We are going through depressing times. The newspapers have been full of bad news for ever and aye and there has been no let up. But this one that came in just now threw me into depression like never before:
http://www.theh
A vanniyar girl marries a dalit boy in a Tamil Nadu town, amidst threats and violence. Her father unable to bear the shame commits suicide. The mother and the community prey on her feelings of guilt as the cause of father's death, succeed in drawing her back to her maternal home. Girl tearfully returns, says she has nothing against her husband or his family and then says she will never go back as her mother is of paramount importance to her. And then the next thing we hear her young husband, in his early twenties, on the threshold of life, is found dead on a train track. Suicide? Murder? No one knows yet. But a wasted life? Yes, most certainly.
What kind of civilisational values do we uphold if a girl amongst us still dare not chart out her own independent course? What kind of parents are these who put their own selfish narrow interests over their daughter's? What kind of society is this that cannot tolerate dissent from any member but must punish them and theirs irrevocably and with a damning finality?
Wasn't there a legal system or a police system that could insist that the young couple could not be pressured by society? After all, they were consenting adults. Could no one offer counselling or even protection to Dhivya against the machinations and manipulations of her mother and family?
Why hasn't any political leader put out a strong anti-caste statement till date? What happened to all those leaders who stood up for Tamils in far away Sri Lanka just two months back? What happened to those others who hop into helicopters, visit flood hit zones to personally assess extent of damage and make the right faces and noises for television cameras?
The Dhivya-Ilavarasan case is an uncomfortable reminder that India shining is actually an ancient civilisation with rundown values teetering on the brink of collapse while trying to keep up the pretense of 'alll eeeeeez well.'
And I still have myself heard and read people saying so often, 'Caste injustice? Now? That was in the past.'
Past? Excuse me. Don't you read the papers? Decades after casteism was abolished by law, we still traumatise couples who choose to marry outside their castes and communities, we make children of discriminated communities sweep their school buildings, clean latrines and carry excrement on their heads. We do not allow other castes enter temples or even walk down public thoroughfares. We do not allow our children to eat noon meals cooked by women from other castes.
In our comfortable middle class homes, we do not share the dinner table with members of 'lower' castes, if we can help it. We do not eat food cooked by other caste people. We do not hire cooks from other castes. When we meet someone new, our first thought inevitably is 'Is he one of 'us?'
Agreed, a few decades cannot entirely wipe out what's a deep-seated, deep-rooted race meme. But surely it is enough time to acknowledge that casteism is not a thing of the past, as we would all like to believe. It exists today, now. It exists all around us, and it also lives inside each one of us, firmly embedded in our hearts and minds. In fact its existence around us has been possible only because we have still given it room within us. The first step would be to shake off the state of denial.
http://www.theh
A vanniyar girl marries a dalit boy in a Tamil Nadu town, amidst threats and violence. Her father unable to bear the shame commits suicide. The mother and the community prey on her feelings of guilt as the cause of father's death, succeed in drawing her back to her maternal home. Girl tearfully returns, says she has nothing against her husband or his family and then says she will never go back as her mother is of paramount importance to her. And then the next thing we hear her young husband, in his early twenties, on the threshold of life, is found dead on a train track. Suicide? Murder? No one knows yet. But a wasted life? Yes, most certainly.
What kind of civilisational values do we uphold if a girl amongst us still dare not chart out her own independent course? What kind of parents are these who put their own selfish narrow interests over their daughter's? What kind of society is this that cannot tolerate dissent from any member but must punish them and theirs irrevocably and with a damning finality?
Wasn't there a legal system or a police system that could insist that the young couple could not be pressured by society? After all, they were consenting adults. Could no one offer counselling or even protection to Dhivya against the machinations and manipulations of her mother and family?
Why hasn't any political leader put out a strong anti-caste statement till date? What happened to all those leaders who stood up for Tamils in far away Sri Lanka just two months back? What happened to those others who hop into helicopters, visit flood hit zones to personally assess extent of damage and make the right faces and noises for television cameras?
The Dhivya-Ilavarasan case is an uncomfortable reminder that India shining is actually an ancient civilisation with rundown values teetering on the brink of collapse while trying to keep up the pretense of 'alll eeeeeez well.'
And I still have myself heard and read people saying so often, 'Caste injustice? Now? That was in the past.'
Past? Excuse me. Don't you read the papers? Decades after casteism was abolished by law, we still traumatise couples who choose to marry outside their castes and communities, we make children of discriminated communities sweep their school buildings, clean latrines and carry excrement on their heads. We do not allow other castes enter temples or even walk down public thoroughfares. We do not allow our children to eat noon meals cooked by women from other castes.
In our comfortable middle class homes, we do not share the dinner table with members of 'lower' castes, if we can help it. We do not eat food cooked by other caste people. We do not hire cooks from other castes. When we meet someone new, our first thought inevitably is 'Is he one of 'us?'
Agreed, a few decades cannot entirely wipe out what's a deep-seated, deep-rooted race meme. But surely it is enough time to acknowledge that casteism is not a thing of the past, as we would all like to believe. It exists today, now. It exists all around us, and it also lives inside each one of us, firmly embedded in our hearts and minds. In fact its existence around us has been possible only because we have still given it room within us. The first step would be to shake off the state of denial.
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