Wednesday, March 31, 2010

[ZESTCaste] Court concludes hearing in Laxmanpur carnage case

 

http://www.ptinews.com/news/590206_Court-concludes-hearing-in-Laxmanpur-carnage-case

Court concludes hearing in Laxmanpur carnage case

STAFF WRITER 18:28 HRS IST
Patna, Mar 31 (PTI) A local court today concluded the hearing of the
Laxmanpur bath carnage case in Bihar's Jehanabad district in which 58
Dalits were gunned down by members of Ranvir Sena 13 years ago.

Additional District judge Vijay Prakash Mishra fixed April 7 for
pronouncing the verdict.

Charges were framed in the case, probed by the Bihar police, against
46 Ranvir Sena men, a private militia of landlords, on December 23,
2008 and altogether 91 of the 152 witnesses deposed before the court.

The case was transferred to Patna from Jehanabad following a High
Court order in October, 1999.

Fifty-eight Dalits were mowed down by Ranvir Sena members at Laxmanpur
bath on December 1, 1997.

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[ZESTCaste] India clashes with Britain over Equality Bill racism law

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/7541598/India-clashes-with-Britain-over-Equality-Bill-racism-law.html

India clashes with Britain over Equality Bill racism law

India is set to clash with Britain over Westminster's new Equality
Bill which outlaws caste discrimination as a form of racism.

Dean Nelson, in New Delhi
Published: 6:50PM BST 31 Mar 2010

The bill, which has been passed in the House of Lords, has been
welcomed by campaigners for India's "dalits" or "untouchables", a
caste which suffers extreme violence and persecution, but has been
rejected by their government.

There are more than 250 million dalits in India, many of whom are
denied water, access to schools, and in some cases the right to pass
through villages by upper caste Hindus who believe their presence, or
even their shadow, pollutes them. Some dalits in India still work as
"night soil carriers" – transporting human waste from latrines.


Ministers in London have become increasingly concerned about
discrimination and persecution against lower caste Indians in Britain
following a report last year which claimed thousands had been
ill-treated because of their caste.

The report, by the Anti-Caste Discrimination Alliance, surveyed 300
British Asians and cited cases of children being bullied at school,
bus inspectors refusing to work with lower caste drivers, and
employees being sacked after their bosses discovered their caste
status.

Until now victims of caste discrimination in Britain have had no
recourse to law. India also has legislation outlawing caste
discrimination but is fiercely opposed to any comparison with racism.

The Indian government has made its views known to British delegations
at the UN's Human Rights Council in Geneva and at a European
Union-India Human Rights Dialogue last month.

"India's position on this issue has been clear and consistent. Caste
and race discrimination are two separate issues and there is no case
to equate the two. We are opposed to attempts at international fora to
equate the issues," said an official source.

Until the mid-1990s India had back moves to include all discrimination
based on descent as a feature of racism in the International
Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. But it changed
its position in 1996 when it is understood to have become concerned at
onerous reporting obligations under the convention.

India's leading campaigner for dalit rights, Dr Udit Raj, last night
welcomed the Equality Bill and said it would increase pressure for the
UN to recognise caste as a form of racism.

"The United Kingdom has done the right thing. The new law will give
moral boost to the people discriminated on the basis of their caste
and will force the UN to include caste as a tool of discrimination.
The government of India has been adopting dual standards. At world
forums they accept Indians are victims of caste but when it comes to
local politics and policies they cash in on caste politics," he told
The Daily Telegraph.


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UK close to banning caste-based discrimination

March 31, 2010 19:54 IST


In a "historic" step, British Parliament has moved closer to amending equality laws to declare as illegal caste-based discrimination, which is also prevalent in India [ Images ], after the House of Lords cleared the measure. The Equality Bill -- which unites the various strands of diversity legislation, outlaws age discrimination and requires businesses to report on the gender pay gap -- will now face final consideration by the House of Commons prior to receiving royal assent. It is expected to become law before the general election expected in early May.



The House of Commons will consider the amendments suggested by the House of Lords on April 6. Amendments made by the House of Lords included a power to outlaw discrimination on the basis of caste; a ban on asking for health and disability information prior to making a job offer; and removing the ban on civil partnership ceremonies taking place in religious premises. There has been mounting evidence of the prevalence of caste-based discrimination among people with origins in the Indian sub-continent.



After refusing to amend the laws for some years on the ground that there was no evidence of such practice in Britain, the government has now accepted that discrimination on grounds of caste may be happening. Harriet Harman, Minister for Women and Equality, said: "I'm pleased that the Equality Bill has completed its third reading in the House of Lords. This is a historic piece of legislation that contains a range of new rights, powers and obligations to help the drive towards equality, including tackling the overarching inequality caused by where you are born and what your parents do for a living."



The third reading is the final stage at which a bill can be amended before it becomes law. Baroness Thornton has commissioned the National Institute of Economic and Social Research to conduct research into the subject.



