Hindu caste system in different point of view

[GHALIB]

@AUSTERLITZ @Nilgiri @Joe Shearer

Any system or society which discriminates on basis of caste creed religion colour race is most inhuman and should be replaced immediately .

 

[Sine Nomine]

@Joe Shearer
Good to see you man.
Where have you been for so long?

 

[Joe Shearer]

@Joe Shearer
Good to see you man.
Where have you been for so long?

In hiding.
In search of earnings.
Trying to get healthy.

How are you?

Any system or society which discriminates on basis of caste creed religion colour race is most inhuman and should be replaced immediately .

Immediately? A system that hardened progressively from around the 6th or 7th century? Impossible!

We have to work very hard on this, and can expect setbacks at each stage. Look at the history of affirmative action for coloured people in the US; relatively a trivial set-up compared to our own problem. It is still huge; it would never have been necessary to have a Black Lives Matter movement if there had been sufficient programme.

 

[AfrazulMandal]

In hiding.
In search of earnings.
Trying to get healthy.

How are you?



Immediately? A system that hardened progressively from around the 6th or 7th century? Impossible!

We have to work very hard on this, and can expect setbacks at each stage. Look at the history of affirmative action for coloured people in the US; relatively a trivial set-up compared to our own problem. It is still huge; it would never have been necessary to have a Black Lives Matter movement if there had been sufficient programme.

Hindus need to be liberated from what we know as Hinduism.
The structure is too rotten to reform. A complete rejection is what can salvage the situation.

 

[Sugarcane]

Caste based discrimination is embedded in constitution of India. Calling it positive discrimination doesn't change the basic fact.

 

[Joe Shearer]

Hindus need to be liberated from what we know as Hinduism.
The structure is too rotten to reform. A complete rejection is what can salvage the situation.

Well, yes and no.

We need to get rid of the old apparatus: to be precise, please listen carefully to the Shankaracharya's discourse. What he says about who is allowed to do what is complete nonsense, and self-serving nonsense. It is one undiluted justification of caste privilege, specifically, the caste privilege of priestly Brahmins, with no redeeming features whatsoever.

As far as the methods of worship and approaching divinity is concerned, there is nothing wrong with what is happening; idol worship is regressive in some senses, in the personification of divinity, for instance, but its role in creating social common spaces and ways of thinking is fine. Other approaches to divinity, meditation, an ascetic life, monastic service, none of these are harmful, quite the contrary, in fact.

I am personally an agnostic, usually a cop-out for atheists who don't want to say that and create controversy, lead to raised eyebrows and sharp intakes of breath. It doesn't affect me personally. But I do believe that this is not an austere, exclusive system of faith that deals with other religions with hatred, and from that point of view, hugely preferable to the Abrahamic systems of faith, that all uniformly preach hatred of others outside the faith in question.

 

[Sine Nomine]

Trying to get healthy.

What happend?

How are you?

Just making a living and trying to live every day with ebullience.

 

[Joe Shearer]

What happend?

Old age.

Any suggestions?

Just making a living and trying to live every day with ebullience.

<sigh!>

Enviable. What are your two secrets? Share, no?

 

[Sine Nomine]

Old age.

Any suggestions?

Stop worrying about things which you failed to change in your younger days.

<sigh!>

Enviable. What are your two secrets? Share, no?

They are secrets until they are with me
Tbh i am living a cloistered life and that is great,less people mean,less problems

 

[Nilgiri]

Fair enough. There is no question that this is the most rational that a defence of what I consider indefensible can get.



Perhaps this is not intentional. Perhaps this type-casting is the result of the inevitable simplification that arises during an exposition of views on complex subjects.

Before going further, from what I have understood you to be saying, this is what I believe you mean when you use some of those terms above. I will move on to try and understand your arguments, and, if I understand them, to try and respond meaningfully, based on my prior understanding of the terms.

Oppressor (cookie cutter version) : Brahmins and upper caste Hindus in general, most particularly the religious among them.
Oppressed (cookie cutter version) : The Dalit, Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes....there are more, but these are primary.
'...Truly the greatest oppressors in reality' :
Not clear. Perhaps

1. Broadly those who advocate a rejection of existing sanctions and taboos promulgated by a narrow set of privileged members of society, appointed arbiters of social norms and examiners of these existing sanctions and taboos by themselves;
2. Ambedkar and his political heirs who advocated affirmative action to ameliorate the lot of those brutalised for centuries;
3. Among that constellation of heirs, the Congress party in particular, in its various editions through the ages;
4. Within the Congress party, the dominating Nehru-Gandhi family in particular, whose presence seems to enrage the advocates of the status quo more than anyone else.

