LETTER DATED 14.12.2022. THE UNEDITED VERSION
The Speaker of the Lok Sabha pulled up an MLA for mentioning his caste in the House (THI,13th December). Apparently, people select them on the basis of ‘democratic norms’ and not caste or religion. One can only applaud such a blatant hypocritical statement. It cannot be ignorance or innocence- two qualities impossible to attach to our politicians at any level. Every single political fight starting from the village level divides people in the name of religion and caste. It would be foolish to expect that our all-too-human politicians forget their religious or caste identities once they enter the House. Their survival is precisely on those lines. Ironically, both ‘religion’ and ‘caste’ are alien ideas having no roots in indigenous traditions of India. The Dharmic traditions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism) are everything which do not fit into the definition of a religion and yet they are religions. Caste, a Portuguese word, has no equivalent in Indian scriptures. The superimposition of caste on our varna-jati vyavastha is responsible for the present mess. It was a complete failure of our social sciences after independence to change the colonial narratives. These social sciences lay the basis for the foundational understanding of the country; as a consequence, every single institution-law, politics, bureaucracy, media, or academia permeates with a poor understanding of the country. Collectively and individually these institutions only perpetuate faultlines in the great Indian civilization.
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