Based on the evidence and research presented in the report, the government is expected to amend equality laws and initiate measures to prevent caste-based discrimination in the same way as discrimination on grounds of sex, colour, religion, age and sexual orientation. Lord Avebury, who belongs to the Liberal Democrats group, had moved the amendment to the qualities Bill 2009, and said he believed the research would "conclusively prove that caste discrimination does occur in the fields covered by the bill".



Keith Porteous Wood, Executive Director of the National Secular Society, said: "The blight of caste discrimination, under which millions in India are regarded as 'untouchable', has spread to this country virtually unnoticed." In November 2009, research conducted by academics at the universities of Manchester, Hertfordshire and Manchester Metropolitan University said tens of thousands of people with origins in the Indian sub-continent faced caste discrimination in Britain.



The new study, whose main conclusion is that there is considerable evidence of caste-based discrimination among the Asians in Britain, was coordinated by the Anti-Caste Discrimination Alliance and included academics from three universities. The report, titled 'Voice of the Community – A Study into Caste and Caste Discrimination in the UK', says that the caste system is widespread and that it affects tens of thousands of people in the workplace, the classroom and even the doctor's surgery.



The study says: "There is clear evidence from the survey and the focus groups that the caste system has been imported into the UK with the Asian diaspora and that the associated caste discrimination affects citizens in ways beyond personal choices and social interaction. "There is a danger that if the UK government does not effectively accept and deal with the issue of caste discrimination the problem will grow unchecked."

http://news.rediff.com/interview/2010/mar/31/uk-close-to-banning-caste-based-discrimination.htm

[ZESTCaste] UK bill links caste to race, India red-faced

 

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/UK-bill-links-caste-to-race-India-red-faced/articleshow/5745108.cms

UK bill links caste to race, India red-faced
Manoj Mitta, TNN, Mar 31, 2010, 04.17am IST

NEW DELHI: In the first such legislative move anywhere in the world,
and much to the embarrassment of India's official position, the
British House of Lords has passed a law that treats caste as "an
aspect of race".

On March 24, the House of Lords passed the Equality Bill empowering
the British government to include "caste" within the definition of
"race". This threatens India's much-touted success in keeping caste
out of the resolution adopted at the 2001 Durban conference on racism.
The provision to outlaw caste discrimination in Britain came in the
form of an amendment made by the Lords as a result of intensive
lobbying by dalit groups, including followers of Ravidass sect who had
suffered a violent attack last year in Austria.

The bill will become a law after the House of Commons passes it. The
legislation draws its legitimacy from a recommendation made in 2002 by
the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD)
that all member states of the International Convention on the
Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), including
India and the UK, should enact domestic legislation declaring that
descent-based discrimination encompassed caste and "analogous systems
of inherited status".

This development comes at a time when the Manmohan Singh government is
already under pressure before the UN Human Rights Council as the draft
principles and guidelines issued by it last year on discrimination
based on work and descent recognized caste as a factor. The British
legislation may provide impetus for the adoption of those draft
principles and guidelines.

Though the bill originally contained no reference to caste, the Gordon
Brown government agreed to its inclusion even as it commissioned a
research on the nature of the problem that is believed to have come
into Britain through the Indian diaspora. A parliamentary committee,
while recommending last year that caste be considered as a subset of
race, cited specific instances of caste discrimination in Britain.

In one such case, a qualified dalit working in the National Health
Service suddenly suffered discrimination at the hands of his
supervisor soon after the latter discovered his "low caste" status.
The dalit employee was reportedly harassed and suspended from work for
a whole year. While a trade union managed to obtain compensation for
him, the case highlighted a lacuna in the law to deal with caste
discrimination. The Gordon Brown government accepted the amendment
tabled by Liberal Democrats subject to the outcome of the research
ordered by it on caste discrimination. Baroness Thornton, speaking for
the government, told the peers, "We have looked for evidence of caste
discrimination and we now think that evidence may exist, which is why
we have now commissioned the research."

Lord Avebury, who had tabled the amendment, said he believed that the
research would "conclusively prove that caste discrimination does
occur in the fields covered by the bill". India's opposition to the
linking of caste with race began in 1996, when it tried to free itself
of "reporting obligation" under CERD, saying that caste, though
perpetuated through descent, was "not based on race".

This is a drastic departure from the position originally taken by
India in 1965 while proposing the historic amendment to introduce
descent in CERD. It had actually cited its experience with caste as an
argument for recognizing all forms of descent-based discrimination.

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[ZESTCaste] Equalisation to annihilation-and beyond

http://www.himalmag.com/Equalisation-to-annihilation-and-beyond_nw4414.html

Equalisation to annihilation-and beyond

April 2010
By: S Anand


A further fragmentation of caste identities would rule out the
possibility of solidarity across oppressed castes.

Caste is not a physical object like a wall of bricks or a line of
barbed wire which prevents the Hindus from commingling and which has,
therefore, to be pulled down. Caste is a notion, it is a state of the
mind. The destruction of Caste does not therefore mean the destruction
of a physical barrier. It means a notional change.


