Friday, August 14, 2020

After 73 Years of Independence, Caste-Ridden India Remains Dominated by Minority Brahmins

After 73 years of independence, a small upper caste Indian minority retains near monopoly of the highest ranks in both the Indian government and the private sector. A few well-educated Indian Muslims and low-caste Hindus can not escape caste-ism even when they move to work in Silicon Valley.  Over two-thirds of low caste Indian-Americans report being discriminated against by upper caste Indian-Americans in Silicon Valley, according to a report by Equality Labs, an organization of Dalits in America.  Dalits also report hearing derogatory comments about Muslim job applicants at tech companies. These revelations have recently surfaced in a California state lawsuit against Silicon Valley tech giant Cisco Systems.
Upper Caste Domination:

It is not just the 220 million Dalits (untouchables), or the 190 million Muslims, or the 110 million from “scheduled tribes” (Adivasis)  who are under-represented, but also the 40-50% of Hindus who come from the widest tier of the pyramid, the shudras or laboring castes, known as Other Backwards Classes (OBCs), according to a report in The Economist Magazine. Here's an excerpt from The Economist:

"Out of the 89 highest-ranked civil servants in the central government, according to a recent survey, just four are not upper-caste Hindus, and not one is an obc. Two-thirds of the Supreme Court’s 31 judges and more than half of all state governors are high-caste Hindus. When the home ministry recently formed a panel to revise the criminal code, its five experts were all men, all from north India and all from upper castes. The trend is just as stark outside of government. A study published last year of the mainstream Hindi and English press revealed that out of 121 people in senior jobs, such as editors, all but 15 were upper caste. Not a single one was a Dalit."

Indian Caste System


Caste Discrimination in Silicon Valley:

The few well-educated Indian Muslims and low-caste Hindus can not escape the upper caste domination even in Silicon Valley. Over two-thirds of low caste Indian-Americans are discriminated against by upper caste Indian-Americans in Silicon Valley, according to a report by Equality Labs, an organization of Dalits in America. Dalits also report hearing derogatory comments about Muslim job applicants at tech companies. These revelations have recently surfaced in a California state lawsuit against Silicon Valley tech giant Cisco Systems.


Religious Discrimination:

Both caste and religious discrimination are rampant among Indian-Americans in Silicon Valley. Back in 2009,  there was a religious discrimination lawsuit filed  against Vigai, a South Indian restaurant in Silicon Valley. In the lawsuit filed in Santa Clara County Superior Court, Abdul Rahuman, 44, and Nowsath Malik Shaw, 39, both of San Jose, alleged they were harassed for being Muslim by Vaigai's two owners, a manager and a top chef — a violation of the Fair Employment and Housing Act, according to a report in the San Jose Mercury News.

According to the complaint, restaurant personnel regularly used ethnic slurs such as "Thulakkan," a pejorative term for Muslims in Sri Lankan Tamil dialect, to harass the two Muslim cooks. Also according to the complaint, restaurant staff were encouraged to call the plaintiffs by names such as "Rajan" or "Nagraj" under the pretext of not wanting to upset customers who might stop patronizing the restaurant if they heard the men referred to by their Muslim names.



Modi in Silicon Valley

The complaint also stated that the plaintiffs were forced to participate in a religious ceremony despite telling the owners it was against their Islamic beliefs. The complaint alleged that the restaurant owners insisted on their participation and proceeded to smear a powder on their foreheads, making the religious marking known as a "tilak."

Upper Caste Silicon Valley

"Dominant castes who pride themselves as being only of merit have just converted their caste capital into positions of power throughout the Silicon Valley," says Thenmozhi Soundarajan of Equality Labs. Vast majority of Indian-Americans in Silicon Valley support India's Islamophobic Prime MInister Narendra Modi. Modi held a huge rally at a large venue in Silicon Valley where he received a rousing welcome in 2015.

Caste vs Race in America:

Contrary to The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) that includes discrimination based on caste, most Indian-Americans argue that race is not caste . Dating back to 1969, the ICERD convention has been ratified by 173 countries, including India. California’s lawsuit reinforces that caste is race. It will now make it harder for companies to ignore caste discrimination. While the US has no specific law against the Indian caste system, the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing has filed the lawsuit against Cisco using a section of America’s historic Civil Rights Act which bars race-based discrimination. Here is an excerpt of an article published in TheWire.in on the lawsuit recently:

"In October 2016, two colleagues informed John Doe, a principal engineer at Cisco, that his supervisor, Sundar Iyer, had told them that he (Doe) was from the “Scheduled Castes” and had made it to the Indian Institute of Technology via affirmative action. “Iyer was aware of Doe’s caste because they attended IIT at the same time,” said the case. The suit says that, when confronted by Doe, Iyer denied having disclosed his caste. In November 2016, Doe contacted Cisco’s HR over the matter. Within a week of doing so, Iyer reportedly informed Doe he was taking away Doe’s role as lead on two technologies. Iyer also removed team members from a third technology that Doe was working on and reduced his role to that of an independent contributor and he was isolated from his colleagues, the lawsuit says. In December 2016, Doe filed a written complaint with HR on the matter."

Summary:

Indian society is caste-ridden. A small upper caste Indian minority retains near monopoly of the highest ranks in both the Indian government and the private sector. after 73 years of India's independence. Caste discrimination is also rampant among Indian-Americans and NRIs (Non-resident Indians) in Silicon Valley with 67% of low caste Indians reporting being victims of such discrimination in workplace. Muslims also face employment discrimination in some of the workplaces dominated by Indian managers. California state has filed a lawsuit against Silicon Valley tech giant Cisco Systems alleging caste discrimination.

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

South Asia Investor Review

India Remains Poor Hungry and Illiterate Decades After Independence

Indian Muslims Worse Off Than Dalits

Bigotry Bedevils Silicon Valley Indian Restaurant

India Ranked as Most Racist in the World

Indians Admire Israel and Hitler

Caste Apartheid in India

Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle With India

Who Killed Karkare?

Procrastinating on Hindutva Terror

India's Guantanamos and Abu Ghraibs

Hindutva Government in Israeli Exile?

Growing US-India Military Ties Worry Pakistan

The 21st Century Challenges For Resurgent India

Riaz Haq's YouTube Channel

PakAlumni Social Network

49 comments:

Rks said...

Riaz Bhai, your are ignorant of India's society. So it will be better if you comment on Pakistani society, where Hindu , Sikh and Christian girls are forcibly kidnapped and converted to Islam and the whole nation closes its eyes. Did you ever discuss this issue in any of your blogs (and you claim yourself to be a Pakistani blogger).

Hindu religion is a very fair religion. It has survived persecution of Islam (unlike Iran or Egypt) for 1000 years and Christianity for 200 years. Still 80% of India is Hindu. Some people got converted by the Muslim invaders... like what is going on in Pakistan- forcible conversion...

Hindu religion is a fair and evolving religion. We self-correct. We are giving huge amounts of reservations in ALL jobs, college seats , scholarships and other benefits to people of lower strata for the last 70 years.


Please highlight any such measures taken by Pakistani government for minorities. In fact Ahmedis are treated like dirt and killing them is "righteous" for all Pakistani Muslims and their government.


India has a huge population of Sudras, Vysayas and Brahmins, because they did not participate in wars. Only Kshatriyas fought wars. So others were saved of the terrible fallouts.

Riaz Haq said...

The Global #Dalit , The Indian #Black : Prof Cornel West In Conversation With #Indian Dalit Scholar Suraj Yengde. Yengde and his #African-#American mentor from a long and robust tradition of Dalit-Black solidarity. #casteism #India | Outlook India Magazine https://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/story/india-news-independence-day-special-whos-indias-george-floyd-heres-exposing-a-racist-india/303552

Cornel West: Well, first, I would like to say that it is a blessing to be in dialogue with my dear brother, Suraj…that we are part of the rich legacies of Ambedkar and W.E.B. Du Bois, that we come together as voices, as figures, as persons who are willing to live and to die for that quest for truth, beauty, goodness and justice that sits at the centre of what Ambedkar and Dubois stand for. Now, we are in a unique historical moment in terms of the spiritual decay, moral decline, and relative transition of the American empire…moving to a low point, unable to regenerate the best of its democratic tradition. And the Chinese empire, ambiguous, still too repressive, still too locked into forms of domination, but escalating its economic production, trying to elevate itself against tremendous difficulties, until the pandemic hit. Then there’s the Indian and the Russian regimes, trying to sustain themselves. Brazil much further on the side. The UK and France, crucial, but in many ways remaining middling. Therefore the fundamental dynamic taking place in our moment has to do with those four fundamental regimes. All of them, of course, are shot through with forms of repression and domination. But all of them are also shot through with marvellous forms of resistance and critique. And you and I are trying to keep track of the radically democratic streams, the ones genuinely empowering those that Frantz Fanon called ‘the wretched of the earth’. This is why I think our dialogue is so very important. I'm looking at it through the lens of a Black people who have been so thoroughly exploited, degraded and dominated and yet still producing so many freedom fighters and love warriors. You are looking at it from the rich, deep heritage of Dalit brothers and sisters, right there at the centre of the Indian regimes, the ways in which Brahmin supremacy has always lost contact with the humanity of Dalits.


Suraj Yengde: It's very interesting, even looking at the past century. I see Du Bois as someone who really fashioned twentieth century political thought. That man never stopped, his pen never stopped…you would have needed an industry to provide him ink!

Cornel West: (Laughs)

Suraj Yengde: And now, in the modern era, in the 21st century, what we see is the politics of Ambedkar and Du Bois resonating, almost 100 years later. I look at this era as someone who has lived a few decades of the 20th century, linking up to the arc of their inspirations, their energies…now that needs to be carried on to the next century. It is no accident that Du Bois and Ambedkar carried so many resonances, though it couldn’t come to fruition as much as we might have expected. But now, if they were to relive, the possibilities and connections would be so strong! Not only because there are vocabularies that can connect us more confidently, but also because of the unfinished business of love that they, our ancestors, inaugurated. One of the parallels we see is of course the Dalit and Black Panthers…the civil rights spirit that the African American public sphere as well as private sphere brought to us, and similarly, the land rights movements led by Dalits. The Dalits are the most landless people of India, 77 per cent of them don't own any land, which means they have been virtually permanent refugees in the Indian nation.

zen said...

Btw, Modi on one hand has done some window dressing by choosing a Dalit President (who constitutionally is a rubber stamp). He also sees untouchables etc. as a good vote bank augmenting his traditional upper caste voters. I am afraid that Muslims are the lowest caste in New India

Riaz Haq said...

The Sanskrit word "varna" means "color, tint, dye or pigment" in the Mahabharata. Varna contextually means "colour, race, tribe, species, kind, sort, nature, character, quality, property" of an object or people in some Vedic and medieval texts. Varna refers to four social classes in the Manusmriti.

The Europeans translated "varna" to "caste"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varna_(Hinduism)

Anonymous said...

Mr. RKS.

1: Would a dalit agree with you that Hinduism is a fair religion?

2: If Hindu culture was capable of self correcting it would have gotten rid of caste system long time ago. It wouldn't have needed British interference to get rid of satti custom.
3: Do you know that Hindus have become a minority in Arunachal in last 50 years. No one is forcefully converting them now, so why are they now only 39%?

Zamir

samir sardana said...

The Photo of Brahma misses out the depravity of the man !

Incest with his daughter ! It is worth noting that the Caste system is linked to his "body organs".dindooohindoo

Dandy Sugar Daddy Doodle Brahma raped and married his daughter Saraswati - and justified the same from the Vedas ! And the Dalits have STILL NOT insurrected against the Hindoos !

" 8. On seeing his beautiful daughter Padma, Brahma was sexually excited. He wooed his daughter and wanted to copulate with her. How could a daughter give consent to her own father? Padma refused. Brahma could not give up his desire. He began to quote the Vedas to convince her that there was nothing wrong in having sex with anyone, anytime, anywhere for the sake of giving birth to a child. " ( Puran )

This is the Vedic verse Brahma quoted to justify incest :

Mathara Mupathya, susara Mupatithe, Puthrartheetha.

Sagamarthi, Napathra loka, nasthee thath.

Saravam paravo vindu ha, dasmath Puthrar tham. Matharam suransathee Rehathee

( Vedas, cited in Puran )

Translated this verse means " This is the sanskrit sloka Brahma quoted to his daughter. The sacred verse enjoins, that for the sake of a child one can enjoy her own sister or daughter, without any sin attached to it. ( Puran )"

samir sardana said...

let us look at the BIG PICTURE !

No Story of Dalit oppression is complete w/o Brahminism
No Story of Brahminism is complete w/o Brahmins
No Story of Brahmis is complete w/o Ade Shankara !

And who is this clown ?

Shankara, from Kerala – a Shaiva exponent of “pure nondualism (Advaita)” and idealism – who was “a Shiva avatar” and “had sex with the wife” of a Dead King, after “entering into the body of the dead king”.

Madhavacharya called Adi Shankara “a bastard & a son of a harlot” who copied, edited and pasted Buddhism” and repackaged it, for the Hindoos.dindooohindoo

He was born of a widower,and thus,was taunted as a "bastard" and also,mocked for his mothers chastity (or lack thereof).

At that time,India was ruled by Buddhists who mocked,abused and ostracised Ade Shankara,on account of the above traits.So what did Ade Shankara do ? He wrote his Magnum Opus,wherein he targeted Women (complex of being born of a widow,with no clear lineage),Dalits (who mocked him,as Buddhists) and Buddhists (who called him a "bastard").

Ade Shankara destroyed Buddhism and Buddhists,and said that women had a status lower than that of a cow,and the Dalits had a status,lower than cow dung !

This is the BIG PICTURE of the Indian Maimonides (in terms of stature - not intellect).The Dalit persecution,is the product of the diseased and complexed mind,of this Brahmin !

But this ain't it !

This man used his yogic powers to enter the body of a dead king (Parakaya Pravesa),and had sex with the wife of the dead king - for a long,long,long time !

He then journeyed with his disciples to a city in which the king, named Amaruka, had died, and employing the ‘science of entering into the body of another’ (parakayapravesavidya), he revived the body of the king, which was lying on the funeral pyre. ‘The yogic power (yogabalam) of the teacher, which was joined to his subtle body, entered the body of the king, and that connoisseur of yoga (yogavit) guided his breath upward from the toes. Leaving his body via the fontanel, he slowly entered the body of the dead king via the fontanel…’

Reanimated by Shankara’s presence, the body of King Amaruka rose from its funeral pyre, and with it, Shankara quickly mastered the erotic arts through extended love-play with the principle queen

People ask - Y is Hindooism doomed ?

