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Comments posted by Sankrant Sanu
On
The Conversion War and Religious Freedom
Salil, From the point of view of the deer, the difference between the teeth and the claws of the tiger is academic. Ecumenism merely seeks to avoid competition between Christian Churches -- all the better to target the native traditions more effectively. Your post regarding proselytization also speaks merely of preventing competition between churches, hardly of respect for native traditions.
When did the Catholic Church suddenly learn the gospel of ecumenism? When it felt its monopoly getting threatened by the, even more aggressive, protestant denominations. Thus, the Pope wrote, in his travel to Latin America (where the catholic church dominates), of protestant missionaries being like "wolves" upon the flock, while bringing to Asia the message of planting the cross throughout. In Latin America, it is seeking to preserve market share, so it speaks in the voice of ecumenism; in Asia to expand and the claws come out. See letter here (search for pope): http://www.jacksonprogressive.com/issues/letterstoeditor/nov99.html
The fundamental difference remains the same -- the different between monopolistic traditions that operate with the neccessity of world domination and the erasure of all others and native traditions that have no such agendas.
On
reservation and hypocrism
ASH writes:
>One more thing. Is it necessary that everyone must have college? How about making weaving/ pottery and jobs like that highly paid professions? The developed societies respect all professions and have internalized that age old concept of dignity of labor, an idea which did not cross the city outskirts.
Hmm ... what if that "developed society" was exactly what India was 200 years ago -- where weaving was a highly paid profession and the Indian weavers were wealthy and respected for their skills the world over.
The problem in the caste debate is the assumptions that there are these so-called backward castes who are "genetically supressed" for centuries. There is enough evidence to document that the artisan classes lost wealth and prestige in colonial times because of the policies of the conquerors not because of some mythical static caste system.
The worst effect of the quota system is this account of suppression and slavery that people learn to repeat that truly demeans the so-called backwards. Only a hundred or so years ago, these same "backwards" were protesting when they were classified as "shudras" by the colonial census, pointing to their own glorious histories and heritage.
It is the modern privileging of textual knowledge by the colonial state and of certain kinds of professions that creates this "backwardness", not "caste."
On
Agitating Medicos Need Urgent Psychatric Treatment!
This blog shows the extent to which colonized ideas have taken hold. Just repeating the same nonsense enough times appears to give it the authority of truth. Take for example, the statement:
"Here the reservation was very much crude as even basic information, education and the opportunity to learn was limited to the forward classes or Brahmins. "
Here is the official record from the Collector of Madras of schooling in 1825, before colonial power was consolidated. St. dated 12th Feb 1825 (copy printed in Dharampal's book "The Beautiful Tree" on the state of education in early British times before its destruction). Data from one Madras Collectorate.
Brahmin students (in schools) 359
Vysee (Vaishyas) 798
Soodras 3619
All other castes (aka "untouchables" in school) 317
Brahmins were less than 8% of the total.
It is unlikely that Manusmriti was ever used as a "law book" before British times or that it is an actual account of jurispudence.
The ideas repeated in this blog are simply colonial nonsense that was generated and highlighted after the 1857 rebellion by the British. The idea was to resurrect a mythology to break up the nationalistic movement, with the "Justice Party", Ambedkar and others used as a foil to deny or delay the Indian quest for independence.
The anti-Brahmin movement is a particular kind of hate movement that grew as a result of those efforts.
On
Reservations:assumptions and facts
Let's say we reserve seats for poor, rural, non-English medium school students. Better still, take the 50% quota and reserve it for children from government schools -- since anyone who can afford it goes to a private school in India. This will (a) force us to improve government schools and (b) cater to the poorest students.
On
Reservations:assumptions and facts
Partibhan,
Your assumptions are wrong. The so-called backward castes are not behind in economic terms. If they were, backward castes would simply be determined on economic grounds. Better still, poor people, irrespective of caste would be helped.