– B R Ambedkar


All Illustrations by Durgabai Vyam and Subhash Vyam / (C) Navayana Publishing
B R Ambedkar was at his lacerating best in 1936. That was a time when,
in Lahore, a breakaway faction of the reformist Arya Samaj, known as
the Jat-Pat Todak Mandal (Forum for the Annihilation of Caste),
advocated inter-dining and intermarriage as measures to destroy caste.
Membership, on paying two rupees as annual subscription, was meant for
"Hindus" who took "a vow to marry himself or his sons and daughters
out of his caste". The radical bluster of this forum, led by savarna,
upper-caste Hindus, stood exposed when they refused to let Ambedkar
express his views, despite having invited him to deliver the
presidential address of the Mandal's annual conference in May 1936. In
his undelivered speech, entitled Annihilation of Caste, Ambedkar
argued, "Hindus observe caste not because they are inhuman or
wrong-headed. They observe caste because they are deeply religious."
This train of logic made him tell the Jat-Pat Todak Mandal, "The enemy
you must grapple with is not the people who observe caste, but the
Shastras which teach them this religion of caste."

On reading Annihilation of Caste, 'Mahatma' Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
made a forceful defence of the fourfold chaturvarnya system. In
response, an irate Ambedkar did not mince words about how, in his
view, caste could really be annihilated: "You have got to apply the
dynamite to the Vedas and the Shastras, which deny any part to reason;
to the Vedas and Shastras, which deny any part to morality. You must
destroy the religion of the Shrutis and the Smritis. Nothing else will
avail." But at least during the heady 1930s, there was the pretence of
concern over caste and the issues that plagued Hindu society across
the Subcontinent. Though Ambedkar ridiculed the pusillanimous efforts
of the 'social reform' school (initially Brahmin-led efforts of the
Arya Samaj, and then represented by a section of the Indian National
Congress), these elements did constitute a body with whom a radical
like him could joust.

An institution such as caste has displayed enormous resilience,
surviving multiple challenges and reinventing itself according to the
times. Yet its origins and survival remain a riddle. Asked to reflect
on the future of caste, Ravikumar, a writer and public intellectual
from Tamil Nadu, recently said, "In the case of caste, no two people
agree on when exactly it was born. In spite of the rigorous research
that has gone into it, everybody is unsure about where this miraculous
birth took place. Since origin and history cannot be pushed aside, it
is crucial that a birth certificate for caste be obtained as soon as
possible, for us to predict its future." That is a smart response, but
still leaves in our hands the gooey mess of caste. Any talk of the
future of caste seems 'offensive' to many; they see it as a matter of
the 'present'. Well, it has been so for a few millennia now, and it
looks like caste is far from dying. It is like snot: We have just
learned to live with it.


The rule of exceptions
One can rationally understand how and why class inequalities exist and
function; and across the globe, there have been strategies evolved to
fight class. We still have unions that seek to protect class
interests, though these have disappeared and/or become obsolete under
the onslaught of neoliberalism. Even if the ideal communist society is
a utopia, the will to achieve it has always existed – and has excited
those involved in the struggle for one. It is an ideal that is
realisable. So too with gender, as successful battles have been fought
in fighting inequalities and discrimination based on sex. Likewise,
racism has been tackled in many ways, though it does persist.

Even when the fight against racism and sexism were in their nascent
stages, futures that transcended the boundaries of race and sex were
imagined by science-fiction and fantasy writers in the West. The
political struggle against discrimination on the basis of race and sex
was matched by the literary imagination. Way back in 1873,
Maharashtrian revolutionary Jotirao Phule acknowledged this when he
dedicated – even at the risk of overreaching – his trenchant critique
of the origins of caste, Gulamgiri (Slavery) "to the good people of
the United States as a token of admiration for their sublime,
disinterested and self-sacrificing devotion in the cause of Negro
Slavery."

The fact is, in Southasia, the challenge to speculate on a future of
caste has not thrown up imaginative responses. For the ideology of
caste, there seems to be no end in sight. For a system that defies
both reason and morality, it looks quite unshakeable. Clearly, over
centuries, there has been an accretion of new jatis; indeed, the scope
for the infinite spawning of jatis had been written into the
scriptures that govern the ideology of caste. Though varna-samkara,
the mixing of castes, is theoretically prohibited, scriptures like the
Manusmriti offer several caveats anticipating transgressions. Indeed,
Kautilya's Arthashastra, estimated to be written in 150 AD, offers an
even more exhaustive labelling and classification of jatis that are
products of varna-samkara. Is it not just British administrators – as
some postcolonial scholars would have us believe – who devised lists
and schedules of castes: This was simply an old Brahminical habit that
colonialism adopted.

From the very beginning, the authors of the caste system envisioned
the scope for endless reproduction of castes, and the creation of new
castes, by writing into the system of rules a set of exceptions that
only reinforce the rules. We may have as many intercaste marriages as
we wish, but caste will not die. On the contrary, new castes will
emerge. As they have. Speaking in New Delhi recently, the Slovenian
Marxist philosopher Slavoj Zizek, who has been attempting to come to
terms with the befuddling ideology of caste, said that such a system
can be sustained "only by a complex panoply of tricks, displacements
and compromises whose basic formula is that of universality with
exceptions: in principle yes, but … The Laws of Manu demonstrates a
breath-taking ingenuity in accomplishing this task." Zizek believes
that the true regulating power of the law

does not reside in its direct prohibitions, in the division of our
acts into permitted and prohibited, but in regulating the very
violations of prohibitions: the law silently accepts that the basic
prohibitions are violated (or even discreetly solicits us to violate
them), and then, it tells us how to reconcile the violation with the
law by way of violating the prohibition in a regulated way.