Y ? They say Y was Hindoosthan enslaved for 2000 years by invaders ?

I say that the entire Hindoo Pantheon and the crazed dementia of Jallikattu and Kali worship,is all a copy and paste from the Assyrians,Babylonians,Sumerians,Persians,Nubians and Kushites

People say - No - don't say that - it breaks me heart !

I present the copy and paste of the Indian Maimonides !

Ramanuja called Shankara a “crypto-Buddhist” (prachanna -bauddha).Sample the “copy and paste” of “Shankara the Shiva avatar”

– As per Buddhism,the “world is Sunya-tattva” (non-existent) and Sankara says, the world is “mithya” (non-existent), devoid of past, present and future.
– As per Buddhism,the way to achieve nirvana is “prajna-paramita” (knowledge of reality),and Sankara says that “tattva-jnana” (true knowledge of reality), is the method to attain moksa.
– As per Buddhism,”Sunya = Prajna-paramita-sutra = mano-vacam agocara = The Sankaras Brahman”.
– As per Buddhism,liberation = “removal of samvrti” (the veil of illusion), while for Sankara it is = “removal of veil of ignorance”

BIG PICTURE ! It is all in the HISTORY of THEOLOGY and the PSYCHOLOGY of the ARCHITECTS of THEOLOGY.

Riaz Haq said...

For 70 years, #Dalits have been denied freedom of religion through 1950 Presidential Order that denies job/education quotas to #Muslim or #Christian converts despite ample evidence that they suffer hardships equal to #Hindu untouchables. https://scroll.in/article/970613/for-70-years-dalits-have-been-denied-freedom-of-religion-through-a-presidential-order via @scroll_in

This month marks 70 years from the passing of the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1950, which aimed at ensuring that Dalit communities would be able to fully enjoy the fundamental freedom and rights protected under the Constitution of India. However, Paragraph 3 of the 1950 Presidential Order prevents Dalits communities from exercising one of the most basic of human rights, the right to freedom of conscience and belief.

The 1950 Presidential Order identifies the caste communities who have experienced extreme social, educational and economic backwardness arising out of the traditional practice of untouchability. These castes are also referred to as Scheduled Castes or Dalits.

These Dalit communities were singled out for deserving affirmative action benefits under various government policies, including education and jobs. Dalit communities also have special protections under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 and political reservation in various forums.

Paragraph 3 of the Presidential Order, however, limited the classification of Scheduled Castes initially only to Hindus. Due to the political activism of Sikh and Buddhist communities, the 1950 Presidential Order was subsequently amended to include Sikhs in 1956 and Buddhists in 1990. The 1950 Presidential Order, however, continues to leave out Dalits who converted to Islam or Christianity from its ambit, despite ample evidence that they suffer equal hardships as other Dalits communities.

The rationale seems to be that Islam and Christianity are more egalitarian religions and therefore a Dalit would not face the same discrimination in their new found faith. Sadly, however, Dalits converting to Islam and Christianity found that their “Dalitness” clung to them and followed them, even after their religious conversion.

In May 2018, Kevin Joseph, a Dalit Christian youth, was murdered by his wife’s relatives in Kerala. His only crime was that he had dared to love and marry an upper caste woman. Principal sessions court judge C Jayachandran noted in the judgment that the motive of the murder was caste prejudice. Sadly, this was but one of many incidents.


In the 1992 landmark judgment of Indra Sawhney and Others v Union of India and Others, the Supreme Court noted:

“Though Christianity does not acknowledge caste system, the evils of caste system in some States are as prevalent as in Hindu society especially among the converts. In Andhra Pradesh, there are Harijan Christians, Reddy Christians, Kamma Christians etc. Similarly, in Tamil Nadu, there are Pillai Christians, Marvar Christians, Nadar Christians and Harijan Christians etc. That is to say all the converts to Christianity have not divested or set off themselves from their caste labels and crossed the caste barrier but carry with them the banners of their caste labels. Like Hindus, they interact and have their familial relationship and marital alliances only within the converted caste groups.”

Riaz Haq said...

Why is the RSS supremo always a Brahmin?


https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-RSS-supremo-always-a-Brahmin


Pralip Narzary, Have researched RSS.
Answered October 29, 2016

Because people in senior cadres are mostly higher caste Hindus. They were the first people who took up the cause of uniting the Hindus. They have been at the forefront right from the birth of Hindu movement - for example Savarkar, Hedgevar both were brhamins. Higher castes have been influential everywhere - just have a look at the list of PMs of India - Modi is probably the second non-Brahmin PM. Look at the caste composition of your teachers - I am sure more than 70–80% would be from higher caste - so its not that the RSS does not let anyone else become supremo, Prof Rajju bhaiya did become RSS supremo. So it is all about availability of able people in the top cadre. Modi worked hard and now he is the PM. Had he not worked hard and Advani or some other higher caste BJP guy become PM, people would be asking question, why is BJP’s PMs are always higher caste - but the same question has never been asked from Congress, despite the fact Congress’ PMs and Presidents have always been from higher castes. I think once OBCs or SCs or STs are in majority in top cadre, you will witness a dalit or OBC or adivasi heading the RSS.

Riaz Haq said...

Unrepresentative US Congress dominated by old white male millionaires. #democracy #UnitedStates #Congress #Elections2020

https://twitter.com/haqsmusings/status/1301243188934443013?s=20

Millionaires: Congress 51%, US Population 5%

White Men: Congress 77%, US Population 31%

Women: Congress 20%, US Population 51%

Over 55 Years: Congress 67%, US Population 28%

Riaz Haq said...

#Dalits bear brunt of #India's 'endemic' sexual violence crisis. #UttarPradesh has the highest number of reported cases of violence against Dalits but there's been a spike during the #COVID #pandemic. #untouchables #Caste #BJP #Hindutva https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/16/dalits-bear-brunt-of-indias-endemic-sexual-violence-crisis

A spate of brutal rapes and murders of young girls in a single district of India over the past month has provoked outrage and exposed the ongoing use of sexual violence as a tool of oppression and revenge against lower caste communities.

Over the past month, the Lakhimpur Kheri district of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh has witnessed four incidents of girls being raped and brutally murdered. At least two of the girls were Dalits, the lowest caste in the Hindu system of social hierarchy, who were previously referred to as “untouchables” and cast out from society.

Last week, a 14-year-old girl Dalit girl was found hanging from a tree in a village, having been raped and murdered. Just a few days before, a three-year-old girl was raped and strangled to death.

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On 14 and 24 August, two girls, a 13-year-old and a 17-year-old, were both raped and killed in Lakhimpur Kheri.

“These cases of extreme sexual violence are more examples of the dominant caste wielding power over Dalit women who are perceived as weak and vulnerable and available,” said Manjula Pradeep, director of campaigns at the Dalit Human Rights Defenders Network.

She added: “Dalit women are seen as impure and deprived when they access basic amenities but their bodies are also used as objects to take revenge on the Dalit communities and keep them oppressed. With more Dalits demanding their rights, these kinds of incidents we have seen in Lakhimpur Kheri are increasing.”

Local activists said the assaults carried out against the Dalit girls went ignored by police until the issue was raised by activists and members of the opposition political party, who said the incident of the 13-year-old had “shaken humanity”. Activists have also struggled to enter the village to intervene in the cases as upper caste members of the village had reportedly blocked access.

The state of Uttar Pradesh already has the highest number of reported cases of violence against Dalits but during coronavirus lockdown there was a reported spike of attacks on Dalits by upper caste Thakurs. However, no arrests have been made.

“The recent spate of rape and murder cases in the Lakhimpur Kheri district indicates an endemic problem of sexual violence and the state government needs to do much more to address this crisis,” said Divya Srinivasan, a south Asia consultant for women’s rights organisation Equality Now.

“In many instances, sexual violence committed against Dalit women and girls is perpetrated by men from dominant ‘upper castes’, who use sexual violence as a tool to assert power and reinforce existing caste, social and gender hierarchies,” said Srinivasan.

Srinivasan emphasised that these entrenched hierarchies of power gave attackers of Dalit women a worrying sense of impunity. Assaults on lower caste women were rarely investigated or prosecuted, and in the case of Dalit victims, rarely prompt much media coverage or public outrage.


'If you saw her body, you will never sleep again': despair as India rape crisis grows
Read more
India remains the most unsafe country for women in the world, with a woman raped every 20 minutes. Lower caste women in particular bear the brunt, with little to no access to justice. It first came to light in a 1999 report by Human Rights Watch that documented how Dalit women in Bihar were raped and then had their breasts cut off and were shot in the vulva.

Official statistics show that at least four Dalit women are raped in India every day, though the real number is thought to be much higher as the communities often do not report the rapes due to pressure from higher castes or because police refuse to file the cases.

Riaz Haq said...

#India’s engineers have thrived in #SiliconValley. So has its #caste system. Only 1.5% of Indian immigrants in #UnitedStates are #Dalits or members of the lower-ranked castes, but they face insults and discrimination from upper caste #Hindu colleagues. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/10/27/indian-caste-bias-silicon-valley/?tid=ss_tw

Whenever Benjamin Kaila, a database administrator who immigrated from India to the United States in 1999, applies for a job at a U.S. tech company, he prays that there are no other Indians during the in-person interview. That’s because Kaila is a Dalit, or member of the lowest-ranked castes within India’s system of social hierarchy, formerly referred to as “untouchables.”

Silicon Valley’s diversity issues are well documented: It’s still dominated by White and Asian men, and Black and Latino workers remain underrepresented. But for years, as debates about meritocracy raged on, the tech industry’s reliance on Indian engineers allowed another type of discrimination to fester. And Dalit engineers like Kaila say U.S. employers aren’t equipped to address it.

In more than 100 job interviews for contract work over the past 20 years, Kaila said he got only one job offer when another Indian interviewed him in person. When members of the interview panel have been Indian, Kaila says, he has faced personal questions that seem to be used to suss out whether he’s a member of an upper caste, like most of the Indians working in the tech industry.

“They don’t bring up caste, but they can easily identify us,” Kaila says, rattling off all of the ways he can be outed as potentially being Dalit, including the fact that he has darker skin.

The legacy of discrimination from the Indian caste system is rarely discussed as a factor in Silicon Valley’s persistent diversity problems. Decades of tech industry labor practices, such as recruiting candidates from a small cohort of top schools or relying on the H-1B visa system for highly skilled workers, have shaped the racial demographics of its technical workforce. Despite that fact, Dalit engineers and advocates say that tech companies don’t understand caste bias and have not explicitly prohibited caste-based discrimination.

In recent years, however, the Dalit rights movement has grown increasingly global, including advocating for change in corporate America. In June, California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing filed a landmark suit against Cisco and two of its former engineering managers, both upper-caste Indians, for discriminating against a Dalit engineer.

After the lawsuit was announced, Equality Labs, a nonprofit advocacy group for Dalit rights, received complaints about caste bias from nearly 260 U.S. tech workers in three weeks, reported through the group’s website or in emails to individual staffers. Allegations included caste-based slurs and jokes, bullying, discriminatory hiring practices, bias in peer reviews, and sexual harassment, said executive director Thenmozhi Soundararajan. The highest number of claims were from workers at Facebook (33), followed by Cisco (24), Google (20), Microsoft (18), IBM (17) and Amazon (14). The companies all said they don’t tolerate discrimination.

And a group of 30 female Indian engineers who are members of the Dalit caste and work for Google, Apple, Microsoft, Cisco and other tech companies say they have faced caste bias inside the U.S. tech sector, according to a statement shared exclusively with The Washington Post.

Riaz Haq said...

Caste discrimination: India must disown parts of ancient texts that contradict the Constitution
Just as the West is re-examining its colonial and slave-running past, India should identify treatises that are anachronistic.

https://scroll.in/article/976824/caste-violence-india-must-disown-parts-of-ancient-texts-that-contradict-the-constitution

The ancient Varna system separates the three twice-born (Dvij) groupings – Brahmin, Kshatriya, and Vaishya – from the Shudras who constituted the lowest rung. All ancient authorities concurred that caste was assigned to a person at birth and could not be changed; with each caste was associated a profession; and all castes were arranged in a hierarchy.

All the Dharma sutras and Dharma shastras asserted that the main task of the Shudras was to serve the twice-born (Apastamba Dharma Sutra I.1.1.7-8; Mahabharata, Shanti Parva 60.28). To assure their servility, they were assigned a low ritual status. While a number of sanskaras or rites of passage, from conception to cremation, were prescribed for the high-rankers, they were prohibited for the Shudras who were not permitted to chant Vedic mantras (Manu Smrti X.127).

They could recite the phrase “Namah Shivay” but were not allowed to prefix “Om” to it, notes P V Kane in his History of Dharmasastra.

If a Brahmin committed adultery or rape, merely a fine was imposed on him (Manu Smrti VIII.385). However if a Shudra had sexual intercourse with a Brahmin woman, he was to be executed no matter whether the act was consensual or not (Vasishtha Dharma Shastra 21.1). If a Brahmin reviled a Shudra, he paid a small fine (Manu Smrti VIII. 268) or nothing at all (Gautama Dharma Sutra XII.10). But in the reverse case, a Shudra’s tongue was to be chopped off (Manu Smrti VIII. 270) .

In the case of killing a Dvij by a Dvij , reasonable prayashchit (atonement) was prescribed. For killing a Shudra the prayashchit was the same as for killing a frog, cat, dog, mongoose, or owl.

As the Hathras case demonstrates, the practice of degrading the lower castes has continued into the present.

In 1848, Jotirao Phule was insulted by Brahmins for being a part of a marriage procession notwithstanding the fact that he had been invited to it by his Brahmin friends. In school in the 1890s, Bhimrao Ambedkar was not allowed to sit with the other children inside the classroom. He had to bring a gunny sack from home and sit on it outside. In the 1910s, Meghnad Saha, who would grow up to become an internationally acclaimed astrophysicist, was not permitted by upper-caste fellow residents at the Calcutta’s Government Eden Hindu Hostel to dine at their table and participate in the annual Sarasvati Puja.

The economic exploitation and oppression of Dalits and crimes against Dalit women are facilitated by the low ritual status assigned to them. Just as the West is re-examining its colonial and slave-running past, India should also identify those parts of ancient texts that are now anachronistic. It should treat them as archives and disown them as living heritage.

Riaz Haq said...