The Mandal commission set up weights so that even if a caste was economically ahead in *all* the criteria, they could still be classified backward due to very amorphous, colonially-inspired tests. The current notion of backward castes is majoritarianism, pure and simple -- since 70% or more of the Indian population is deemed backward. (Defying all logic) It simply uses the power of majority voting blocks to gain privilege--often at the behest of already dominant communities, like the Yadavs and Jats. Based on government reports, the average wealth of the Jats is over 40% greater than the Brahmins in Haryana. EVERY SINGLE chief minister of Haryana has been a Jat. So this is a community that has been both politically and economically privileged. Communities such as these are already among the rural elite--and reservations are a way to extend their dominance to other spheres.
Presently reservations have become a policy of excluding a small percentage of the population--and this is done by an elaborate myth-making of how they "subjugated" 70% of the population for 5000 years, which is more or less complete nonsense. But then, even Hitler relied on myths of how the minority Jews had conspired to become economically successful. The Mandal logic subverts the provisions of equality that are intended to guard against majoritarianism using the constitutional loophole of "backward classes."
For the chronicles of a quota society, read, Ladnam, Land of Equality, Part I http://sankrant.sulekha.com/blogs/blogdisplay.aspx?cid=48674.
On
The Land of Equality, Part I
Added some references at the end -- to cite the quote about merit from the Backkward Classes Commission of India, 1980, popularly known as the Mandal Commission.
On
The myth of sexual liberalism in ancient India
BB,
The Indian traditions are, luckily, lacking in Western moralism. What's wrong with that? We hardly need to defend against accusations of "Hindus being immoral" by trying to construct some kind of of morality rule book.
This does not mean that Indians/Hindus are not moral -- i.e. do not know how to distinguish right from wrong. However, our moral space is much more complex and diverse and does not follow from any central code book of "thou shalt not do X." I do not see issues of sexual conduct--whether or not one is a virgin before marriage, for instance, primarily as issues of morality; but merely those of different modes of societal functioning.
On
The myth of sexual liberalism in ancient India
| Salil comments: |
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One needs to understand the history from where comments such as these arise. The sexual liberation of women and their lack of permission to orgasm etc was a prominent theme in Western feminism. If anything, this comment would apply to the convent-educated classes in India who are compelled to follow the Western cycle of repression and liberation. (Indian society must necessarily follow the cycle of Western development of course -- whoopee, now we need to get "Indian women" to come since the Western one's have discovered orgasm). The rural women will do quite fine, incidentally, even without this liberation. They have little problems with their bodies--that hang-up is a particular artifact of Christian culture. Social workers that interact with rural women have often been surprised at their frank approach to sexual issues, embarrassing for the convent-educated. I agree with you about the premise of this article though. Yet, worth reading my earlier post carefully to see that the liberated West is not so liberated actually -- it is very immature regarding sexuality as a civilization--and we hardly need to follow their example. |
On
The myth of sexual liberalism in ancient India
Dear BB,
You should check out the practises of the Eshava community in Kerela regarding mock marriages. I do not view this practise as either moral or immoral. It is one of the many ways of an evolved society of dealing with sexual energy, maturity and training. The problems appear when we try to evaluate these practises by some uniform normative "moral law" a very Christian approach that made little sense in the Indian context where there was an enormous diversity of practises rather than a central church making rules.
Regaring virginity, it was important but not critical. In the tribal Mid-East culture of the Abrahamic faiths, virginity was sacrosanct. The blood-drenched cloth from first coitus after marriage was shown publicly to prove the bride's virginity (there was no such restriction on the men). In India, while the attributes of marital fidelity were highly valued, it does not appear that virginity-- as an event-- had the same obsessive importance. There are so many instances of non-virgin brides in the texts, including the Mahabharata.
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The Crisis of Governance: What India can learn from America
Hi Kumar, thanks for your post. I have mostly been writing elsewhere since Sulekha no longer appears to draw the same crowd or respect quality writing. It's a pity.
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