The idea of corrupting the system of caste through genial viruses like
intermarriage and inter-dining is defeated even before organisations
like the Jat-Pat Todak Mandal in Lahore or the Periyar E V
Ramasamy-led Self-Respect Movement in Tamil Nadu offered these as
counters. After all, the very system we are dealing with is a gigantic
virus, which is why Ambedkar spoke of the need to "dynamite" the
Brahminical religion that upholds caste. Yet his subsequent recourse
to Buddhism, stripped of all the metaphysical baggage it had acquired
over centuries, has not exactly led even Dalits into a caste-free
utopia. A whole generation of Dalit Buddhists has relapsed into
popular Hinduism, as studies have shown.

Further, new communities are always being enlisted as castes.
According to historian D D Kosambi, at the instance of Kautilya, the
Brahmins were designated with the task of creating castes among tribes
that rebelled against the Mauryan Empire – despite the fact that the
Mauryans were themselves believed to be of tribal/Shudra origins. In
her recent essay on Maoists in Dandakaranya, writer Arundhati Roy
notes that, as part of the Hindutva drive,

In north Bastar, Baba Bihari Das had started an aggressive drive to
'bring tribals back into the Hindu fold', which involved a campaign to
denigrate tribal culture, induce self-hatred, and introduce Hinduism's
great gift – caste. The first converts, the village chiefs and big
landlords – people like Mahendra Karma, founder of the Salwa Judum –
were conferred the status of Dwij, twice-born, Brahmins.

Those who refuse to convert are also casted, by being declared katwas
(untouchables). In Kandhamal, Orissa, after three decades of
indoctrination, the Hindutva forces incited the Hinduised Adivasis,
the Kandhas, to attack the Pana Dalit Christians for a full year
leading up to December 2009. It is the same old script of the shrewd
Kautilya that is being enacted today.

It is caste that gives Brahminism – what we call 'Hinduism' today –
its sanatan (eternal) status. Yet if caste seems indestructible,
self-regenerating, everlasting as well as ever-changing, what, then,
is its future? The caste system is no longer simply linked to
occupation, though this linkage has not altogether disappeared. There
has, of course, never been rigidity written into this system; rather,
it has proved itself to be enormously flexible, a characteristic that
has helped it to adjust, make compromises, survive and thrive. To
illustrate, according to social historians, the Jats who are today
demanding Other Backward Class (OBC) status in India were, until the
eighth century, regarded as a chandala, untouchable, jati in the Sindh
and Punjab regions. By the 11th century they had attained Shudra
status; after the Jat rebellion of the 17th century, a segment of the
Jats aspiring to be zamindars sought Rajput (Kshatriya) status.

Historian Irfan Habib sees this as an instance of erstwhile victims of
the caste system turning into its votaries. We also find that many
Dalit communities that announce their arrival on the stage of
modernity seek to present us with imagined histories of a glorious
past, when they actually belonged to a higher caste and became
subsequently 'fallen'. For instance, as chronicler of the Dalit
movement Bhagwan Das points out, thanks to indoctrination by the Arya
Samaj since the 19th century, the Lalbeg community, spread across
undivided Punjab, was rechristened as Valmikis. The story that they
were originally Brahmins and their ancestor was the writer of the
Ramayana has found acceptance among the Valmikis, who no longer call
themselves Lalbeg – a name that, according to Das, had Buddhist
origins. In Tamil Nadu, the Pallars (Dalits) say they are Devendra
Kula Vellalars, tracing their ancestry to the Vedic god Indra.

The equalisation mirage
Since the time of colonial modernity, the oppressed castes have
demanded a fair share in the power structures, and devised various
strategies by which to counter the forces that have sought to keep
them down. Such a thrust – aided by a constitution and a democracy
modified or written by Ambedkar to respond to the specificities of a
caste-ridden society – has resulted in the limited social and
political empowerment of several erstwhile Shudra castes and Dalits.
Given that caste is here for good, the issue before every caste seems
to be how to make the best use of this identity. The process underway
in large swathes of the Subcontinent is not an effort to undermine
caste, but rather the assertion of each jati's identity to stake claim
to a share in power. What is indeed unspooling is the impetus towards
what some activists have called 'equalisation of castes', not their
annihilation.

In such a context, the simplistic demand for the annihilation of caste
and the effort to project everyone as equal can be read as a
Brahminical ploy to ensure that the inherited material and
intellectual privileges of the elite are maintained. Such an
artificial annihilation of caste would mean the marginalised castes
forego their group identity, and will themselves into a
liberal-democratic universe in which only individuals matter. In such
a world, the Brahminical castes will project themselves as individuals
with merit, and keep the Dalits and other marginalised groups out – as
they have always done. Such an effort at erasing caste will only
result in the annihilation of the oppressed castes.