How Big #Tech Is Importing #India’s #Caste Legacy to #SiliconValley? Jatav’s #IIT classmates quickly identified him as #Dalit. He’d been educated in Hindi-language schools, and his English was poor. His clothes were shabby. He didn’t have a smartphone. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-03-11/how-big-tech-is-importing-india-s-caste-legacy-to-silicon-valley

For all the IITs’ proficiency at training and placing students, though, the coders, programmers, product developers, and engineers fanning out to global tech bring with them the troubled legacy of India’s caste system. On campus, students are surrounded by—and in some cases participate in—a culture of discrimination, bullying, and segregation that targets fellow pupils from India’s Scheduled Castes, also known as Dalits. The IITs officially discourage such harassment, but the prejudice against these students remains quite open.

Caste in India speaks, as race does in America, to centuries of social, cultural, and economic divisions. Unlike in the U.S., though, India has since 1950 had a national system of affirmative action designed to undo the legacy of bias. Among its provisions are ones that help Dalits and other oppressed groups get into and pay for college. For nearly half a century, IIT admissions have been subject to a reservation system that’s still hotly debated on the campuses. In recent years, the schools have opposed attempts to extend affirmative action to faculty hires, arguing it would dilute the quality of the applicant pool and undermine their meritocratic image.

The IITs are notoriously cutthroat, starting with the admissions process. Some 2.2 million people have registered to take the 2021 entrance exam, to vie for roughly 16,000 slots. About 15% of those are allotted to students from the Scheduled Castes (SCs) and another 7.5% to applicants from the Scheduled Tribes (STs), indigenous people who’ve faced marginalization and whose status has also been formalized by the constitution. To fill those slots, universities sometimes offer seats to students with test scores below the cutoff point—though not as far below as is commonly assumed.

Caste-based resentment at the IITs can run high. In one video posted on YouTube in 2018, a student poring over a pile of books is labeled “GEN,” for general pool, while the two students sleeping nearby are identified as “SC” and “ST.” In another post circulated widely among IIT groups last year, a student suggested Covid-19 should also give preferential treatment to the marginalized groups. “My dear Corona,” it said in Hindi. “In every sphere SC/STs get first preference. So if you can, please look into the same.”

Dalit IIT graduates who’ve managed to land jobs in the U.S. say that such attitudes can be found there, too. Last year a Dalit graduate of IIT Bombay filed suit in the U.S. against Cisco Systems Inc. and two of his fellow alums, saying he’d experienced caste-based discrimination at their hands while the three of them were employed at the company. The accompanying publicity prompted a wave of complaints about caste discrimination in American tech—allegations that seemed to blindside the industry.

Amit Jatav, a Dalit from Karauli, in the northwestern state of Rajasthan, remembers catching “the IIT bug” in high school, where he excelled in chemistry, physics, and math. His father, an elementary school teacher, and his mother, a fieldworker, scraped together money from relatives and local lenders to send him for a year of test prep. He took the entrance exam in 2017 and got into IIT Delhi on his first try.

Jatav’s classmates quickly identified him as Dalit. He’d been educated in Hindi-language schools, and his English was poor. His clothes were worn and shabby. He didn’t have a smartphone. In an environment where entrance exam scores are status symbols, Jatav had placed relatively low, marking him as a “quota” student. He heard loud comments saying he was at IIT only because of his “category” instead of “earning it rightfully.” He wasn’t invited to study groups, dinners, or social events.


Riaz Haq said...

#Hindu Sect Is Accused of Using Forced Labor (mainly #Dalit) to Build #NewJersey Temple. #US federal agents raided the massive temple in Robbinsville, N.J., as a lawsuit charged that low-caste men had been lured from #India to work for about $1 an hour. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/11/nyregion/nj-hindu-temple-india-baps.html#click=https://t.co/Oz8nDR3CRo


Federal law enforcement agents descended on a massive temple in New Jersey on Tuesday after workers accused a prominent Hindu sect of luring them from India, confining them to the temple grounds and paying them the equivalent of about $1 an hour to perform grueling labor in near servitude.

Lawyers for the workers said in a lawsuit filed Tuesday that Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha, a Hindu sect known as BAPS that has close ties to India’s ruling party and has built temples around the world, had exploited possibly hundreds of low-caste men in the yearslong construction project.

The workers, who lived in trailers hidden from view, had been promised jobs helping to build the temple in rural Robbinsville, N.J., with standard work hours and ample time off, according to the lawsuit, a wage claim filed in U.S. District Court in New Jersey. The majority are Dalit, the lowest rung in India’s caste system.

They were brought to the United States on religious visas, or R-1 visas — temporary visas used for clergy and lay religious workers such as missionaries — and presented to the U.S. government as volunteers, according to the claim. They were asked to sign several documents, often in English, and instructed to tell U.S. embassy staffers that they were skilled carvers or decorative painters, the complaint said.

Lawyers for the men, however, said they did manual labor on the site, working nearly 13 hours a day lifting large stones, operating cranes and other heavy machinery, building roads and storm sewers, digging ditches and shoveling snow, all for the equivalent of about $450 per month. They were paid $50 in cash, with the rest deposited in accounts in India, the complaint said.

“I respectfully disagree with the wage claim,” Kanu Patel, the chief executive of BAPS, told The New York Times, while noting he was not in charge of day-to-day operations at the site.

Lenin Joshi, a spokesman for BAPS, also disputed the accusations, saying the men did complicated work connecting stones that had been hand-carved in India. “They have to be fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. In that process, we need specialized artisans,” Mr. Joshi said, saying this work qualified the men for the visas.

“We are naturally shaken by this turn of events and are sure that once the full facts come out, we will be able to provide answers and show that these accusations and allegations are without merit,” Mr. Joshi said.

Riaz Haq said...

#Modi opposes #caste census in #India. A caste count could cause fissures in the #Hindu vote, which the #BJP has managed to consolidate in recent years, despite deep divisions that underpin the party's plank of Hindu unity. #Islamophobia_in_india https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-58141993

Major opposition and regional leaders have met India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi to argue in favour of counting caste in the country's census.

"A caste census will be a historic, pro-poor measure," Tejashwi Yadav, a leader of the regional Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), was quoted as saying by the Press Trust of India.

Mr Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party's decision not to do so has sparked a political maelstrom.

Hinduism's deeply hierarchical and oppressive caste system, which dates back some 2,000 years, puts Brahmins or priests at the top, and Dalits (formerly untouchables) and Adivasis (tribespeople) at the bottom.

In between are a multitude of castes - it's hard to even say how many because there is no list that has enumerated them all.

But there is a swathe of lower and intermediate castes, which are roughly believed to constitute about 52% of the population, that are recognised as Other Backward Classes or OBCs.

While India's census, which happens every 10 years, has always recorded the population of Dalits and Adivasis, it has never counted OBCs.

Now, several political parties, including BJP's allies, are demanding a caste census - essentially a count of OBCs. However, the government has refused.


------------------

Caste is a crucial factor in every Indian election, from the village council to the parliament. More so in Uttar Pradesh, where the BJP's power and popularity rest on a delicately forged alliance of castes, and especially those in the OBC category.

A caste count could cause fissures in the Hindu vote, which the BJP has managed to consolidate in recent years, despite deep divisions that underpin the party's plank of Hindu unity.

The government has also argued that it would lead to the perpetuation of caste identities - but lower castes say that identity is a reality they grapple with everyday and only the privileged can afford to overlook caste.

Critics say there's another reason for the BJP's reluctance. Counting OBCs would reveal what a large proportion of the population they make up, but how little of it comprises upper castes, who nevertheless dominate politics and bureaucracy, because of centuries of privilege afforded by wealth and education.

Riaz Haq said...

Unmasking Hindutva - Frontline
Inbox

https://frontline.thehindu.com/the-nation/unmasking-hindutva-looking-back-on-dismantling-global-hindutva-online-conference-september-2021/article36628499.ece



Benign Brahminism
Considering that caste is an intrinsic part of the Hindutva world view, a session was dedicated to the theme. Gajendran Ayyathurai presented his paper on “Systematic Blindnesses: Hindutva, Benign Brahminism and the Brick Wall of Caste/Hindu Identity”. In his argument, “benign Brahminism stands for how Brahmin-male claims of Hindu identity, Hindu culture and Hinduism have come to be legitimised in the Indian and Western academy’s theories, institutions and practices that superimpose and mask the latent and manifest forms of caste/casteism”. Bhanwar Meghwanshi, who quit the RSS as he became disgusted with its casteism, explained in Hindi that “Hindutva is not a religion or faith but is a communal political ideology that is based on brahminical Hinduism that wants to turn India from a secular nation into a Hindu rashtra”. Basing his argument on his own experience, Meghwanshi asserted that “the lower castes do not have any role in determining the strategies or politics of the RSS, instead, they are exploited and weaponised against religious minorities”. In her presentation, the philosopher Meena Dhanda said it was possible for caste “to be included in the legal definition of race under the [U.K.’s] Equality Act of 2010”.

Also read: Hindu right-wing organisations in the U.S avail themselves of low-interest loans offered by the SBA

In a session on “Gender and Sexual Politics of Hindutva”, the film-maker Leena Manimekalai showed a clip from her incomplete film Rape Nation, which partially looks at the stories of survivors of sexual violence during the communal carnages that took place in Gujarat and Muzaffarnagar in 2002 and 2013 respectively. Arguing that sexual violence is at the core of Hindutva, Leena Manimekalai said: “Hindutva has redefined nationalism as a genocidal impulse to rape and murder non-Hindu women. It is a celebration of toxic masculinity.”

The transgender studies scholar Aniruddha Dutta showed in his presentation how the BJP’s rise had even affected the Hijra tradition where there has been a transformation from a “syncretic Indo-Islamic tradition to a more orthodox version of Hinduism”. The Dalit feminist P. Sivakami critiqued Hindutva as having “no vision for Hindu women except that it intends to prepare and reorient them against their imaginary enemy, i.e., the Muslim man, thus diverting her from her real struggles”. The feminist scholar Akanksha Mehta segued from this presentation, stating that “notions of gender and sexuality rooted in caste and race are crucial to the Hindutva project” even as she compared the analogous role of women among savarna (caste) Hindus and Zionists.

Hindutva and its relationship to nationalism was the theme of the session titled “Contours of the Nation”. The focus was on the operation of Hindutva in Kashmir, the north-eastern region and the Adivasi-inhabited areas of central India. The anthropologist Mohamad Junaid examined the “spectacle of domination” of the Hindutva state, characterising it as “primarily an anti-Muslim state”. He also spoke about the long history of Hindutva in Kashmir, tracing it to the land reforms of the 1950s, which were a challenge to “Hindu sovereignty”.

Riaz Haq said...

Cal State Adds Caste to Anti Discrimination Policy: Dalit Group Happy; Several Faculty Say Unfair

https://www.indiawest.com/news/cal-state-adds-caste-to-anti-discrimination-policy-dalit-group-happy-several-faculty-say-unfair/article_b3e72010-7bb1-11ec-b2c5-f36f36c37b7a.html


The California State University is a public university system with 23 campuses and eight off-campus centers. CSU is the largest four-year public university system in the United States.

Equality Lab’s executive director Thenmozhi Soundararajan, in a press release called CSU’s decision a historic win, and credited “the tireless efforts of the student-led interfaith and inter-caste initiative.” Noting that “the movement for caste equity in the United States is growing exponentially as caste-oppressed Americans and allies bravely organize for our rights,” she added her organization looks forward “to working with CSU campuses to help implement this historic win.”

In the press release, Manmit Singh, a student at San Francisco State University said the victory “has shown the power of an interfaith, inter-caste, and multiracial coalition.”

Meanwhile, Dr. Praveen Sinha, Professor of Accountancy at California State University, Long Beach noted, “The addition of caste is a misguided overreach given the existence of comprehensive policies which already protect against various forms of discrimination.” He said, “We cannot but oppose the unique risk that CSU’s move puts on us as they add a category that is only associated with people of Indian descent, such as myself and thousands of other faculty and students in the CSU system. It is going to create divisions where they simply do not exist.”

“As a faculty member of Indian origin, I am well aware that discrimination is a daily reality for many students of varied backgrounds, and there is a robust mechanism of addressing all such complaints under existing laws and CSU policy,” said Dr. Sunil Kumar, Professor of Engineering at San Diego State University. “But this policy change has been made in the absence of any scientifically reliable evidence or data. Rather than redressing discrimination, it will actually cause discrimination by unconstitutionally singling out and targeting Hindu faculty of Indian and South Asian descent as members of a suspect class because of deeply entrenched, false stereotypes about Indians, Hindus, and caste. We are disappointed that the CSU faculty association championed this move without holding discussions with the concerned faculty even when three professors had alerted them way back in May 2021. In their meeting with these three professors on January 14 this year, some of the CFA leaders admitted that they did not understand the complexity of caste and that they dropped the ball.”

The faculty members expressed deep concern that, as written, the caste policy would specifically deny Hindu, Indian and South Asian faculty equal protection and due process.

There are more than 600 Cal State faculty of Indian and South Asian origin who would be rendered vulnerable should the collective bargaining agreement be passed as currently written noted the Hindu American Foundation in a press release. Lawyers at HAF, also sent a letter to CSU Board of Trustees, the CSU Office of General Counsel, CSU Chancellor, and president of the California Faculty Association, on behalf of CSU faculty.

The faculty petition points to comprehensive survey by the Carnegie Endowment, “Social Realities of Indian Americans: Results From the 2020 Indian American Attitudes Survey,” which found that while discrimination on the basis of color is common for Indian Americans, caste discrimination is exceedingly rare.

Riaz Haq said...

Only 3% Muslims are in Indian national media

https://muslimmirror.com/eng/muslims-are-only-3-in-indian-national-media/


Recently, Oxfam India released a report titled “Who Tells Our Stories Matters: Representation of Marginalised Caste Groups in Indian Media.” It says; 90% of leadership positions in Indian media are occupied by Upper Caste groups with not even a single Dalit or Adivasi heading Indian mainstream media.

Exactly the same findings were made by the social activist and psephologist, Yogendra Yadav in 2006 who did a similar survey about the social profile of the national media professionals in India.

Yadav recalls the days of the Mandal II agitation in 2006 when he did this survey; “It was more a rudimentary headcount than a scientific survey but it confirmed our worst suspicions about caste, gender, and religion across Indian media.”

“We drew up a list of 40 national media outlets (Hindi and English TV channels and newspapers) and requested someone there to draw a list of their top 10 editor-level decision-makers. Then we recorded information on the gender, religion, and caste against each name. We had shortlisted 400 persons but were able to collect information on 315 only” he recalls.

