Caste away

You can drive caste away from India but you cannot drive caste out of Indians.

At least this is what I have learned and experienced since childhood.

We Indians might sound very moral and highly ethical in many aspects of social life but when it comes to caste we fare worse.For whatever we might say or do we just can not do away caste from our socials lives or politics.

A typical middle class convent educated might close his ears to the existence of such grave inequality in our society but closing your eyes and ears might not necessarily shut the inequality out of public domain.

My so called high class Hindu friends and the not so high class Hindu low class friends justify the existence of caste.They might justify it not morally but by giving in to it in social life.

Look at our marriages where caste is still a dominant factor and probably the first factor to be considered when it comes to any matrimonial alliance.India is a IT horsepower and so is caste based matrimonial industry.A casual look at our matrimonial portals is enough to suggest that even after all the communication revolution and the ease with which grooms and bride profiles are available on the net , we just could not bring a caste revolution.Instead we keep revolving around caste.

And the sadder part is that some matrimonial portals even have a sub-caste section.We Indians love details and so the sites cater to our needs.

Many marriages in our family were fixed through the conventional newspaper matrimonial advertisements.And the leader is off course none other than our very own newspaper TOI.If you are a prospective groom or bride or the guardian than you know what I am talking about.Religion is off course highlighted but caste is also highlighted.TOI had a policy that the newspaper ad. will cost you less if you run the "no dowry" and the " caste no bar" tag line in your matrimonial advertisements.

No discussion on caste is complete without the mention of caste based job reservations but I will not discuss this as there is already so much written about it .

It is a pity that even after centuries of existence we have not been able to drive out caste.
Caste is a part of out social and political psyche.
I might sound absurd but is it possible that the same Mahatma who helped us achieve our Independence also engraved the caste psyche in our minds.Look at the harijan song of the Mahatma.If he was so keen on caste issues why did not he ask any low caste Hindu or Muslim to head the Indian state.
As long the vote bank politics keep ticking on caste based votes we are not going to see the demise of this centuries old pogrom .
We might be the world's largest democracy but are we the most mature one.
One thing that I like about capitalism is the fact that to a certain extent it has driven out caste form business platforms.The private entities run for profit and you are good fro them as long as you make money money for them .The private firms are just not interested in your make as long as you make profit.
People might suggest that we should economic reservations and not caste based reservations.But come on.The so called low caste have suffered for last 2000 years or more and have just been given room for last 65 years.It is their very right to right the social wrong.Economics can not justify everything and anything.For the record can some tell me the number of SC/ST crorepati entrepreneurs.Please do not quote the niece and nephews of politicians.
Look at the top leadership of most political parties and you will find mostly high caste politicians.This is the situation in a country where we had reservations for more than 6 decades  and more than half the population is low caste or obc.
Rest assured that no matter what we might say or write or shout, we still have not done proper justice to the ones who are living on the social fringes.
Economic changes can help remove social evils but not wipe social evils.Social evils take time or may be take two to three generations to pass before the psyche of the Indians changes.

It is good to take a while and look in the mirror & ask ourselves if we are doing enough.