This is the caste struggle that is ongoing today in India. In the kind
of first-past-the-post parliamentary democracy practiced in the
country, this has meant the consolidation of jati identities where
each caste seeks a share in the political structures. When Lalu Yadav
is chief minister of Bihar, the Yadavs benefit; when Nitish Kumar
takes over, it is the Kurmis' turn; the Pattali Makkal Katchi in Tamil
Nadu almost exclusively represents the Vanniyar caste's interests.
Tamil Nadu has also seen the debut of the Kongunadu Munnetra Peravai,
a party that brazenly represents the voice of the land-owning Gounder
community. They contested 12 Lok Sabha seats in the 2009 parliamentary
election.

The logic of such democratic sharing can also ensure that Dalits fight
among themselves for the meagre spoils of the system, as can be seen
it the case of the Madigas and the Malas of Andhra Pradesh fighting
over sub-categorisation of quotas. This is a struggle that has led to
Chief Minister Nitish Kumar creating the category of Maha Dalit in
Bihar, to ostensibly ameliorate internal inequalities with the Dalit
castes. What we see unfolding is democracy and modernity joining hands
to further fragment jati identities, and thus rule out the possibility
of solidarity across oppressed castes.

We may even hazard the conclusion that parliamentary democracy is best
suited to perpetuate castes and facilitate caste mobility. India is
often projected – and celebrated – as one of the unique examples of
the sustained success of democracy; the secret of this success is that
such a political system can peacefully coexist with caste. In fact,
caste and democracy – much to posthumous Ambedkarite consternation –
have nurtured and sustained each other. In Uttar Pradesh, we see
someone such as Mayawati build a majestic alliance of castes that
ought to be theoretically, and even principally, opposed to each
other. In the personal realm, the Dalits and Brahmins may not have
roti-beti ka vyavhaar (inter-dining and intermarriage), but they are
willing to come together to share political power.

But can there, really, be equalisation of castes? The principle behind
reservation is exactly this: to ensure opportunities to
hitherto-oppressed communities and, in the long term, ensure
educational and economic parity with other castes that have enjoyed
the privilege of birth. The logic that governs the 'equalisation of
castes' theory is that if enforced poverty and lack of education can
be addressed, castes can be placed on an equal footing. However, since
the very basis of caste is graded inequality and hierarchy – the
preservation of notions of high and low – then 'equalisation of
castes' is a contradiction of terms. The policy of mandatory
reservation thus cuts both ways – facilitating social mobility for
subaltern communities but also ensuring that they are trapped in the
identity. This is demonstrated by the fact that despite the Bahujan
Samaj Party's huge success and celebrated coalitions of jatis,
Mayawati cannot ensure the victory of Dalits from non-reserved
constituencies. Reservation, while absolutely necessary for oppressed
castes, has also not dented caste consciousness.

What the future holds, then, is the heightened assertion of caste as
identity. To be anti-caste can be a privileged, individualised
position. Those who have the resources can delude themselves into
believing that they can 'exit' caste, but that hardly amounts to the
annihilation of caste as a system. Freedom from caste can, at best, be
an idiosyncratic, personal manifesto. We can, indeed, each of us,
script and imagine such a future and retain a fragment of personal
sanity – if we can afford it. But there can be no alternative to the
larger battle of the caste underclass to fight discrimination.


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[ZESTCaste] The Mithila attitude

http://www.himalmag.com/The-Mithila-attitude_nw4430.html

The Mithila attitude

April 2010
By: CK Lal


Traditionally, the caste system has functioned differently in the Nepali Tarai.


Everyone's god: Salhes's shrine and Brahma tree
C K Lal
Caste has such deep roots in Southasian society that it would appear
as if these divisions were primordial. Several equally plausible
theories about the origins of caste are prevalent in villages around
Janakpur, in Nepal's Tarai plains, a town believed to be situated at
the site of the mythical capital of the Mithila of Valmiki's Ramayana.
Hindu creationists, for instance, believe that the Brahmin emanated
from the mouth of the primeval man, the Kshatriya from his arms, the
Vaishya from his thighs and the Shudra from his feet. Rationalists, on
the other hand, attribute the evolution of caste to varna, translated
as skin colour in the Mahabharata, which says that a Brahman is white,
a Kshatriya red, a Vaishya yellow and all Shudras black. A variation
of the 'Aryan invasion' theory holds that the conquerors
institutionalised their supremacy by imposing themselves upon the
existing occupational groups.

In addition, there is the widely held belief that caste was originally
a system of horizontal differentiation, in order to assign
occupational duties in a coordinated manner. In this formulation, most
castes, except Brahmins at the top and Dalits at the bottom, were
fluid categories. Finally, the theory of karma propounds that one's
caste in this life is a result of the virtues of the previous one. All
that a person can do is acquire virtue in the present life, to be
rewarded with promotions up the caste ladder by the divine manager.