Our findings were; “A staggering 88 percent of this elite list were upper-caste Hindus, a social group that cannot possibly exceed 20 percent of India’s population. Brahmins alone, no more than 2-3 percent of the population, occupied 49 percent of positions. Not even a single person in this list turned out to be from Dalit or Adivasi background. More relevant to the case in point, the OBCs, whose population is estimated to be around 45 percent, was merely 4 percent among the top media professionals. Women accounted for only 16 percent.

Yadav says that “the representation of the 14 percent Muslims was only 3 percent in the national media. He adds that brazen anti-minority headlines get routinely generated in media and the communal flare-up gets 9 times more coverage than caste conflict in India.”

Yadav says what we summarized in 2006 that India’s ‘national’ media lacks social diversity; it does not reflect the country’s social profile comes true with findings of the Oxfam report on media in India. The big picture that remains the same even after 15 years is that 20 percent of the country gets 80 percent voice in the media and the remaining 80 percent is limited to 20 percent media space.

Yogendra Yadav’s writeup “Hindu upper-caste Indian media is a lot like White-dominated South Africa” can be accessed in The Print, October 27, 2022.


---------------

Media has been perceived by the masses as a sacrosanct institution but how these are governed is a matter of mystery. While a wide range of issues are discussed, covered and aired both in print as well as on news channels, caste disparity within media houses has hardly ever been a topic of serious discussion. The deliberate ignorance of the issues that affect marginalised communities has led them to come up with their own channels.

This study is an attempt to find out the status of representation among SC, ST, OBC & DNT in different media outlets. The research team has explored the challenges faced by newsrooms, looked for existing best practices that different countries have adopted and also provided suggestions to make newsrooms more inclusive.


https://www.oxfamindia.org/knowledgehub/workingpaper/who-tells-our-stories-matters-representation-marginalised-caste-groups-indian-media

Riaz Haq said...

Another popular Hindu mythological text often shared with children is the Ramayana. In the story Rama, his wife Sita, and his brother Lakshmana are presented as dashing and heroic, particularly because they had braved exile and fought against a terrifying demon king, Ravana. Yet a closer look at the full Sanskrit text of Valmiki’s Ramayana reveals a violent undercurrent in its reinforcement of dharma. In one later addition to the story, a Brahmin goes to King Rama with his son dead in his arms. You must have done something wrong as king, he says, otherwise my son would not have died. A sage at court explains that the son died because a Shudra peasant fouled the order by learning to read and doing ascetic practices to try to ascend to heaven, which as a member of the lower caste he had no right to do.

Soundararajan, Thenmozhi. The Trauma of Caste (p. 64). North Atlantic Books. Kindle Edition.

Rama immediately leaps into his flying chariot and spies a mystic hanging upside down from a tree in an act of spiritual asceticism. It’s the Shudra Shambuka, who explains to Rama he is doing this rigorous penance in hopes of knowing the divine. Rama doesn’t even let him finish his sentence. He just slices Shambuka’s head off. All the gods cry out, “Well done!” Flowers from the heavens rain down on Rama, and the dead child of the Brahmin comes back to life.32 This story terrified me as a caste-oppressed child. I could not understand what was wrong with wanting to aspire to know God. Even more tragic than the existential implications of this story, today this kind of ritual decapitation occurs as the violence prescribed in scripture has spread across the subcontinent. Scriptural edict has become material violence.

Soundararajan, Thenmozhi. The Trauma of Caste (p. 65). North Atlantic Books. Kindle Edition.

Riaz Haq said...

As Gail Omvedt details in her classic study Buddhism in India, Brahmins used Vedic scripture to award themselves high status, sanctity, and power while circumscribing other communities in lower classes based on social function. Among the first scriptures to do this is the Rig Veda, in the Purusha Sukta, a hymn that introduces the concept of varna as part of the divine order.13 The Purusha is described as the first being from whom all other creation is derived. His sacrifice creates all life forms, including human beings, as his parts make up the origins of the universe, the elements, all the worlds, and everything in creation. The text says:

Soundararajan, Thenmozhi. The Trauma of Caste (p. 55). North Atlantic Books. Kindle Edition.

When they divided Puruṣha how many portions did they make? What do they call his mouth, his arms? What do they call his thighs and feet? The Brahman was his mouth, of both his arms was the Rājanya made. His thighs became the Vaiśya, from his feet the Śūdra was produced. The Moon was gendered from his mind, and from his eye the Sun had birth; Indra and Agni from his mouth were born, and Vāyu from his breath. Forth from his navel came mid-air; the sky was fashioned from his head, Earth from his feet, and from his ear the regions. Thus they formed the worlds.14

Soundararajan, Thenmozhi. The Trauma of Caste (p. 55). North Atlantic Books. Kindle Edition.

These verses describe a world in which all humans originate from the varnas, or social classes, that sprung from the body of Purusha. His mouth or his head was the origin of the priestly class, the Brahmins. Then the Rajanyas, or the varna that would come to be known as Kshatriyas—the rulers and warriors—were supposed to come from his arms and chest. The Vaishyas came from his abdomen and thighs; they were the merchants, artisans, and traders—tasked with being responsible for the external dealings in the world. The Shudras were the servant class, and they were his feet.

Soundararajan, Thenmozhi. The Trauma of Caste (pp. 55-56). North Atlantic Books. Kindle Edition.



Riaz Haq said...

Excerpt from the recently published book "The Trauma of Caste" by Dalit author Thenmozhi Soundararajan (pp. 15-16).

Caste Is Suffering This is some profound existential shit. Imagine your worth and your fate are irrevocably determined at the moment of your birth. You are condemned to a life of servitude, humiliation, exploitation. You are less than human. You have no choice but to live in a caste apartheid of segregated ghettos and be denied access to schools, roads, basic amenities like fresh water. You are forbidden to speak or hear or read the language of Sanskrit, in which the laws that determine your fate are written. You are not even allowed the consolation of spiritual practice, some kind of relationship with a higher power, because you are considered spiritually defiling before God. This life sentence—because let’s be clear, this is the life of a slave, a spiritual criminal—is decreed in the scriptures that form the entire basis of your society. If it is scripture itself that condemns you to being outcast for life, who then would challenge the law of God?

Riaz Haq said...

#Hindu Nationalists have also targeted #Jewish-#American Professor Audrey Truschke with vicious threats and abuse on her various social-media profiles, including threats of #rape and #murder, as well as anti-#Muslim and #Antisemitic slurs. #Islamophobia https://caravanmagazine.in/history/hindu-right-cannot-debate-me-audrey-truschke

Audrey Truschke is an associate professor of South Asian history at the Rutgers University in New Jersey, in the United States. Truschke’s research focuses on the history of early and modern India. She has written three books on the subject—Culture of Encounters, on Sanskrit in the Mughal courts; Aurangzeb: The Man and the Myth which argues for a reassessment of the Mughal king; and the recently published Language of History: Sanskrit Narratives of Indo-Muslim rule.

Truschke has regularly come under severe criticism from Hindu right-wing nationalists, who see her academic research into India’s complex multicultural past and religious history as an affront to their beliefs. Beginning with the release of her first book, Truschke has faced a constant barrage of online harassment, hate mail, co-ordinated attacks on social media, and in some cases, even censure—in August 2018, a lecture she was due to give in Hyderabad was cancelled due to security threats, after the police received letters of opposition. The same year, she faced an outpouring of threats and abuse after she tweeted that according to one loosely translated verse in Valmiki’s mythological epic Ramayana, Sita called Ram a “misogynistic pig.” Truschke discussed this interpretation and the misogynistic response from the Hindu right-wing, in an article in this publication.

In early March this year, Truschke began facing a spike in vicious threats and abuse on her various social-media profiles, including threats of rape and murder, as well as anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic slurs. The abuse referred primarily to her scholarship on India. On 9 March, Truschke tweeted that in recent days, she had faced an “avalanche of hate speech” and threats endangering her family. She said she had blocked 5,750 accounts “and counting.” A few days earlier, an anonymous Twitter account “@hinduoncampus,” which claimed to be run by Hindu students in US universities, circulated an open letter to the Rutgers administration, describing Truschke’s work as “bigotry against Hindus.” In a statement issued on 9 March, Rutgers University called for an end to the trolling, and backed Truschke’s academic freedom to pursue “controversial” scholarship. It also promised to begin a dialogue with the Hindu students on campus.


Riaz Haq said...

'Brahmins represent the head of India': Manoj Muntashir's video on JNU postershttps://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/mangal-pandey-chanakya-were-brahmins-manoj-muntashir-s-video-on-jnu-posters-101670162529384.html

Brahmins represent Only Brahmins pray for the good for everyone even when he has nothing to eat, Manoj Muntashir said in his video slamming the anti-Brahmin slogans at JNU. “I am proud that I am Brahmin," he said in the video.Writer and lyricist Manoj Muntashir has released a video protesting the anti-Brahmin slogans which recently surfaced on the walls of Jawaharlal Nehru University triggering a massive row. In his video, Manoj Muntashir said it is a stereotype that the Brahmins are facing as everywhere they are portrayed as 'greedy and wicked'. Clarifying that he is not part of any political party, the artiste said his aim for the video was to say the truth about Brahmins.

On Thursday, the walls of the JNU campus were defaced with slogans like "Brahmins leave the campus", "There will be blood", "Brahmin Bharat Chhodo", "Brahmino-Baniyas, we are coming for you!" etc. 'Go back to Shakha' was found written inside the chambers of the Brahmin professors. While the university authorities ordered a probe, no group took responsibility for the defacement.

"Though India was plundered several times by outside forces in history, it did not lose everything and who saved these things from the plunderers? The Brahmins. I don't need to remind you that Mangal Pandey and Chanakya were Brahmins," Manoj Muntashir said."We are the kingmakers; Brahmins never hankered after power. Maharishi Vasistha never wanted to capture Ayodhya," Manoj Muntashir said adding that some people think Brahmins divided the society into castes but it is not the fact, he said. Brahmins represent the head of India and it should never be bowed down, Manoj Muntashir added.The JNU episode created a row and the university in past has been accused of fanning 'anti-national' activities. After the incident, Vishwa Hindu Parishad said coward Leftist agenda will not be successful as JNU now has adopted the idea of nationalism and social harmony/

Riaz Haq said...

Brahmins make up 4.3% of the Indian population, 50% wealthy, 37% middle, 13% lower.
They are mostly teachers and intellectuals. Further of the four religious groups are


the Sikhs are richest and 6 in 10 are in this group.Or 60%.
The Ambanis changed their name as they got tired of being labelled as Gujjus and took on a Sindhi name.
Today one of the problems is Indian Corporations are run by promoters or what is commonly called Bania capitalism rather than Shareholders as is common in Western Corporations.

https://velivada.com/2017/08/26/brahmin-bania-capitalism-adani-infosys-style/

The Economic Times published an article on Indian companies in its recent edition. One of the disturbing nature of India Inc is that it controlled by the “Promoters” and not by the “stakeholders”. The majority of the companies listed on the bourse are controlled by the “promoters”.

This is against the corporate governance, whatever that term means, it means one clear thing: the shareholders do not control the companies they invest, but those who started the companies as the investors and promoters.

This is what has happened in the case of Infosys which embroiled in controversy as to who controls the company. Suitable amendments are called for in this area, particularly making the stock market more transparent and the responsibility shifting more towards the shareholders.

A few people controlling the fate of the company developed through people’s money is against the principle of ownership. The ET showed that out 500 companies, over 350 had the control of the investors and not of the shareholders, though these companies are listed on the bourse.

As India started opening up its economy since 1991, the Indian capitalism started employing new methods of looting the state and even earning money from the state through undervaluation of the imported goods including minerals like coal from the countries like Indonesia for the thermal power plants run by the private parties like Adani.

Coal is the new gold in India for the burgeoning thermal power plants and though the thermal power plants must be replaced by the cleaner and greener energy, the India Government is not ready to phase out the thermal power plant. The investments made in the thermal power plants is huge.

The companies like Adani creates a complex network of agents throughout the globe to get many benefits and use the loopholes in the laws to exploit the country. The Department of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) is an important institution and it has to inquire into serious lapses.

One of the difficulties involved in the inquiries of the DRI is the working with the other foreign governments to know the patterns of the imports in India. The country of origin has been hidden in the series of shipments from different locations. It is a complex web which is difficult to track and that is why it makes easy for the companies like Adani to dodge the Government institutions.

Now that the Indian capital can donate as much as they like to the RSS/BJP through electoral bonds, the capitalism and Brahminism will have a complete run in this country and that is why the time ahead is critical for the survival of the Indian democracy.

Virginia Raines said...

The Indian Dalits attacked for wearing the wrong shoes - BBC
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-44517922
Jun 19, 2018 — Documenting five seemingly mundane reasons Dalits (formerly untouchables) have been beaten and killed.


Dalit man killed for riding horse in Gujarat - Times of India
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/rajkot/dalit-man-killed-for-riding-horse-in-guj/articleshow/63549437.cms
Mar 30, 2018 — Pradeep Rathod, 21, was beaten to death by a group of people from the Darbar community in Timbi village of Umrala taluka.


'This Is It. I'm Going To Die': India's Minorities Are Targeted In Lynchings
https://www.npr.org/2019/08/21/751541321/this-is-it-im-going-to-die-indias-minorities-are-targeted-in-lynchings
Aug 21, 2019 — That slogan — which means "Praise Lord Ram," a Hindu god — has long been known as a prayer. Now it's an incitement to mob violence against India's minorities.


India's Violent Mobs Are a Menace to Minorities
https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/03/18/indias-violent-mobs-are-menace-minorities-and-democracy


India: Vigilante 'Cow Protection' Groups Attack Minorities
https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/02/19/india-vigilante-cow-protection-groups-attack-minorities


Hindu Priest Calls for the Beheading of Christians in India
https://www.persecution.org/2021/10/24/hindu-priest-calls-beheading-christians-india/


Spectre Of Mob Lynchings Continues To Haunt India Amid Lacklustre Laws
https://www.outlookindia.com/national/spectre-of-mob-lynchings-continues-to-haunt-india-amid-lacklustre-laws-news-193743
Apr 28, 2022 — Lynching is not defined as a crime under the Indian Penal Code. In 2017, NCRB collected data on cases of mob lynching, hate crimes etc. But it was observed that the data was unreliable.

Riaz Haq said...

Beaten and humiliated by Hindu mobs for being a Muslim in India

by Geeta Pandey

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-58406194

Unprovoked attacks on Muslims by Hindu mobs have become routine in India, but they seem to evoke little condemnation from the government.

Last month, a video that went viral on social media showed a terrified little girl clinging to her Muslim father as a Hindu mob assaulted him.

The distressing footage showed the 45-year-old rickshaw driver being paraded through the streets of Kanpur, a city in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, as his crying daughter begged the mob to stop hitting him.

