Danielou told "the teaching of philosophy, arts, sciences, which constituted the prestigious Indian cultural tradition, became more and more ignored and could only survive thanks to the Brahmins, without any help whatsoever from the State." Every invader treated Brahmins as the first enemy. "Alfonso de Albuquerque started a reign of terror in Goa, razing temples to erect churches in their stead, burning "heretics", crucifying Brahmins, converting the lower castes"
Come to present situation. It is not the Brahmins who is not allowing the Dalits, Harijans or any other backward class people to come to front row. It is those who are little forward in their own community not allowing people behind them to go forward. In Tamilnadu, even today Dalits are parked in one corner and cannot enter the area devoted to Vanniars, who are just one rung above them, writes Francois Gautier in Rewriting Indian History. In the same book he continues to write "..Brahmins, who actually represent today a minority, which is often underprivileged... ...Brahmins never interfered in politics and today they are often a neglected lot..." "...In fact today, it is the Brahmins who have become the Dalits of India..." .
Harassment on Brahmins did not stopped there "..most of the intellectual Brahmin Tamil class has emigrated outside Tamil Nadu; the average income of Brahmins is less than that of non-Brahmins; a high percentage of Brahmin students drop out at the intermediate level ; 75% of domestic help and cooks in Andhra Pradesh are Brahmins; and most of Delhi’s public toilets are cleaned by Brahmins...."
Come to Kashmir now. Kashmiri Pandits became refugees in their own land. 1 million Kashmiri Hindus in 1900 in the Kashmir valley and barely a few hundreds today. Islamic terrorists concentrated on Pandits in the beginning. They knew if they destroy them the soul of Hinduism could be attacked. They attacked on Pandits, many Pandits lost their life, house, land temples, number of beautiful Kashmiri Pandit girls were raped. Where was the Human Right Commission or the activists sleeping? Are only Dalits human? I have seen number of journalist, media firms highlights even a Dalit kills another Dalit due to some personal rivalry they gives it a national news value publishing "A Dalit murdered". Why they could not see a Brahmin getting murdered or India getting wounded?
1 comment:
It is kind of amazing for me to read this article in the 21st Century. The interesting thing to note here is that the author is still in BC era and thinking of and worrying about castes. Anyway we cannot blame the author. It might take another millennium before any Indian can get away about castes. I have lot of respect for group of Indians, who started a group called Brahmin a society group for sharing their ideas, principles and securing themselves by a concept call castes. Brahmins brought great ideals, pushed themselves with very high quality of living. Well, it worked very well until 15th century. However socialism was not part of their ideals or principles. This was the drawback of the Brahmins principles and greatly hurt them from 16th century onwards. While implementing great cultural ideas, they made a mistake of ignoring outer caste and isolating themselves from the outside world. Ignorance of outside world is the biggest drawback of Brahmin groups. Their ignorance of outside society and dis-respect to other intellectuals and not adopting to social nature of the other people was not a very good thing. In other parts of the world, Muslims similar to Brahmin had same ideals. Not adopting to other society and ignorance of other society intellectuals might hurt muslims in a long run, similar to what happened to Brahmins between 16th and 21st century.
Brahmin is fundamental part of Hinduism. Hindus adopt mixed castes from various part of India. With the mixed or inter-caste marriages at very high level in India, gap between castes within Hindus is coming closer. In another Half millennium, by year 2500, the Hinduism will evolve be a more uniform natured religion. So it is high time that author stop worrying about Brahmin’s alone and start thinking of how Hindus will fare in next millennium. Brahmins might make about 2 to 3% of the world population. Author need to understand that over 95% of the world population have no clue what Brahmin is all about, but still much live a better life, with noble ideas, good heart and generous mind.
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