Whatever the theory, endless conflict appears to be built into the
system of caste divisions. Yet different castes have lived together in
the villages of the Nepali Tarai for millennia without major clashes.
Part of the explanation behind the 'peaceful coexistence' may lie in
the subordinate position of the 'low' castes in economic terms. At
least some role was played by the subsistence agriculture that made
cooperation a necessary condition of survival. However, a system of
layered stratification, rather than hierarchy, seems to have been the
mainstay of the caste system in the Mithila region. Different groups
live together because they were neither high nor low but merely
different, each with its own customs and deities. In the social arena,
they have had to cooperate for collective survival.

Water everywhere
According to legends in Mithila, the popular geographic term tarai
owes its origin to massive lakes that once existed below the Shivalik
(Chure in Nepal) foothills of the Mahabharata ranges. In all
probability, these were wetlands left by changes in the courses of the
mighty Himalayan rivers, which, once out of the mountains, meander in
the plains to meet the Ganga. Today, all cultural symbols of Mithila
are water-based. Makhan, lotus seeds, grow in shallow water; fish are
caught from rivers and ponds; and betel leaves grow best in the shade
of trees near watercourses. Makhan, machha and paan are essential
elements of almost all rituals of every caste in this area.

This also indicates that the earliest settlers of this area must have
been skilled fisherfolk. The hunter-gatherer ancestors of Mithila were
water-dependent, rather than forest-dwellers. That could be the reason
that the Mallahs figure high on the list of acceptable castes, though
they are not considered as one of the high castes. Naturally, the main
deity of the fisherfolks must have been water; today, their traditions
perhaps live on in the Judshital festival, which heralds the onset of
summer in the month of Baisakh, when elders bless young ones with
water.

Over time, wetlands tend to shrink and tall grasses begin to grow in
the resultant clearings. The groups that had long made their living by
collecting reeds and making huts are probably ancestors of the
present-day Doms, whose role in Mithila rituals continues to be
important. But what are known today as Dusadhs were probably the
people who began to settle along the riverbanks. Most likely, they
hunted animals with bows and arrows and, along the way, learned the
skills required to make bamboo rafts, reed huts and grass bins for
storing edible fruits.

The tradition of worshipping Salhes – a mythical Dusadh king who is
reputed to have fought valiantly, driven invaders across the Ganga and
then died defending his possessions – might have begun later. But
trees that are today worshipped as of Dusadh deities probably predate
the tradition of making earthen statues of Salhes. The oldest villages
of Mithila invariably have a Dusadh shrine, and all castes, including
the 'forward' castes, pay yearly tribute for ritual pujas of Salhes.

Tree-worship
The evolution of pastoral society created different castes in its
wake, of which the earliest ones seem to have been Dhanuks, Koeris and
Bhedihars. They worshipped mounds of earth as the Mother Goddess – the
term kali was probably imposed upon this practice much later. Unlike
the Doms and Dusadhs, who had a tradition of moving with the season
along the river, goat- and sheepherders tended to live in clusters.
Their lifestyle continues to have the most visible impact, as most
settlers of Mithila are still Kali worshippers; it was probably their
shamans who began the tradition of tree-worship as Brahma the eternal.
In most Mithila villages, Dhanuks and Koeris are considered to have
been earliest settlers; later settlers of affluence prefer people of
these castes as family attendants and consider them as equals in
society.

Cowherds and buffalo-rearing castes introduced the tradition of Shiva
worship, but these were not permanent settlers. Until quite recently,
they retreated into the forest with their cattle for much of the year.
Such a tradition, however, must have begun when pastures turned into
agricultural fields, and animals had to be taken wherever grass was
abundant. Strangely, farming communities do not seem to have
contributed their own deities. Instead, most adopted prevalent Brahma-
and Kali-worshipping traditions. The shrines of Sita and Ram that dot
the landscape are additions from the Bhakti age, when Buddhism went
into retreat and kings claiming divine mandate began to patronise
organised Hindu religion with land grants to temples. The Ram-Janaki
temple in Matihani, near Janakpur, is the main Vaishnava shrine in
Nepal, with its mahanth considered to be maan mahanth, a temple head
above all other priests of the country.

The retreat of Buddhism gave a fillip to Brahminism, and what the
sociologist M N Srinivas was to later call a process of
Sanskritisation. Caste divisions became entrenched, with Brahmins at
the top; farming communities accepted Vaishya status; and Dalits were
relegated to the bottom. This was the caste system that, in Nepal,
Jang Bahadur was to later institutionalise in the Muluki Ain – the
Code of the Land – with the help of two Brahmin priests from Mahottary
in Mithila. Strangely, there is no indigenous Kshatriya caste group in
this area, which confirms the hypothesis that the Kshatriya category
was an open group, admitting people with 'warrior attitudes' from all
castes.

