Abolish caste system: Supreme Court

Read this news article in the Indian Express: Abolish caste system: SC, gives lifer to 6 for Dalit killings.

[Thirty years after eight Dalits were massacred by upper caste Thakurs in Uttar Pradesh, the Supreme Court has sentenced to life imprisonment five of the accused and said caste system should be abolished soon for ensuring rule of law and smooth functioning of democracy.

Reversing the acquittal of the six accused, the apex court said "unfortunately, the centuries-old Indian caste system still takes its toll from time to time. This case unfolds the worst kind of atrocities committed by the so- called upper caste (Kshatriya or Thakur) against the so-called lower caste caste in a civilized country.

"It is absolutely imperative to abolish the caste system as expeditiously as possible for smooth functioning of rule of law and democracy in our country," a bench of Justices Dalveer Bhandari and A K Patnaik said in a judgement....]

But can we really abolish the caste system? Hardly possible when our politicians openly lobby for election tickets on the grounds of which caste they belong to? When they openly participate in public gatherings of people of a particular caste and promise them to work for progress of their community! Now what does that really mean? Do we wish to progress as a nation or as a federation of several thousand castes and sub castes? The Indian caste system has become an ugly blot on the face of our great civilization. While on one hand we complain about racial discrimination against our students in Australia and the west, what have we done as a nation to stop discrimination on the basis of caste? The only forward is a total, all out, ban on caste system. For any matter, any purpose, religious, social, or otherwise, identifying people on the basis of caste should be banned in India. No matter what price it may take, abolishing and uprooting the caste system will only make this country a safer and better place for people to live with equal opportunities and  without any kind of discrimination.

 

Who is a threat to India, China?

Read Shekhar Gupta’s article “Opportunity, Made in China” on the Indian Express today.  He argues that we as a nation are senselessly worried about China’s so called aggression alongside the border. He says the Indian army is capable of safe guarding our borders.

“So what is different now? You can analyse the Chinese motivations for ever. In fact, analysing “why is China behaving this way” is a flourishing global industry and we can further swell its ranks while, probably, coming to the same conclusion after our exertions that everybody does, about the inscrutability of the Chinese. Why don’t we, therefore, examine for a change “why are we behaving this way”. Or rather, reacting/responding this way?”

“Yet, some of the talk on our side is curious: upgradation of airbases along the borders, stationing of Sukhois, raising two more mountain divisions, sanction of funds and, lo and behold, quick environmental clearance of road-building projects in the border region. What do we expect? That, if the Chinese really intend to invade us, will they give us five years to get ready? Or, for heaven’s sake, if they did indeed invade us, will they just walk in, and annex Tawang or whatever else? Neither of the two is an inevitability or even likely. Our armed forces are good enough today to defend their territory and, while capability upgradations are needed, the flurry of activity today is not much preparation of some future invasion, but to make up for lost years in our military modernisation.”

Shekhar says in the articel…

“An analysis of our own minds may show that the answer to our fears does not just lie in modernising more air bases or checking out the fortification of our forward defences and the quality of our bunkers. That we should do — and should have been doing — anyway. Good fences, as they say, make for good neighbours. The answer lies in getting our act together as a nation, a system of governance and society to be at least a worthy near-equal to China. We have to defeat internal threats like the Naxals with a sense of purpose, rather than lose time in vacuous debate; multiply, three times over, the pace of infrastructure-building — not just in Arunachal and Ladakh, but all over India; liberate ourselves from the fear of double-digit growth; and show much greater national focus than we do.”

Read the complete article here.

I think the fear and media frenzy in India is more because we like to cry when problems come and refuse to find a solution. The problem is, we have always felt we have been a great nation, a land of gods, from the beginning, hence we have nothing to do and a miracle will happen to give us our due in the world. Our home minister is hesitant in accepting that there is an Operation to be carried out against Naxals, our Prime Mnister took 5.5 years in his two consecutive years just to only signal a disinvestment policy, we are a big failure in the preparations for commonwealth games. Whatever progress we have made is due to the sheer hard work of our entrepreneurs and young talented workforce. We can start doing a 100 times better if only we realize the lesson of karma that we preach to the world but do not practice ourselves.

-Hitendra.