His attackers asked him to chant "Hindustan Zindabad" or "Long Live India" and "Jai Shri Ram" or "Victory to Lord Ram" - a popular greeting that's been turned into a murder cry by Hindu lynch mobs in recent years.

He complied, but the mob still kept hitting him. The man and his daughter were eventually rescued by the police. Three men arrested for the attack were freed on bail a day later.

A few days later, another viral video surfaced showing a Muslim bangle-seller being slapped, kicked and punched by a Hindu mob in Indore, a city in the central state of Madhya Pradesh. The attackers could be heard abusing Tasleem Ali and telling him to stay away from Hindu areas in future.

In a police complaint, he later alleged that he had been "beaten by five-six men who hurled communal slurs at him for selling bangles in a Hindu-dominated area and robbed him of money, his phone and some documents".

But in a strange turn of events, Ali himself was arrested the next day after the 13-year-old daughter of one of his alleged attackers accused him of molesting her. His family and neighbours have strongly denied the accusation. They said it was inconceivable that the father of five would do something like that.

And eyewitnesses, quoted in the Indian press, said he was attacked because of his religious identity and the molestation accusation against him seemed to be an afterthought.

The two attacks were among several instances of anti-Muslim violence in August, but the last month by no means was cruellest for India's biggest religious minority group, with a population of more than 200 million.

Riaz Haq said...

Dalit Activist Thenmozhi Soundararajan Takes on Caste
Her debut book, The Trauma of Caste, exposes caste oppression in the South Asian subcontinent and the United States.

https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/features/a42257504/dalit-activism/

When Thenmozhi Soundararajan was 10 years old, she discovered that her Indian family was “untouchable”—they belonged to the lowest caste in Hinduism. Though abolished in India’s constitution in 1950, the thousands-of-years-old social and religious hierarchy, which classifies people into five levels based on spiritual purity, persists in South Asia and the diaspora. Soundararajan’s parents, who hailed from the state of Tamil Nadu, fled caste oppression in 1975 to become one of the first Tamil families to immigrate to Los Angeles. Though they built successful careers as physicians while raising two children, they took great pains to hide their caste from other South Asian Americans.

Soundararajan soon learned why during a playdate at an Indian friend’s house, whose family belonged to the highest caste, Brahmin. When Soundararajan mentioned that she was untouchable, a look of disgust flashed across her friend’s mother’s face. Due to the belief that Brahmins cannot share food or even eat from the same kitchenware as members of the lowest caste, she switched Soundararajan’s snack plate to a different one.

Soundararajan was devastated. As she learned more about her caste and her family's experiences, her trauma from caste grew. Her self-esteem suffered for years. “I was haunted by the lie fed to me by caste oppression—that I wasn't human enough,” she says. “I felt dirty. I was always washing my hands, smoothing my clothes, and fidgeting with my hair. I picked apart my features and my complexion. I had a lingering sense of imposter syndrome that was difficult to shake for many years.”

I was haunted by the lie fed to me by caste oppression—that I wasn't human enough

Soundararajan has since made it her mission to end caste oppression, a journey she recounts in her debut book, The Trauma of Caste: A Dalit Feminist Meditation on Survivorship, Healing, and Abolition (North Atlantic Books). The word Dalit translates to broken and is the caste Brahmins deem untouchable. But as Soundararajan explains in the book, Dalit also represents the resilience, survival, and the pride of her people.

Caste extends far beyond the borders of the South Asian subcontinent. It impacts 1.9 billion South Asians and 5.5 million South Asians in the United States. It is also found in all South Asian religious communities. “For anyone born into a culture where caste is prevalent,” Soundararajan says, “it determines who and where they worship, where they live, choices and advancement in education and career, even personal relationships—in essence, their entire lives.” Dalits in South Asia face rampant human rights abuses and have a much lower life expectancy than dominant-caste South Asians. Speaking out about caste violence has made Soundararajan a target. “To be a woman leader today means you have to deal with endless threats, gaslighting, and very little support for your safety. We are strong on the outside, but vulnerable and tender as we work with the pain of those attacks.”

In 2015, Soundararajan cofounded Equality Labs, a Dalit civil rights organization. One year later, Equality Labs conducted the first survey on caste discrimination in the United States. It found, among other things, that two out of three Dalits were mistreated because of their caste in the workplace, one in four had endured verbal or physical assault because of their caste, and one in three Dalit students were discriminated against in education. “The results were shocking, even to us,” Soundararajan says. “Dalits have some of the highest rates of discrimination and violence of all Asian American communities.” The survey led to Equality Labs, its partners, and the office of Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal to organize the first congressional briefing on caste discrimination.

Riaz Haq said...

Dalit Activist Thenmozhi Soundararajan Takes on Caste

https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/features/a42257504/dalit-activism/

We are strong on the outside, but vulnerable and tender as we work with the pain
Caste discrimination in this country has made headlines in recent years. One of its epicenters is Silicon Valley. In 2020, California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing sued CISCO for discrimination based on caste when two dominant caste supervisors mistreated a Dalit engineer and paid him a lower salary than others. Soon thereafter, Apple became the first large tech company to explicitly ban caste discrimination in its employee handbook, along with race, religion, gender, age, and ancestry.

U.S. temples have also been the site of caste oppression. Last year, a federal lawsuit was filed against BAPS, a Hindu denomination, for paying Dalits far below minimum wage and forcing them to live in a guarded compound while constructing new temples. “Caste is a workers’ rights issue,” Soundararajan says. “We have to work together to make all workplaces safer for all workers and add caste as a protected category.”

The Trauma of Caste is a prescription for healing. It contains meditations on restoration, nonattachment practice, and the importance of forming connections with myriad communities. For Soundararajan, conversion to Buddhism in adulthood, following in the footsteps of Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, a Dalit scholar, activist, and drafter of the Indian constitution, played an important role in her quest for peace. “For me, becoming Buddhist was claiming my own divinity. It was acknowledging how much violence I faced in religious institutions and charting my own path as a seeker that acknowledged my beauty, my power, my dignity, and my life. Buddhism helped me find a way to make peace with the violence that has shaped me, without letting it define me.”

It is a powerful thing to return to your fellow humans and leave behind the lies
But the violence won’t end until the eradication of caste begins, Soundararajan says. Members of dominant castes must reflect on their privilege and fragility with great intention and mindfulness. “They have benefited for centuries from the exploitation and discrimination of caste-oppressed people. They must confront the histories of blood and violence that have created the conditions for their power and led to their family wealth, land, and resources.” Dominant-caste South Asians must also find ways to take direct, measurable action. “They can add caste as a protected category in their workplace, speak out about ethnonationalist violence in our homelands, and challenge caste privilege in their family and friend networks.”

An oppressive system only divides and fractures everyone. A reckoning with caste, and the pain it continues to cause, Soundararajan says, is an opportunity to restore humanity globally. “It is a powerful thing to return to your fellow humans and leave behind the social lies that have harmed all of us for too long. This is no time for silence. It is instead the time to heal.”

Riaz Haq said...

Hundreds killed each year for marrying outside caste: CJI DY Chandrachud

https://www.indiatoday.in/law/story/hundreds-killed-each-year-for-marrying-outside-caste-chief-justice-of-india-dy-chandrachud-2310427-2022-12-17

Hundreds of people are killed each year for falling in love or marrying outside their castes or against the wishes of their families, the Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud said today while speaking on morality and its interplay with the law.

The CJI made the statement while referring to an incident of honor killing in Uttar Pradesh in 1991 as carried in a news article by the American magazine, Time.

The article shared the story of a 15-year-old girl who eloped with a man of 20 from a lower caste. They were later murdered by the upper castes of the village, and believed their actions were justified because they complied with the code of conduct of society.

The CJI was delivering the Ashok Desai Memorial Lecture on the topic ‘Law and Morality: The Bounds and Reaches’, addressing questions on the indissoluble link between law, morality, and group rights.

While talking about morality, the CJI said that expressions of good and bad, right and wrong are often used in everyday conversations.

The CJI said that while the law regulates external relations, morality governs the inner life and motivation. Morality appeals to our conscience and often influences the way we behave.

‘We can all agree that morality is a system of values that prescribes a code of conduct. But, do all of us principally agree on what constitutes morality? That is, is it necessary that what is moral for me ought to be moral to you as well?’ he asked.

While discussing what constitutes ‘adequate morality’, the CJI said that groups that have traditionally held positions of power in the socio-economic-political context of society have an advantage over the weaker sections in this bargaining process to reach adequate morality.

The CJI further built an argument that vulnerable groups are placed at the bottom of the social structure and that their consent, even if attained, is a myth. For example, Max Weber argued that the Dalits have never rebelled.

He pointed out that the dominant groups, by attacking the etiquette of the vulnerable groups, often prevent them from creating an identity that is unique to themselves.

The CJI elaborated on the same by sharing an example of clothing being one of the tools employed by dominant castes to alienate the Dalit community, where it was a wide-spread norm that the members of the Dalit community must wear marks of inferiority to be identified.

The CJI further spoke about how, even after the framing of the Constitution, the law has been imposing ‘adequate morality’, that is, the morality of the dominant community.

Riaz Haq said...

2022: A Look back at hate crimes against Dalits and Adivasis in Modi's India

https://cjp.org.in/2022-a-look-back-at-hate-crimes-against-dalits-and-adivasis/

To witness such incidents even in this day and age is not only disheartening but should shock the conscience of the nation.

As per the statistics provided in the NCRB report, atrocities/Crime against Scheduled Castes have increased by 1.2% in 2021 (50,900) over 2020 (50,291 cases).

Uttar Pradesh (13,146 cases) reported the highest number of cases of atrocities against Scheduled Castes (SCs) accounting for 25.82% followed by Rajasthan with 14.7% (7,524) and Madhya Pradesh with 14.1% (7,214) during 2021. The next two states in the list are Bihar accounting for 11.4% (5,842) and Odisha 4.5% (2,327). The above top five states reported 70.8% of cases of atrocities against Scheduled Castes.

Furthermore, as per the report, Atrocities/Crime against Scheduled Tribes have increased by 6.4% in 2021 (8,802 cases) over 2020 (8,272 cases).

Madhya Pradesh (2627, cases) reported the highest number of cases of atrocities against Scheduled Tribes (STs) accounting for 29.8% followed by Rajasthan with 24% (2121 cases) and Odisha with 7.6% (676 cases) during 2021. Maharashtra was next in the list with 7.13% (628 cases) followed by Telangana at 5.81% (512 cases). The above top five states reported 74.57% of cases of atrocities against Scheduled Tribes.

In terms of ratio to the overall population, Dalits (SCs) are estimated to be at 16.6 per cent of the population and Adivasis/Indigenous peoples (STs) at 8.6 per cent.

We look at some of the most shocking instances of crimes against Dalits and Adivasis in 2022.

Riaz Haq said...

How India’s caste system limits diversity in science — in six charts

https://www.nature.com/immersive/d41586-023-00015-2/index.html

Data show how privileged groups still dominate many of the country’s elite research institutes.

This article is part of a Nature series examining data on ethnic or racial diversity in science in different countries. See also: How UK science is failing Black researchers — in nine stark charts.

Samadhan is an outlier in his home village in western India. Last year, he became the first person from there to start a science PhD. Samadhan, a student in Maharashtra state, is an Adivasi or indigenous person — a member of one of the most marginalized and poorest communities in India.

For that reason, he doesn’t want to publicize his last name or institution, partly because he fears that doing so would bring his social status to the attention of a wider group of Indian scientists. “They’d know that I am from a lower category and will think that I have progressed because of [the] quota,” he says.

The quota Samadhan refers to is also known as a reservation policy: a form of affirmative action that was written into India’s constitution in 1950. Reservation policies aimed to uplift marginalized communities by allocating quotas for them in public-sector jobs and in education. Mirroring India’s caste system of social hierarchy, the most privileged castes dominated white-collar professions, including roles in science and technology. After many years, the Indian government settled on a 7.5% quota for Adivasis (referred to as ‘Scheduled Tribes’ in official records) and a 15% quota for another marginalized group, the Dalits (referred to in government records as ‘Scheduled Castes’, and formerly known by the dehumanizing term ‘untouchables’). These quotas — which apply to almost all Indian research institutes — roughly correspond to these communities’ representation in the population, according to the most recent census of 2011.

But the historically privileged castes — the ‘General’ category in government records — still dominate many of India’s elite research institutions. Above the level of PhD students, the representation of Adivasis and Dalits falls off a cliff. Less than 1% of professors come from these communities at the top-ranked institutes among the 23 that together are known as the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), according to data provided to Nature under right-to-information requests (see ‘Diversity at top Indian institutions’; the figures are for 2020, the latest available at time of collection).

“This is deliberate” on the part of institutes that “don’t want us to succeed”, says Ramesh Chandra, a Dalit, who retired as a senior professor at the University of Delhi last June. Researchers blame institute heads for not following the reservation policies, and the government for letting them off the hook.

Diversity gaps are common in science in many countries but they take different forms in each nation. The situation in India highlights how its caste system limits scientific opportunities for certain groups in a nation striving to become a global research leader.

India’s government publishes summary student data, but its figures for academic levels beyond this don’t allow analyses of scientists by caste and academic position, and most universities do not publish these data. In the past few years, however, journalists, student groups and researchers have been gathering diversity data using public-information laws, and arguing for change. Nature has used some of these figures, and its own information requests, to examine the diversity picture. Together, these data show that there are major gaps in diversity in Indian science institutions.

Riaz Haq said...

Prominent Indian Historian on Hindutva History

https://thewire.in/history/what-history-really-tells-us-about-hindu-muslim-relations

From the historical perspective, we may well ask whether the division had evidence to support it. Supposedly irrefutable evidence of division is said to lie in the Muslims over the last 1,000 years having victimised the Hindus, treating them as enslaved. Why do historians question this theory? It is claimed that when the Muslims invaded India and came to power, they victimised and enslaved the Hindus for 1,000 years. The image projected is that of violence and aggression of one against the other. Now that the Hindus are in power they should have the right to avenge themselves. However, the historical sources researched by professional historians read differently and do not rejuvenate this view of colonial historians.

The dictionary tells us that to victimise is to make a victim of a person or a specific group of people, to cheat, swindle and defraud them, or to deny them any freedom, or to slaughter them in the manner of a sacrificial victim. Politicians of a certain view and others who should know better, are known to endorse the theory. The professional activity of Hindus was reduced to a minimum, they were socially ostracised and above all forcibly converted. They also had to pay a tax as non-Muslims.