Farming also institutionalised caste roles. In a fitting finale to the
caste conundrum, occupational castes have been some of the most
significant beneficiaries of the remittance economy, in Nepal and
elsewhere. Castes such as barbers, blacksmiths and carpenters possess
very particular skills, after all, and oftentimes have less hesitation
in taking up what are considered menial jobs. As such, their
contributions to economic vibrancy are generally greater than those of
the 'upper' castes, and their occupational dexterity has helped them
to move ahead in the modernising economy. It would be interesting to
watch the impact of resurgence of 'low' castes on the lifestyles of a
region that takes excessive pride in its cultural traditions.


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[ZESTCaste] Well beyond Khairlanji

http://www.himalmag.com/Well-beyond-Khairlanji_nw4421.html

Well beyond Khairlanji

April 2010
By: Ashley Tellis


Questioning our personal contradictions is essential to any discussion on caste.


Karen Haydock
I find a question about the 'future of caste' offensive, primarily
because caste is an issue of the present and we do not have the luxury
to pontificate about the 'future' of it. I teach at a new Indian
Institute of Technology (IIT) which is being mentored by an old IIT,
where casteism is sickeningly alive. Colleagues speak derisively of
Dalit students who naively change the question in the entrance exam to
the 'prestigious' IIT so they can answer it, because they are too
stupid to solve a difficult question but they get in regardless,
because of quota, thus 'lowering' the standards of the IIT; a
professor tells me there is no Brahmin ideology to the IIT, and that
Brahmin students commit suicide too, when I ask him to set mechanisms
in place so that Dalit students can complain, especially if we are to
have Brahmins teaching Sanskrit. When I was in college, my Sanskrit
teacher told the Brahmins in class that they would understand better.
As a half-Dalit half-Christian, I felt great, of course.

We do not have to look to Khairlanji for Dalit atrocities. They happen
in our bourgeois urban lives every day. I was marginalised and looked
upon as pariah because of my black Dalit father. That he was
alcoholic, wife-beating and had no responsibility toward the home made
it easier for people ('good' Catholic people in the Bombay
neighbourhood in which I grew up) to hate him and me. My schizophrenic
mother, whom he pretty much beat to a pulp, sang songs about his
Harijan, chokra-boy identity, and spoke of his skin colour (she was
white as driven snow). He broke all her teeth in return.

What my Dalit history has taught me – and this is all I can offer for
the 'future' – is that Dalit identity, like all identity, needs to be
reflexive, needs to step outside itself, needs to look at itself
askance, needs to ask questions of the self and see internal
contradictions. In a writer like Urmila Pawar, we see the pain of this
process, the difficulty of it. In her autobiography Aydaan, her
deepest love, for her husband, is constantly lashed by his sexism, by
his inability to see her as powerful, by his implicit resentment of
her growing into the most important Dalit feminist writer of her, and
many other, generations. She fights him; she fights him to the bitter
end. And yet, after his death, she can still offer a stunning portrait
of him, swimming in his own particularity, singular and beautiful.

But what is far more beautiful in the end is the picture of her –
writing, struggling, wondering about her own contradictions, her own
investments in casteism, in bourgeois morality, nevertheless confident
of her feminism, ambivalent about her children, working through these
difficult processes in her life with a candour that is as remarkable
as it is searing. Pawar never lets herself suffer any illusion, and
works relentlessly towards the politics of which she dreams. That is
all I can hope for the Dalit future. That we have such a
self-reflexive politics. That we fight caste on all fronts, starting
from within ourselves, till the bitter end of it.


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[ZESTCaste] Non-Brahmin staff face discrimination

http://www.expressbuzz.com/edition/story.aspx?Title=Non-Brahmin+staff+face+discrimination&artid=IPPE3Tp7LYk=&SectionID=e7uPP4%7CpSiw=&MainSectionID=fyV9T2jIa4A=&SectionName=EH8HilNJ2uYAot5nzqumeA==&SEO=

Non-Brahmin staff face discrimination

Express News ServiceFirst Published : 31 Mar 2010 05:08:00 AM ISTLast
Updated : 31 Mar 2010 09:53:10 AM IST

VIJAYAWADA: Sri Kanaka Durga temple authorities' decision to allow
only Brahmins in 'prasadam' section here stirred up a controversy
today.


Several non-Brahmin workers, who have been preparing prasadam for the
past several years, staged a protest at the temple in protest against
the decision.

The temple which invites tenders every year for making pulihora,
laddus, chakkerapongali and other prasadams, issued the tender a month
ago specifying that only Brahmin community people would be allowed to
work in prasadam making and packing section.

Majority of the workers in prasadam section, who prepare and pack
laddus, are non-Brahmins and they have been doing so for the past 20
years.

However, in the recent tender notification for 2010- 11, the temple
authorities asked the contractor that all the provisions of the tender
notice including deputing Brahmin workers in prasadam section should
be followed strictly.

The new tender guidelines which will come into effect from April 1
created a controversy as over 65 persons working in prasadam section
are non-Brahmin.

"The temple authorities are giving priority to Brahmin workers at the
cost of our lives,'' lamented Pochapalli Ratnam saying that it can't
be justified. ``There was no single complaint against me in
maintaining cleanliness in the last 20 years,'' he told Express.

