Casteism

I recently read an article about a manhunt in Orissa to catch 29 men who allegedly forced a group of women to parade naked after a row over caste tradition.

It seems shocking that in this century where man is exploring the outer space, there are still many people stuck and fighting over their privileges and some as basic as their right to the common water resource!! And what seems to be stopping them, is their “Caste”!!!

This might be surprising for the city-bred folks as they have rarely faced a situation where they are denied rights just coz they are from a different (lower/upper) caste. I don’t even know what my caste/sub-caste is?? How does that even matter or concern my life and the way I want to lead it??

But it seems that in some areas these things still matter and matter a lot. The six women in a village in the eastern state of Orissa were attacked because the men in their families had refused to wash the feet of upper caste wedding guests!! The women belonged to the lower barber caste. Their menfolk had refused to wash feet of upper caste Khandayats.

And the punishment meted out to them, by the so-called upper castes people were to beat their women up, strip them naked and abuse them. Who gave them these rights? What makes them superior to the other people? Their birth in the upper caste family? How can some thing which nobody has control on, decide one’s status and one’s rights?

The more I think on it, the more it angers me. This is not the first time that such a thing has happened. We have been reading for years about such outrageous treatments meted out to poor folks in Bihar and many other areas in India. How long will this continue? Where is the police, the law and order? In this episode too, nobody has been arrested even five days after the incident!! This itself shows the seriousness with which the administration is taking such issues.

With so much tension and riots between different religions, haven’t we had enough deaths and suffering that we still need to fight over castes and sub-castes now?? How can this change? Will proper education work? How can it be planned? Is the government doing anything towards this? Probably it is, but with the huge population and increasing issues maybe the resources are too less.

Manpower is the most important resource of any nation. With our country having the second largest population, many often wonder why we are still left behind as a developing nation. Well, probably such articles are the answer to that. With people busy in fighting with folks from different religions, castes, sub-castes, gothras, regions, neighboring buildings, areas, etc, etc, we can’t expect them to find some time to work and grow, can we?