Victimisation is not unknown to most pre-modern societies. Those having access to power and wealth, resort to humiliating and harming those without either. Upper-caste Hindus have been familiar with this practice for more than two millennia. The Dalits, lower castes, untouchables were segregated, and it was claimed that their touch was polluting. They were placed in a separate category of those without or outside caste, the avarnas. This was practised among all religions in India, although records link it more to upper-caste Hindus.



It seems that even on conversion to other religions, and specially those that in theory observed the equality of all, this segregation was maintained. As a category, it may well have been larger in numbers. This is why we have Muslim pasmandas, Sikh mazhabis, Dalit Christians, and such like. Yet these are religions that formally believe in all of mankind being created equal. One difference however is that this practice was not directed primarily to a religion but was linked to caste and the absence of caste status. Many questions arise that are fundamentally important to our society. Are practices of this kind directed less to particular religious communities and more to the large numbers outside varna society? Are these actions defined more by caste than by other identities or do they change with purpose and intent? Significantly, in Sanskrit sources, Muslims are generally not referred to as Muslim but by ethnic labels such as Yavana, Tajik, Turushka, etc.

Since so much of crucial importance has happened as a result of what was projected as religious antagonism, and even victimisation, let’s just look at what were the actual relations between the two religious communities, the Hindu and the Muslim, and in the period of the last thousand years.

Starting at the level of the elites we know that quite a few Hindu royal families remained at the highest social status. They remained at the head of the administration in their erstwhile kingdoms and were given the continuing status and title of raja. The politics of administration required some continuation. Their income – agrarian and commercial – was sufficient for maintaining their aristocratic style of living.

Riaz Haq said...

Prominent Indian Historian on Hindutva History

https://thewire.in/history/what-history-really-tells-us-about-hindu-muslim-relations

Traders from Arabia and East Africa trading with the west coast of India go back many centuries, even before the birth of Islam. The extensive trade touched points along the Indian Ocean Arc – the coastline that went continuously from East Africa up the coast of Arabia, on to the coast of Gujarat and then south along coastal India to Kerala. There was considerable familiarity among traders on each side. Arab traders after the spread of Islam, settled in the flourishing towns trading along this coast. Their invading activities were limited to a part of Sind.



Some Arab settlers married locally, which is what settlers often do when they arrive in new places. Cultures intermingled. All along the west coast of India, new societies evolved. Social identities and religious sects were a mix of Islam with existing religions of the area. This resulted in new religious movements, many of which are still prominent – the Khojas, Bohras, Navayaths, Mappilas and such like.

It also led to the employment of Arabs in local administration. The Rashtrakutas in the 9th century AD appointed a Tajik /Arab governor of the region of Sanjan in coastal Deccan. A Rashtrakuta inscription records the grant of land made to a brahmana by a Tajik/Arab officer on behalf of the Rashtrakuta king. The revenue from this went towards donations to local temples as well as to the Parsi Anjuman, since many Parsi merchants were settled in the area. The majority of officers at this level of administration were members of the local elite and therefore largely Hindu, and these officers continued in the administration of the Sultans.

Appointing local persons to high office was a practice that went back centuries, providing closer control over local matters. This may well be a reason for Muslim rulers appointing Rajputs to high office. The Mughal economy was in the trusted hands of the Vazir, Raja Todar Mal, and Raja Man Singh of Amber, a Rajput, commanded the Mughal army at the battle of Haldighati. He defeated another Rajput who was an opponent of the Mughals – Maharana Pratap. Pratap’s army with its large contingent of Afghan mercenaries had as commander Hakim Khan Suri, a descendant of Sher Shah Suri. One could ask whether the battle was strictly speaking essentially a Hindu-Muslim confrontation. Both religious identities had participants on each side in a complex political conflict. Rajput clans had differing loyalties among themselves and the imperial power and therefore fought on opposite sides, and regaining ancestral kingdoms was on both agendas.


The intervention of Hindu chiefs in the politics of the Mughal court was substantial. One instance that went on for a long period was that of Mughal relations with Bundelkhand. The Bundella raja, Bir Singh Deo, who was close to Jahangir and held one of the highest Mughal mansabs /rank of revenue assignment, was so embroiled in Mughal court politics that he was linked to the assassination of the chief chronicler and close friend of Akbar, Abul Fazl.

Riaz Haq said...

Ramayana is anti-OBC and anti-women


https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-64556116

Ramcharitmanas is counted by many scholars to be among the world's greatest literary creations. Celebrated author Pavan Varma calls it "a deeply philosophical work" which "is akin to the Bible for many Hindus".

Composed by Tulsidas, the poem is a retelling of Ramayana, the Sanskrit epic written by Hindu sage Valmiki 2,500 years ago. It's widely believed that Tulsidas's version, which is written in Awadhi - a dialect very similar to Hindi - is what made Ram's story accessible to the masses and why it became so popular.

The story of the crown prince of Ayodhya and his victory over the demon king Ravana is performed every year during the Dussehra festival across India. He is a god who's revered by millions of Hindus for his sense of justice and fair play.

But in the past few weeks, politicians on opposing sides have been arguing over whether the text is derogatory towards women as well as Dalits, who are at the bottom of India's deeply discriminatory caste system.

This is not the first time Tulsidas's epic, written more than 600 years ago, has been criticised, but what sets it apart this time is the scale of protests by both its supporters and critics. General elections in India are due in a year and politicians from both sides accuse each other of using the controversy over the book to polarise voters along caste lines.

Since January, protesters have burned pages allegedly containing excerpts from the book - and counter-protests have been held, demanding critics of the work be arrested.

At least five people, accused of desecrating the sacred text, have been arrested and, at the weekend, police invoked the National Security Act (NSA), a draconian law that makes bail nearly impossible, against two of the arrested men.



-----

Trouble started in January when a minister in the northern state of Bihar said the book was "spreading hatred in society". At a gathering of university students, Education Minister Chandrashekhar (who uses only one name) recited a few lines from Ramcharitmanas to prove his point.

"It says that if people from lower castes receive education, they become poisonous, like a snake becomes after drinking milk," he said.

A few days later, Swami Prasad Maurya, a prominent leader of a socially-disadvantaged community known as Other Backward Classes (OBC) and a member of the regional Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh state, expressed similar sentiments.

Insisting that some verses of Ramcharitmanas were "offensive", he demanded that they be removed from the book.


"Why hurl abuse in the name of religion? I respect all religions. But if in the name of religion, a community or caste is humiliated then it is objectionable," The Indian Express quoted him as saying.

--------

Prof Hemlata Mahishwar of Delhi's Jamia University told BBC Hindi that "it's not just one or two lines but there are several verses" in Ramcharitmanas that are derogatory to women and Dalits.

"There's one couplet that says that a Brahmin is to be worshipped even if he's full of bad qualities. Whereas a Dalit, even if he's a Vedic scholar, cannot be respected. So how can we accept a book that's so biased?"

Some experts, however, say that Tulsidas was not a reformer and did have his biases, but the controversial lines are spoken by his characters and can't be taken to be a reflection of the author's opinion.

Akhilesh Shandilya, an expert on Ramcharitmanas, told BBC Hindi that the lines appear derogatory to Dalits and anti-women only when taken out of context and read in isolation.

But critics say that Ramcharitmanas has to be approached in the present-day context and deserves scrutiny and discussion, especially as it is a book that has such a hold on the imagination of Indians.

Riaz Haq said...

Why did Tulsidas ask his God Rama to punish Shudras and women not Mughal rulers?
in Life/Philosophy — by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd —

https://countercurrents.org/2023/02/why-did-tulsidas-ask-his-god-rama-to-punish-shudras-and-women-not-mughal-rulers/

The anti-Shudra, Dalit and women language of Tulsidas in his Ramcharitamanas engendered a major controversy in North India. Its impact could also be seen in the South, which already had a strong Shudra mobilization history. He equated them with animals and drums and wanted to keep punishing them forever. The new consciousness of the Shudras, Dalits and women is not going to accept this kind of writing. They do not want their children to study these historical humiliating books in the schools, colleges and universities. It is a known fact that the RSS/BJP want to impose all such books in our educational institutions.

All over the country the Shudra consciousness is opposing such books. Regional language articles and opinions keep appearing in the South Indian languages. It will not die down soon, because the defenders of Tulsidas are not saying that such abusive sentences were interpolations, not of original writer, as they do in the case of ancient Sanskrit books that used caste cultural abusive language. They earlier were making the Muslims and colonial rulers and writers responsible for caste division among the Hindus on caste lines to sustain their political power and economic exploitation.

This line of argument was first developed by the RSS supporting Dwija writers and speakers, as there were hardly any Shudra or Dalit writers in those ranks. All the defenders of Tulsidas and his book as their spiritual grandh are Dwija RSS/BJP leaders or the saints, sadhus, who are Brahmins. No Shudra/Dalit from the RSS/BJP ranks can defend this kind of abuse of food producers, cattle grazers, pot makers, leather workers, barbers, weavers and so on. This abusive language of Tulsidas is against the nation’s wealth creators, which in essence means against the nation. The Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis working in RSS/BJP cannot defend that language, as they too have self respect.

Tulsidas wrote this book during Akbar-Jahangir rule. As information available on the internet shows that it was written in the end of 16th century. That in essence means that it was written during Akbar’s rule. Akbar died in 1605 while sitting on the throne. Tulsidas died in 1623. That was the time Shudras/Dalits were struggling with nature to bring vast areas of land under cultivation. Deforestation, agriculture expansion were the main burden of the Shudras and Dalits. The Dwijas, more particularly the Brahmins, to which community Tulsidas belonged, were not even respecting agriculture work as spiritually respectable. They designated all agricutural operations as Shudra kaam (work). It was then he was writing that “ढोल गवाँर सूद्र पसु नारी। सकल ताड़ना के अधिकारी।(ḍhōla gavāomra sūdra pasu nārī. sakala tāḍanā kē adhikārī). “A drum, an illiterate, a Shudra, a beast and a woman — all deserve punishment”.

Punishment by whom? Punishment by his God Rama and by the Mughal State, which was imposing heavy land taxes on the Shudra farmers. Agrarian masses- men and women–were starving. But the Dwijas had protective valves in Akbar’s administration.

Tulsidas knew that the Mughal state during Akbar rule was run by Birbal and Todar Mal. According to Wikipedia Birbal, was a Saraswat Bhatt Brahmin advisor and main commander (Mukhya Senapati) of the army in the court of the Mughal emperor. . He had a close association with Emperor Akbar and was one of his most important courtiers, part of a group called the navaratnas (nine jewels).


Riaz Haq said...

Lying in Hinduism

https://vedkabhed.com/index.php/2014/05/14/lying-in-hinduism/


Krishna said,
Brahma Vaivarta Purana, Krishna Janma Khanda 98.38-44 ”…Hari began to laugh and thus addressed Uddhava, using words of good import and worlds sanctioned by the Vedas, ”O Uddhava, untruth spoken to women or on the sporting ground, or in an emergency which endangers life or for the good of the vows or the Brahmin is not contemptible…” Tr. Rajendra Nath Sen

Matysa Purana 31.16 ”Sarmistha said:- ”King! there is no sin in speaking untruth at the time of indulging in sexual pleasures, on the occasion of marriage, when life is in danger, wealth is at stake, and in joke. Lying on these five occasions is venal.” Tr. Various Sanskrit Scholars, Edited by B.D. Basu

Mahabharata 8.69 ”In a situation of peril to life and in marriage, falsehood becomes utterable. In a situation involving the loss of one’s entire property, falsehood becomes utterable. On an occasion of marriage, or of enjoying a woman, or when life is in danger, or when one’s entire property is about to be taken away, or for the sake of a Brahmana, falsehood may be uttered. These five kinds of falsehood have been declared to be sinless. On these occasions falsehood would become truth and truth would become falsehood.”

Mahabharata 1.82 “Sarmishtha then said, ‘It hath been said, O king, that it is not sinful to lie on the occasion of a joke, in respect of women sought to be enjoyed, on occasions of marriage, in peril of immediate death and of the loss of one’s whole fortune. Lying is excusable on these five occasions.” Tr. K.M. Ganguli

Vasishtha Samhita 16.35 (Men) may speak an untruth at the time of marriage, during dalliance, when their lives are in danger or the loss of their whole property is imminent, and for the sake of a Brâhmana; they declare that an untruth spoken in these five cases does not make (the speaker) an outcast.

Gautama Samhita 23.29 Some (declare, that) an untruth (spoken) at the time of marriage, during dalliance, in jest or while (one suffers severe) pain is venial.

Riaz Haq said...

#Caste system in #Indian Prisons: Unconstitutional but legal – State prison manuals legitimize caste-based rules for prisoner activities, from cleaning to cooking. #India #Modi #BJP #Hindutva #Brahmin #Apartheid https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/toi-edit-page/caste-system-in-indian-prisons-unconstitutional-but-legal-state-prison-manuals-legitimise-caste-based-rules-for-prisoner-activities-from-cleaning-to-cooking-judiciary-must-step-in-to-stri/

By Atishya Kumar

India’s criminal justice system, a legacy of the Raj, is intended primarily to punish. Reformation or rehabilitation was never on the agenda. As a result, the age-old social system of caste remained prevalent in prisons. Worse still, many colonial policies heavily relied on caste-based rules for administration and maintenance of order in prisons.

To date, the primary law that governs management and administration of prisons is still the colonial era law – Prisons Act, 1894. That state-level prison manuals remain unchanged since the establishment of the modern prison system also prominently reflects the colonial and caste mentality.

Riaz Haq said...

New Indian textbooks purged of nation’s Muslim history

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/04/06/india-textbooks-muslim-history-changes/


By Anumita Kaur


The Taj Mahal is one of India’s most iconic sites. But this year, millions of students across India won’t delve into the Mughal Empire that constructed it.

Instead, Indian students have new textbooks that have been purged of details on the nation’s Muslim history, its caste discrimination and more, in what critics say warps the country’s rich history in an attempt to further Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist agenda.

The cuts, first reported by the Indian Express, are wide-ranging. Chapters on the country’s historic Islamic rulers are either slimmed down or gone; an entire chapter in the 12th-grade history textbook, “Kings and Chronicles: The Mughal Courts" was deleted. The textbooks omit references to the 2002 riots in the Indian state of Gujarat, where hundreds of Indian-Muslims were killed while Modi was the state’s leader. Details on India’s caste system, caste discrimination and minority communities are missing.

Passages that connected Hindu extremism to independence leader Mohandas K. Gandhi’s assassination were pruned as well, such as the 12th grade political science textbook line: Gandhi’s “steadfast pursuit of Hindu-Muslim unity provoked Hindu extremists so much that they made several attempts to assassinate [him].”

