the identities we inherit. The least the holders of power can do is to sit quietly, listen, reflect — not “Am I complicit” but “In what ways am I complicit” — learn, make space. And then they should let go of the reins.

The Education Ministry data showed that the number of Muslim students decreased to 19.21 lakh in 2020-21 from 21 lakh in 2019-20.

https://indianexpress.com/article/education/enrolment-of-muslim-stu...



AISHE 2020-21: Enrolment of Muslim students for higher education decreases to 4.6%
The Education Ministry data showed that the number of Muslim students decreased to 19.21 lakh in 2020-21 from 21 lakh in 2019-20.

The number of Muslim students enrolling for higher education in India has dropped in the 2020-21 academic year compared to the previous year, according to a report by the All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) 2020-21.

Will India Surpass China to Become the Next Superpower?
Four inconvenient truths make this scenario unlikely.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/06/24/india-china-biden-modi-summit-...

by Prof Graham Allison, Harvard's Kennedy School of Government


when assessing a nation’s power, what matters more than the number of its citizens is the quality of its workforce. China’s workforce is more productive than India’s. The international community has rightly celebrated China’s “anti-poverty miracle” that has essentially eliminated abject poverty. In contrast, India continues to have high levels of poverty and malnutrition. In 1980, 90 percent of China’s 1 billion citizens had incomes below the World Bank’s threshold for abject poverty. Today, that number is approximately zero. Yet more than 10 percent of India’s population of 1.4 billion continue to live below the World Bank extreme poverty line of $2.15 per day. Meanwhile, 16.3 percent of India’s population was undernourished in 2019-21, compared with less than 2.5 percent of China’s population, according to the most recent United Nations State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report. India also has one of the worst rates of child malnutrition in the world.

Fortunately, the future does not always resemble the past. But as a sign in the Pentagon warns: Hope is not a plan. While doing whatever it can to help Modi’s India realize a better future, Washington should also reflect on the assessment of Asia’s most insightful strategist. The founding father and long-time leader of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, had great respect for Indians. Lee worked with successive Indian prime ministers, including Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi, hoping to help them make India strong enough to be a serious check on China (and thus provide the space required for his small city-state to survive and thrive).

But as Lee explained in a series of interviews published in 2014, the year before his death, he reluctantly concluded that this was not likely to happen. In his analysis, the combination of India’s deep-rooted caste system that was an enemy of meritocracy, its massive bureaucracy, and its elites’ unwillingness to address the competing claims of its multiple ethnic and religious groups led him to conclude that it would never be more than “the country of the future”—with that future never arriving. Thus, when I asked him a decade ago specifically whether India could become the next China, he answered directly: “Do not talk about India and China in the same breath.”



Since Lee offered this judgment, India has embarked on an ambitious infrastructure and development agenda under a new leader and demonstrated that it can achieve considerable economic growth. Yet while we can remain hopeful that this time could be different, I, for one, suspect Lee wouldn’t bet on it.