Shadows of the last name
Who does not remember the story of a father explaining the importance of staying united to his kids ,by showing that a single twig breaks off easy on bending , whereas a bundle of twigs doesn’t. Sadly ,once in the real world, lessons such as these fade away in light of practicality and societal norms. It seems funny, to be living in times where we have managed to erase the distance between us and the moon, but not between our surnames.
In all honesty, a year back , the lines written above did not imply much meaning in my life, and I believed that casteism was a thing of the past among the educated in our generation. It was only recently , when I had the chance to live outside a metro city that I saw the enormity of my ignorance. After having lived in Delhi all my life, my job made me shift to a smaller city last year, and it has been a year of revelations to say the least .For one thing ,I have realized that my surname is of great consequence , much more than I had ever thought of it to be . Every conversation that happens, eventually comes back to the surname of the person in question. These conversations incensed me till no end and, it took me almost six months to stop being left baffled at the frequent mention of caste.
It is not always in a derogatory sense that the question of caste comes up though, and I have long debated with myself if my aversion to these talks is only because it is new to me ,and maybe this is not about prejudice at all . However, my case got a bit stronger when an “upper caste” friend of mine on hearing about a Brahmin girl marrying outside of her community, commented that though she did not believe in the caste system herself , the girl would be going from here to here , holding out her one palm at the top and gesturing towards the other one at the bottom. I looked at her in shock and pity, wondering if she would ever realize the implication and the gravity of what she had said. One is used to this kind of talk when it comes from our grandparents or parents, maybe because it is convenient to shrug it off as generation gap . But who do you blame it on when an educated, working twenty five year old engineer in today’s age, believes in caste, and probably unknowingly discriminates on it too. It is intriguing to see casteism so deeply rooted in our society on a daily basis, that it is hardly noticeable. If this is the way an educated individual thinks in India , it becomes daunting to imagine what prevails in the rural parts ,the villages , the illiterate youth, who sadly constitute the majority. It might sound farfetched, but, ghastly incidents like the recent killings of two Dalit kids in Haryana, the Dadri lynching , or the innumerable honor killings , are all byproducts of such thoughts ,aggravated to their worst.
Governments come and go , they talk about unity and in the same breath remind us that our caste has been victimized. Expecting politicians to stop cashing in on caste politics is only fair on our part when we stop voting on the same basis. There is no immediate solution since this is about bringing a lasting change, in our culture and practices .The easier part of the task in hand is to shield our future generations from this stench of the past. The ones, who are privileged enough in this country to have been educated, have a decision of great consequence to make. They need to question the regressive beliefs that have been passed on to us by our elders , before we do the same to the generations that follow. The sole purpose of education is to empower a person with the ability of taking decisions for himself. If as a generation we fail to realize this and are not able to decide what we need to let go from our past, we become as much a part of the mob that stands in front of yet another Dalit hut, ready to kill.
Who does not remember the story of a father explaining the importance of staying united to his kids ,by showing that a single twig breaks off easy on bending , whereas a bundle of twigs doesn’t. Sadly ,once in the real world, lessons such as these fade away in light of practicality and societal norms. It seems funny, to be living in times where we have managed to erase the distance between us and the moon, but not between our surnames.
In all honesty, a year back , the lines written above did not imply much meaning in my life, and I believed that casteism was a thing of the past among the educated in our generation. It was only recently , when I had the chance to live outside a metro city that I saw the enormity of my ignorance. After having lived in Delhi all my life, my job made me shift to a smaller city last year, and it has been a year of revelations to say the least .For one thing ,I have realized that my surname is of great consequence , much more than I had ever thought of it to be . Every conversation that happens, eventually comes back to the surname of the person in question. These conversations incensed me till no end and, it took me almost six months to stop being left baffled at the frequent mention of caste.
It is not always in a derogatory sense that the question of caste comes up though, and I have long debated with myself if my aversion to these talks is only because it is new to me ,and maybe this is not about prejudice at all . However, my case got a bit stronger when an “upper caste” friend of mine on hearing about a Brahmin girl marrying outside of her community, commented that though she did not believe in the caste system herself , the girl would be going from here to here , holding out her one palm at the top and gesturing towards the other one at the bottom. I looked at her in shock and pity, wondering if she would ever realize the implication and the gravity of what she had said. One is used to this kind of talk when it comes from our grandparents or parents, maybe because it is convenient to shrug it off as generation gap . But who do you blame it on when an educated, working twenty five year old engineer in today’s age, believes in caste, and probably unknowingly discriminates on it too. It is intriguing to see casteism so deeply rooted in our society on a daily basis, that it is hardly noticeable. If this is the way an educated individual thinks in India , it becomes daunting to imagine what prevails in the rural parts ,the villages , the illiterate youth, who sadly constitute the majority. It might sound farfetched, but, ghastly incidents like the recent killings of two Dalit kids in Haryana, the Dadri lynching , or the innumerable honor killings , are all byproducts of such thoughts ,aggravated to their worst.
Governments come and go , they talk about unity and in the same breath remind us that our caste has been victimized. Expecting politicians to stop cashing in on caste politics is only fair on our part when we stop voting on the same basis. There is no immediate solution since this is about bringing a lasting change, in our culture and practices .The easier part of the task in hand is to shield our future generations from this stench of the past. The ones, who are privileged enough in this country to have been educated, have a decision of great consequence to make. They need to question the regressive beliefs that have been passed on to us by our elders , before we do the same to the generations that follow. The sole purpose of education is to empower a person with the ability of taking decisions for himself. If as a generation we fail to realize this and are not able to decide what we need to let go from our past, we become as much a part of the mob that stands in front of yet another Dalit hut, ready to kill.
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