The new curriculum, developed by India’s National Council of Educational Research and Training, has been in the works since last year and will serve thousands of classrooms in at least 20 states across the country. It follows long-standing efforts by Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to craft a Hindu nationalist narrative for the country — a platform that Modi ran on in 2014 and secured reelection with in 2019.

“The minds of children are now under direct onslaught in this kind of intense way, where textbooks must not ever reflect South Asia’s dynamic, complex history,” said Utathya Chattopadhyaya, a history professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara. “So you basically create a body of students who come out knowing very little about the history of social justice, the history of democracy, the history of diversity, and so on.”


India has been home to Hindu, Muslim and many other religious communities for centuries. British rule stoked tensions among communities, leading to violence in 1947 after the country was partitioned into Pakistan and modern India.

Hindu nationalism has intensified under Modi. It has led to violent clashes, bulldozing of Indian-Muslim communities and deepening polarization throughout India and its global diaspora.

The curriculum change is another step in the trend, Chattopadhyaya argued. BJP-led state governments have launched textbook revisions for years. But now it’s stretched to the national level.

“This is actually an intensification of something that’s been happening. It is a way of ‘Hindu-izing’ South Asian history and ignoring all other kinds of diverse plural histories that have existed,” he said.

Riaz Haq said...

I won a birth lottery on caste, but learned fortune need not mean cruelty
Shree Paradkar
By Shree ParadkarSocial & Racial Justice Columnist

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2023/04/15/i-won-a-birth-lottery-on-caste-but-learned-fortune-need-not-mean-cruelty.html


I come from a Brahmin family. This means I won a birth lottery. It means that while other identities may pose barriers, caste is never one. In fact, in certain situations, it is the secret handshake that opens doors, sometimes literally.

Caste privilege looks like — among many things — never hesitating to say your last name, being considered to come from a “good family,” having a higher chance of a sheltered upbringing (innocence is prized but not granted to all women) and being treated with deference in public spaces.

Brahmins around me insist they are not casteist. They say they don’t even think about caste let alone know the names of various castes, yet their social circles are almost entirely made up of fellow Brahmins. They say that caste oppression is now reversed and that Brahmins are now the real victims, sidelined in the caste system.

These are debates without empirical data, backed up by an anecdote or two about an undeserving “lower caste” person getting this job or that. (For a Brahmin, everybody else is “lower caste.”) By various counts, Brahmins, who form about four to five per cent of the Hindu population, comprise half of Indian media decision-makers and at least a third of bureaucrats and judges. Meanwhile, according to Oxfam, Dalits’ life expectancy can be up to 15 years less than other groups.

If forced to discuss caste, Brahmins will often claim the orginal varna system was fluid at its founding thousands of years ago, again with no evidence that Dalits could ever have educated themselves enough to then be considered Brahmin. As Indian social justice advocate Dilip Mandal noted recently on Twitter Spaces, a discussion on caste is neither theological nor historical nor abstract. It’s about lived experiences today.

Being ignorant of caste is a marker of privilege. I, too, only learned of the details of the caste system thanks to the tireless advocacy of Equality Labs in the U.S. Understanding anti-Black racism awoke me to caste-based brutality. Of course, learning that one’s gloried background is the carrier of such cruelty causes harsh cognitive dissonance. Reckoning with this reality is painful, but that discomfort pales in comparison to the generations of trauma inflicted on the marginalized. There is also little point in guilt or self-hatred; both emotions, while wrenching, simply continue to centre on the self.

None of us are born with a ready-made analysis of oppression. None of us choose to be born into the identities we inherit. The least the holders of power can do is to sit quietly, listen, reflect — not “Am I complicit” but “In what ways am I complicit” — learn, make space. And then they should let go of the reins.

Riaz Haq said...

'Hindutva Is Nothing But Brahminism'

https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/hindutva-is-nothing-but-brahminism/215089


The author (Kancha Ilaiah) of Why I Am Not A Hindu on his view that 'Dalitisation' alone can effectively challenge the threat of Brahminical fascism parading in the garb of Hindutva.


How would you characterise contemporary Hindutva? What is the relationship between Hindutva and the Dalit-Bahujans?

As Dr.Ambedkar says, Hindutva is nothing but Brahminism. And whether you call it Hindutva or Arya Dharma or Sanatana Dharma or Hindusim, Brahminism has no organic link with Dalit-Bahujan life, world-views, rituals and even politics. To give you just one example, in my childhood many of us had not even heard of the Hindu gods, and it was only when we went to school that we learnt about Ram and Vishnu for the very first time. We had our own goddesses, such as Pochamma and Elamma, and our own caste god, Virappa. They and their festivals played a central role in our lives, not the Hindu gods. At the festivals of our deities, we would sing and dance--men, women and all-- and would sacrifice animals and drink liquor, all of which the Hindus consider 'polluting'.

Our relations with our deities were transactional and they were rooted in the production process. For instance, our goddess Kattamma Maisa. Her responsibility is to fill the tanks with water. If she does it well, a large number of animals are sacrificed to her. If in one year the tanks dry up, she gets no animals. You see, between her and her Dalit-Bahujan devotees there is this production relation which is central.



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In fact, many Dalit communities preserve traditions of the Hindu gods being their enemies. In Andhra, the Madigas enact a drama which sometimes goes on for five days. This drama revolves around Jambavanta, the Madiga hero, and Brahma, the representative of the Brahmins. The two meet and have a long dialogue. The central argument in this dialogue is about the creation of humankind. Brahma claims superiority for the Brahmins over everybody else, but Jambavanta says, 'No, you are our enemy'. Brahma then says that he created the Brahmins from his mouth, the Kshatriyas from his hands, the Vaishyas from his thighs, the Shudras from his feet to be slaves for the Brahmins, and of course the Dalits, who fall out of the caste system, have no place here. This is the Vedic story.

What you are perhaps suggesting is that Dalit-Bahujan religion can be used to effectively counter the politics of Brahminism or Hindutva. But Brahminism has this knack of co-opting all revolt against it, by absorbing it within the system.

It is true that although Dalit-Bahujan religious formations historically operated autonomously from Hindu forms, they have never been centralised or codified. Their local gods and goddesses have not been projected into universality, nor has their religion been given an all-India name. This is because these local deities and religious forms were organically linked to local communities, and were linked to local productive processes, such as the case of Virappa and Katamma Maisa whom I talked about earlier. But Brahminism has consistently sought to subvert these religious forms by injecting notions of 'purity' and 'pollution', hierarchy and untouchability even among the Dalit-Bahujans themselves, while at the same time discounting our religious traditions by condemning them as 'polluting' or by Brahminising them.

Riaz Haq said...

#Indian #Muslims in higher #education: Enrollment of Muslims in #India fell by 8% in 2019-20, while that of #Dalits, #Adivasis & #OBCs rose by 4.2%, 11.9% & 4% respectively. Upper caste #Hindus saw highest growth rate of 13.6%. #Islamophobia #Casteism https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/lower-in-higher-education-8598739/

The recently released All India Survey on Higher Education 2020–21 shows some contrasting trends. On the one hand, enrollment of Dalits, Adivasis and OBCs in higher education has increased by 4.2 per cent, 11.9 per cent and 4 per cent respectively compared to 2019-20. The upper castes, whose share in enrollment had been declining with the implementation of Mandal II since the late 2000s but who have come back with the highest growth rate of 13.6 per cent. On the other hand, the enrollment of Muslim students dropped by 8 per cent from 2019-20 – that is, by 1,79,147 students. This level of absolute decline has never happened in the recent past for any group.

UP accounts for 36 per cent of that total decline followed by Jammu and Kashmir, which accounts for 26 per cent, then Maharashtra (8.5 per cent), Tamil Nadu (8.1 per cent), Gujarat (6.1 per cent), Bihar (5.7 per cent) and Karnataka (3.7 per cent). Except in Tamil Nadu, Muslims alone witnessed an absolute decline in their enrollment. While the states that have a larger share of the Muslim population account for the higher share of decline, small states too show similar trends. For instance, between 2019-20 — 2020-21, Delhi lost about 20 per cent of its Muslim students while J&K lost about 36 per cent.

------------

Professor Sukhdeo Thorat, emeritus professor, Centre for the Study of Regional Development, Jawahar Lal Nehru University and former chairman, University Grants Commission(UGC) said that financially weak Muslims may go for higher studies if they are helped through scholarships.
Speaking on a lecture ‘Where do the Muslims lag behind in higher education?: Lessons for policies’ on the occasion of the 25th Foundation Day of the Maulana Azad National Urdu University (Manuu), Thorat said, “There are internal disparities among Muslims in attainment of higher education based on income level, gender and medium of education and institutions like Manuu must give preference to such groups through scholarships, differential fee structure, hostel facility and remedial coaching classes.”
He reiterated that Muslims have the lowest Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) at 16.6% in higher education among all the communities in the country (national average is 26.3%). He also pointed out that Muslim students depend highly on government institutions (54.1%) as compared to other communities (national average 45.2%) and only 18.2% Muslim students go to private aided higher education institutions and 27.4% go to private unaided higher education institutions against a national average of 24.4% and 30.1%, respectively.


https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/education/news/muslims-have-lowest-ger-in-higher-education/articleshow/88808430.cms

Riaz Haq said...

Hindu Violence against Buddhism in India has NO Parallel


by Syed Ehtisham


The ruthless demolition of Buddha statues by the Taliban leaders in Afghanistan has invited severe criticisms from different quarters of the world. It is quite surprising to note that the Hindu Nazi-led Indian Govt. supported by all other Hindu Nazis has condemned the Taliban action. It appears paradoxical that the ancestors of the present Hindu Nazis in India wantonly destroyed the Buddhist statues and brutally killed the followers of Buddha in India. An impartial student of history can unequivocally remark that the Indian Nazis have no moral right to criticise the Taliban action.

Hundreds of the Buddhist statues, Stupas and Viharas were destroyed in India between 830 AD and 966 AD in the name of the revival of Hinduism. Indigenous and foreign sources, both literary and archaeological, speak volumes of the havoc done to Buddhism by the Nazis in India.

Role of Sankaracharya
Nazi leaders like the Sankaracharyas and many kings and rulers took pride in demolishing the Buddhist images aiming at the total eradication of the Buddhist culture. Today, their descendants destroyed the Babri Masjid and they have also published a list of mosques to be destroyed in the near future. It is with this sin of pride that they are condemning the deed on the part of the Afghans.

The Hindu ruler, Pushyamitra Sunga, demolished 84,000 Buddhist stupas which had been built by Ashoka the Great (Romila Thaper, Ashoka and Decline of Mauryas, London, 1961, p 200). It was followed by the smashing of the Buddhist centres in Magadha. Thousands of Buddhist monks were mercilessly killed. King Jalaluka destroyed the Buddhist viharas within his jurisdiction on the ground that the chanting of the hymns by the Buddhist devotees disturbed his sleep. (Kalhana, Rajatharangini, 1:40). In Kashmir, King Kinnara demolished thousands of Viharas and captured the Buddhists villages to please the Brahmins. (Kalhana 1:80).

Demon’s role

A large number of Buddhist viharas were usurped by the Brahmins and converted into Hindu temples where the Untouchables were given no entrance. The Buddhist places were projected as the Hindu temples by writing Puranas which were concocted myths or pseudo-history.

The important temples found at Tirupati, Ahoble, Undavalli, Ellora, Bengal, Puri, Badrinath, Mathura, Ayodhya, Sringeri, Bodhgaya, Sarnath, Delhi, Nalanda, Gudimallam, NagarjunaKonda, Srisailam and Sabarimala (Lord Ayyappa) in Kerala are some of the striking examples of the Brahmanic usurpation of the Buddhist centres.

At Nagarjunakonda, the Adi Sankara played a demon’s role in destroying the Buddhist statues and monuments. Longhurst who conducted excavations at Nagarjunakonda has recorded this in his book Memoirs of the Archaeological Survey of India No: 54, The Buddhist Antiquities of Nagarjunakonda (Delhi, 1938, p.6.).

Non-Brahmins burnt alive
The ruthless manner in which all the buildings at Nagarjunakonda were destroyed is simply appalling and cannot represent the work of treasure-seekers because many of the pillars, statues, and sculptures have been wantonly smashed to pieces. Local tradition relates that the Brahmin teacher Sankaracharya came to Nagarjunakonda with a host of followers and destroyed the Buddhist monuments. The cultivated lands on which the ruined buildings stand was a religious grant made to Sankaracharya.

In Kerala, Sankaracharya and his close associate Kumarila Bhatta, an avowed enemy of Buddhism, organized a religious crusade against the Buddhists. We get a vivid description of the pleasure of Sankaracharya on seeing the people of non-Brahmanic faith being burnt to death from the book Sankara Digvijaya.

Riaz Haq said...

Indian American Muslim Council
@IAMCouncil
The Muslim community is less differentiated within, along class and caste lines. But they experience clear collective deprivation, write
@jaffrelotc
and Kalaiyarasan A

https://twitter.com/IAMCouncil/status/1695232087526113388?s=20

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BJP’s Pasmanda Muslim outreach: It’s not as divided as you think
The Muslim community is less differentiated within, along class and caste lines. But they experience clear collective deprivation
Written by Christophe Jaffrelot , Kalaiyarasan A
Updated: August 25, 2023 17:20 IST
Newsguard

https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/christophe-jaffrelot-kalaiyarasan-a-write-on-bjps-pasmanda-muslim-outreach-its-not-as-divided-as-you-think-8908162/


A couple of months ago, in his address to BJP workers in Bhopal, Prime Minister Narendra Modi emphasised that the party’s outreach to poor Muslims could take advantage of the “extreme exploitation of backward Pasmanda Muslims” by upper-caste Muslims and the parties playing the game of vote bank politics. This speech and the recent co-option of Pasmanda Muslims by the BJP have renewed the debate on caste among Muslims in India. While one cannot deny or disown the persistence of caste among Indian Muslims, in terms of socio-economic inequality, it is much less significant than among Hindus.

There are three broad groupings of Muslim castes — Ashrafs, Ajlafs and Arzals — which approximate to upper castes, OBCs and Dalits respectively. However, Dalit Muslims don’t self-identify as Scheduled Castes in survey data as they don’t enjoy reservation. Their castes are usually listed in the OBC category. OBCs constitute about 60 per cent of Indian Muslims, followed by 38 per cent of upper castes and the remaining 2 per cent constitute SC/STs. These groups, however, are unevenly distributed geographically. Pasmandas, comprising OBCs and Dalits, constitute 76 per cent of Muslims in UP and Bihar, for instance.