It is not clear which of these you are referring to, and perhaps one should depend on the context.



I meant specifically the two of us, assuming that we are both upper-caste Hindus; in your case, I assume that you are a Tamilian Brahmin, and that enjoys both privileges and disabilities beyond the ordinary. My case is decidedly less salient, except in a context that you have raised later.



I didn't mean that, but you are right: no individual can represent anything more than his or her own personal opinion.

On the other hand, my original sense stands valid, that we cannot, either of the two individuals that we are, or both, singly and collectively, speak about affirmative action with legitimacy. We do not know what it brings, we do not know what it was like without such action, we do not know what it was like for those who obtained it, so we cannot stand on the sidelines, look at our own positions, and comment on that programme.



By all means, let us rattle the bars of the cage.

However, it would help enormously to know who is the target, who is this 'bunch of kleptomaniacs drunk on power that are effectively neo-casteist, precisely because they want to usurp the old edifice for a new one that puts and keeps them at the top'. Your statements do not make that clear; on one shift of the kaleidoscope, it looks like social reformers and politically inclined social reformers in particular, all over the country up to and including Assam, but no others. On the next shift, we seem to see the Dravidian parties, your own particular betes noire.

Before we can ill-treat you by ignoring you and sticking to the beaten path, we would like to know why we are ill-treating you.



Unless you are a Wedgewood-Benn, or a Hogg, or a Douglas-Home, you are not really in a position to disclaim your status, especially not if you have assumed the thread and been given the Gayatri.

You mention the value of education. You are preaching to the choir. In our part of the country, my lot was famous (infamous, in certain contexts) for putting education on top of their social objectives. They had no choice, since the Brahmins and the Kayasthas had effectively cornered all other avenues to social prominence.

It is not very useful to cite the circumstances of the early-mid 20th century. That period was not the period during which affirmative action was proposed and implemented, and why some of us (my families on both sides included - my maternal grandfather was housed and schooled by his brother-in-law, a minor government functionary, and 'paid' his way by scrubbing the household dishes. Those who are not Hindu will not understand the full implications of this).

The other side of the family was much worse off, as small-time school teachers, who bootstrapped themselves to professorship at a famous Dhaka college that was, thirty or forty years later, a particular object of attention during Operation Searchlight.

What we are discussing has nothing to do with those Horatio Alger stories. It has everything to do with inherited social prominence, never mind that this soured post-independence (the worst efforts of the Justice Party did not disenfranchise the Brahmins at that time; it took Annadurai and Karunanidhi to achieve that).

To remind you that this is to be mutually dismissed, not a penny of what my parents left us was inherited. Not even as much land as is covered by the point of a needle.

TO BE CONT.

@Nilgiri

Please let me finish my reply - the second and possibly further sections - before addressing my arguments. If you decide to address them.





You were denounced by @hellfire, and banned, and let back in for reasons not understood by mere mortals.

I, on the other hand, have met @hellfire, and several other members of PDF.

So put a sock in it.




Suvarna Teja, still.

Let me get back to you sir a bit later, I need to find some time to saliently lend more anyway....it is very interesting conversation for me.

Please take your time...you must put your health etc as a high priority.

 

[SuvarnaTeja]

Eliminate poverty not poor or rich .

Which is easier. Eliminating people or poverty?

 

[GHALIB]

Which is easier. Eliminating people or poverty?

Poverty

 

[AfrazulMandal]

But I do believe that this is not an austere, exclusive system of faith that deals with other religions with hatred, and from that point of view, hugely preferable to the Abrahamic systems of faith, that all uniformly preach hatred of others outside the faith in question.

That is a defence of the same sickening Hindu social and spiritual order. Plus the hate for Abrahamic religions is also unfounded but not unsurprising.
A more equal society based on Islam in India will benefit all more compared to the one on Varna. And it's not hatred. Islam does not hate Hinduism as a religion. It just does not even recognise it as one. But neither do hindus. It's not worthy of being compared side by side, no offense.

idol worship is regressive in some senses, in the personification of divinity, for instance, but its role in creating social common spaces and ways of thinking is fine

Idol worship is totally regressive and a waste of time. Common spaces can easily exist among Muslims without the need for any idol. Your defence of idol worship is not tenable, sorry.

 

[Hellfire]

Caste based discrimination is embedded in constitution of India. Calling it positive discrimination doesn't change the basic fact.

Please reference/cite it.

 

[Sugarcane]

Please reference/cite it.

Constitution of India.