Drawing on the latest All India Debt and Investment Survey (AIDIS) and Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS), we use multidimensional variables — wealth consumption, access to jobs and educational attainment — to evaluate social inequalities among Indian Muslims and to compare them with the situation prevailing among Hindus.

The average per capita wealth among Hindu upper castes was Rs 8,64,984 in 2019, as against Rs 4,27,149 for OBCs, and Rs 2,28,437 for Dalits. The figures for upper-caste Muslims and OBCs were Rs 3,43,014 and Rs 3,10,922, respectively. In other words, on average, the wealth of Hindu upper castes was more than three times that of Dalits and twice that of OBCs, while this gap was just 10 per cent among Muslims. In Bihar, where Pasmanda Muslims are in large numbers, wealth inequality among Muslims is insignificant — just 2 per cent — and in Madhya Pradesh, Pasmanda Muslims do better than Ashrafs in wealth accumulation by 14 percentage points. By contrast, the gap is 43 per cent in UP, where there are remnants of landed Muslim aristocracy. However, if we compare the wealth gap among the Hindus of UP, on average, the Hindu upper castes own almost twice as much wealth as OBCs and three times as much as Dalits.

A similar trend can be observed in consumption, too. In 2021-22, the average per capita monthly expenditure among the Muslim upper castes was Rs 2,180, as against Rs 2,151 among Pasmandas, a margin of 1.4 per cent. The corresponding figures for Hindus were quite different: Upper castes, with Rs 3,321, consumed 40 per cent more than OBCs (Rs 2,180) and 57 per cent more than Dalits (Rs 2,122). The gap among Muslims was rather small in UP (6.2 per cent) and Bihar (10 per cent), while it stood at, respectively, 48 per cent for the Hindu upper castes vis-à-vis OBCs and 60 per cent vis-à-vis Dalits in UP, and 27 per cent and 48 per cent in Bihar.

Riaz Haq said...

The Muslim community is less differentiated within, along class and caste lines. But they experience clear collective deprivation

by Christophe Jaffrelot

https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/christophe-jaffrelot-kalaiyarasan-a-write-on-bjps-pasmanda-muslim-outreach-its-not-as-divided-as-you-think-8908162/

In terms of educational attainment too, Ashrafs and Pasmandas are not so different. In 2021-22, the percentage of upper caste Muslim youth (18 to 23 years) attending higher educational institutions was the same as the Pasmandas: 19.8 per cent. By contrast, the percentage of Hindu youth in higher education among upper castes was as high as 46.5 per cent, while it was 36 per cent for OBCs and 26 per cent for Dalits. Interestingly, in UP and Madhya Pradesh, Pasmandas do even better than their upper-caste counterparts. In fact, in UP, Muslim upper castes are experiencing negative growth in educational attendance. As a result, their enrollment came down to 12 per cent in 2021-22, as against 14 per cent in 2011-12 — an unprecedented development in the history of India so far as we know, simply because every group, so far, has experienced greater access to higher education.

Muslims’ lower access to education gets reflected in access to regular jobs. The percentage of salaried workers among Muslims is 19.3 per cent as against 21.5 per cent for Hindus. But, again, there is no difference between Muslim upper castes and Pasmandas. In contrast, the percentage of salaried workers among Hindu upper castes is 33 per cent as against 19.9 per cent for Hindu OBCs and 21.5 per cent for Dalits. In states such as UP, Bihar, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, Pasmanda Muslims do better than their upper-caste counterparts, whereas Hindu upper castes still control most of the coveted jobs.

In sum, Muslims are less differentiated along class and caste lines than Hindus: While Hindus form an extremely unequal community, with upper castes being very resilient net gainers, Muslims are experiencing collective deprivation. That said, BJP leaders may still “divide and rule” Muslims by co-opting Pasmandas — the way they have done with Shias and Bohras — as well as by exploiting status-related faultlines, which remain strong even if class-based distinctions are much less visible than on the Hindu side. In UP, during the recent local body elections, the BJP nominated 395 Muslim candidates and 61 won. Three-fourths of these 395 candidates were Pasmandas. By contrast, in the previous local elections, the party had fielded only 180 Muslim candidates, with only one winning.

Riaz Haq said...

Muslims are the poorest religious group in India
By
Abhishek Jha
,
Roshan Kishore
Jun 30, 2023 09:22 AM IST

An HT analysis of unit level data from the latest AIDIS and PLFS shows they have the lowest asset and consumption levels among major religious groups in India

https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/muslims-in-india-the-poorest-religious-group-with-high-inequality-and-limited-opportunities-data-analysis-reveals-101688097160955.html

An HT analysis of unit level data from the latest AIDIS and PLFS shows they have the lowest asset and consumption levels among major religious groups in India
The first of this two-part data series looked at intra-religious inequality among Muslims and found that they are as unequal a society as Hindus in India. These measures of inequality do not tell us about the material well-being (or lack of it) of Muslims as a whole vis–a-vis other religious groups in India. An analysis of the relevant numbers shows that they are the poorest religious group in the country. Here are four charts which explain this in detail.
Muslims have the lowest asset/consumption levels among major religious groups…

An HT analysis of unit level data from the latest All India Debt and Investment Survey (AIDIS) and Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) shows that they have the lowest asset and consumption levels among major religious groups in India. Average consumption and asset values for Muslims are 87.9% and 79% of the all-India average and 87.8% and 79.3% of the average values for Hindus. Religious groups which have a population share of less than 1% have been clubbed in the “others” category.

Which means that they over-populate the ranks of the poor in India

There is often a lot of dog-whistling about the population of Muslims increasing at a higher pace than other religious groups in India. While most such commentary is ill-informed – this was discussed in detail in these pages (https://tinyurl.com/2mhjxnn2) — Muslims do have an overrepresentation problem when it comes to their relative share in population among the poor. A comparison of relative share – among every decile class by assets ; it basically measures the share in a given decile class divided by overall share in population – shows that Muslims are concentrated in the bottom half of India’s population and outnumber the Hindus in relative terms in each of the bottom six deciles.

Even Muslim upper castes are poorer than Hindu OBCs

A comparison of average asset/MPCE values across social groups among Hindus and Muslims shows this clearly. The average asset value for non-SC/ST/OBC Muslims – they are the non-Pasmanda Muslims – is not just lower than the average value for non-SC/ST/OBC Hindus but also lower than that of Hindu OBCs, which shows that the claims of Muslim upper castes enjoying disproportionate economic power are just not true.

Poor employment and educational opportunities seem to be the primary cause of economic backwardness for Muslims

The PLFS gives data on both the status of workers (whether regular wage, self-employed, or casual) and the type of enterprise (such as government, public and private limited companies) at which a worker is employed. This shows that even non-SC/ST/OBC Muslims have a low share in regular jobs (the average wage in such jobs is the highest) compared to other religions. A comparison with caste groups among Hindus shows that non-SC/ST/OBC Muslims only do better than ST and SC Hindus. The disadvantage for Muslims becomes even bigger if one looks at their share in government jobs, a fact which has been pointed out by the Sachar Committee among others. To be sure, the low share of Muslims among the better jobs in India need not necessarily be a result of discrimination in the hiring process. Rather, it could be the result of Muslim job-seekers lagging in terms of educational qualifications, which is bound to have a big role in employability.

Riaz Haq said...

Let me state my proposition right off the bat – we Indians are the most racist people on earth! I was reminded of this stark truth when Sam Pitroda made that controversial statement regarding the physical characteristics of people from different parts of the country.


by Mathew John

https://thewire.in/society/why-indians-are-the-most-racist-people-on-earth



Pitroda belongs to that incorrigible species of individuals who refuse to abide by the tried and tested dictum that it is better to keep your mouth shut and let people think you are a fool rather than open it and remove all doubt. Clearly lacking the acumen to anticipate that in this heated election season, even the most benign statements will be misconstrued by political opponents, Pitroda drew a simple racial, but certainly not racist, comparison among our people from different regions: “We could hold together a country as diverse as India – where people on East look like Chinese, people on West look like Arabs, people in North look like maybe white and people in South look like Africans. It doesn’t matter. We are all brothers and sisters.”

-------

The ugliest racist reaction was that of the Prime Minister of the country who demonstrated the lowest common denominator of racist thinking with his denunciation of Pitroda for equating people from the South with the African. The self-proclaimed divine being/thespian/politician expressed thunderous outrage that the “Shehzada (Rahul)” and his Congress acolytes were “disrespecting our countrymen based on the colour of their skin. Modi will definitely not tolerate it”. By implication, he was insinuating that to be compared to the dark-skinned Africans amounted to disrespect of our countrymen. For Modi, black is not beautiful. And he further exposed his crude racism by accusing the Congress of not supporting Draupadi Murmu’s candidature for President because they thought she was African – “her skin is dark so she must be defeated”. Significantly, Modi seemed okay with the other comparisons drawn by Pitroda. To be associated with the Whites, or the Chinese or the Arabs is kosher but in Modi’s reckoning, to be linked to the Africans is an insult. How appallingly racist is that?

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On the issue of racism, we have a lot to be ashamed of. In her profoundly insightful book on racism titled Caste, Isabel Wilkerson describes the hierarchies of power that sets the presumed supremacy of one group against the supposed inferiority of another, that harnesses race, class and colour to divide and subjugate people. We in India have the dubious distinction of not only providing the moniker for the book but being linked with Nazi Germany and America as the dominant locations that have bolstered the racist power structures and hierarchies that divide us today



Wilkerson points to uncanny similarities between India and America. Both have adopted social hierarchies that reinforce the differences between the highest and the lowest, keeping the dominant castes separate, apart and above those deemed lower. Both exiled their indigenous people – the Adivasis in India, the Native Americans in the United States – to remote lands and to the unseen margins of society, apart from using terror and force to keep them there.

To put it bluntly, our centuries-old, iniquitous caste system is the mothership that has provided the inspiration for Nazi Germany and racist America. This egregious concept of social hierarchy goes back millennia and is thousands of years older than European racism and division by skin colour. But caste is not our only social deformity. Our racism is a many-coloured monster that goes beyond caste, embracing discrimination based on religion, on the colour of one’s skin and even one’s facial characteristics.

Riaz Haq said...

The Hindutva Lobby, by Andrew Cockburn

https://harpers.org/archive/2024/10/the-hindutva-lobby-hindu-nationalism-america-andrew-cockburn/

In the summer of 2023, California legislators approved a bill banning discrimination on the grounds of caste. Defined in the bill as “an individual’s perceived position in a system of social stratification on the basis of inherited status,” caste is a central feature of life for hundreds of millions of people in India and beyond. The measure had been championed by California’s Dalit community. Once known as “untouchables,” Dalits occupy the bottommost rung of the Hindu hierarchy, and they have traditionally been confined to menial occupations on the fringes of Indian society, purely by virtue of their birth.

Dalits in California report that this ancient system has been imported to the United States where it remains prevalent in the Indian diaspora, including among those in the tech industry. “They say that in California this doesn’t exist,” declared the measure’s sponsor, State Senator Aisha Wahab. “If it doesn’t exist, then why do we have so many people advocating for the need of this bill?” (As if to corroborate Wahab’s allegations, Google had canceled a planned talk in 2022 by the Dalit activist Thenmozhi Soundararajan, in reaction to the vehement objections posted on internal Google message boards that denounced her as “Hinduphobic”—a common defense against claims of casteism.) Despite furious opposition from leading figures in California’s Hindu tech community—such as Asha Jadeja Motwani, widow of the engineer who helped craft the original Google search algorithm—by September the measure had passed both House and Senate with overwhelming bipartisan majorities and was sent to Governor Gavin Newsom for his signature. While Newsom deliberated, Dalit activists, led by Soundararajan, waged a monthlong hunger strike outside the state legislature. Then, in October, Newsom announced that he was vetoing the bill. It was unnecessary, he claimed, because any discrimination was already covered by existing civil-rights laws.

Newsom’s decision took many by surprise, but others knew better. A month earlier, the ambitious governor, widely considered a future Democratic presidential candidate, flew to Chicago, where Joe Biden’s campaign had convened major donors for a meeting of the Biden Victory Fund PAC. Among them was Ramesh Kapur, a wealthy Massachusetts entrepreneur, whose voice and checkbook carry weight in the firmament of Democratic Party fundraising. In Chicago, Kapur made it clear to Newsom that he faced an important choice: if he ever hoped to secure Kapur’s support, he had better make the right decision on the caste bill. Kapur was hoping to encourage competition between Newsom and Kamala Harris, whose mother was Indian. “I raised money for her when she ran for the Senate and the presidency,” Kapur told me. (His goal, he said, is to elect the first Indian-American president—“hopefully before I get reincarnated!”) “If you want to be our next president,” Kapur bluntly informed the governor, “veto the bill.”

Newsom received an equally unequivocal message from Ajay Jain Bhutoria, another major Biden fundraiser who had served as deputy finance chair of the Democratic Party. “We used very strong words,” Bhutoria, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, later recounted on Twitter,

Riaz Haq said...

MacArthur 'genius' grantee says Dad and Mom helped her defy caste prejudice

https://www.npr.org/sections/goats-and-soda/2024/10/01/g-s1-25437/macarthur-genius-grant-caste-dalit-india-shailaja-paik


Shailaja Paik was born into India’s Dalit community — one of the millions who belong to historically marginalized and oppressed castes due to their professions. They’re so scorned that they were for centuries known as “untouchables.” And even though modern India is changing, caste discrimination refuses to go away.

Paik faced prejudice both as a Dalit and a woman. She credits her parents, especially her father, for helping her (and her three sisters) defy the prejudices they faced as Dalits and as women. He made sure they got an education.

For Paik, schooling was a path to teaching history in the U.S., writing books about the untold plight of the Dalits — and now being dubbed a genius.

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A research professor of history at the University of Cincinnati, Paik is not a public figure as some recipients are. She has documented the deep social inequity rising from India’s repressive caste system that she is a part of. Her focus is the plight of Dalit women like herself.

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"My family moved to Pune, the nearest city [four hours away by road] in the 1960s, where I grew up. We lived in a one-room house in a slum area in Yerawada, on the Ahmednagar highway, which made it easier for my father to make trips to our native village so he could keep in touch with his family. Our house was about 20 by 20 feet, and we didn’t have access to toilets"

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"This is something that especially high-caste elite liberals do not want to talk about. Some [Indians] are quick to talk about the racial discrimination that they face but do not want to talk about the caste discrimination that they perpetuate."

"So we should talk about it and stop pretending that there is no caste, in India and elsewhere. There are very intense conversations taking place in the U.S. today, especially [around] caste and race."