"One looks at the quality and whether the prasadam is being prepared
in hygienic conditions or not. The temple authorities can take action
against erring workers but throwing out the existing workers in the
name of caste is not acceptable,'' opined Tirumalla Jayalaxmi, another
worker. However, the temple Executive Officer N Vijay Kumar said that
he did not include any new provision in the tender notice and was
merely implementing the guidelines of Endowment department.

He maintained that the provision that only Brahmins should be allowed
to work in prasadam making and packing section had been violated for
the last several years on Indrakeeladri.

'To protect the temple's sanity and maintain hygienic conditions in
prasadam packing, I have strictly advised the contractor to depute
only Brahmin community workers even in prasadam packing,' the
Executive Officer said. Protesting against the temple's decision,
scores of workers under the aegis of Prasadam- Making Contract Workers
Union staged a protest at the temple and demanded withdrawal of the
decision immediately.


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[ZESTCaste] Mayawati in reverse gear?

http://www.expressbuzz.com/edition/story.aspx?Title=Mayawati+in+reverse+gear?&artid=edOY4x%7C%7CS1E=&SectionID=RRQemgLywPI=&MainSectionID=RRQemgLywPI=&SectionName=XQcp6iFoWTvPHj2dDBzTNA==

Mayawati in reverse gear?


The New Indian ExpressFirst Published : 31 Mar 2010 11:42:00 PM
ISTLast Updated : 31 Mar 2010 12:11:16 AM IST

Inscrutable are the ways of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati but
there is a method in the way she has, of late, been treating Satish
Chandra Mishra, who was at one time considered the second most
powerful person in the Bahujan Samaj Party. A lawyer, he came into the
good books of Mayawati when he successfully pleaded for her in a
defection case. He was soon made a party general secretary in which
capacity he organised hundreds of Brahmin sammelans all over the
state. Considered the architect of the Dalit-Brahmin-Rajput social
engineering, he played a major role in the distribution of tickets in
the 1997 Assembly elections — Brahmins and Rajputs got more tickets
than the Dalits. It paid dividends when, for the first time, the BSP
won an absolute majority in the state and formed a government. And
when a State Advisory Council was constituted and Mishra was given its
responsibility, he emerged in popular perception as the power behind
the Mayawati throne. All this gave the impression that the
Bahujan-Brahmin-Kshatriya combination was here to stay and there was
no going back to Manuwadi-bashing days. Alas, the results of the 2009
Lok Sabha elections opened Mayawati's eyes to the gradual erosion in
the Dalit support base of the BSP. Muslims, too, were not enamoured of
the growing upper caste clout as represented by Mishra.


With that came crashing down Mayawati's dream of playing the role of a
king-maker, if not the queen herself, in national politics. She had
difficulty in reconciling herself to the fact that the BSP got only 20
seats, against Congress' 21. Since then she has been asserting the
Dalit character of the government and the party by appointing Dalit
officials to key posts and stating unambiguously that her successor
would be a Dalit. That Mishra's usefulness was over was apparent when
the SAC stopped functioning. Finally, when he was asked to look after
the legal affairs of the party, it signalled the end of what his
detractors call 'Mishra raj' in the BSP. For all his legal and
administrative acumen, he does not have an independent political base
in the state to even think of raising a banner of revolt against
Mayawati. For the time being, he can only wait for the day when the
chief minister realises that the BSP needs upper caste votes to make
it a clear winner. Till then Satish Chandra Mishra can only sulk on
the sidelines.


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[ZESTCaste] Teacher evicts Dalit student from house; apologises after protests

 

http://www.nepalnews.com/main/index.php/news-archive/2-political/5077-teacher-evicts-dalit-student-from-house-apologises-after-protests.html

Teacher evicts Dalit student from house; apologises after protests
Wednesday, 31 March 2010 01:52

A teacher in Lamjung evicted a student staying in his house on rent
after learning about the student's Dalit identity, reports say.

Krishna Prasad Adhikari, a teacher of Shanti Sadan Primary School in
Okhlepani, Duradanda of Lamjung, evicted Suk Bahadur Bishwakarma, a
student of Sewa Sadan Secondary School, Purankot.

Bishwakarma was staying at Adhikari's house along with his friends to
take the ongoing SLC exams. His exam centre was at Sarbodaya Higher
Secondary School, where Adhikari was deployed as invigilator for the
SLC exams.

After learning about Bishwakarma's identity at the exam centre,
Adhikari forced him out of his house.

The local Dalit community and social activists protested against the
incident and forced Adhikari to apologise before the evicted student
in public.

He has also been suspended from invigilation at the exam centre. The
protesting Dalit community have demanded the teacher be suspended from
his job and booked under the charge of public offence.

Bishwakarma, who had gone back to his house after eviction, has been
placed at another local Chyam Bahadur Bishwakarma, also a member of
the Dalit community, by his family and the school management
committee.

Although, discriminating based on caste is punishable by law in Nepal,
casteism still largely prevails in Nepal. Police and the local
administration in Lamjung has not shown any interest in taking action
against Adhikari. nepalnews.com

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[ZESTCaste] Waiting for spring

http://www.himalmag.com/Waiting-for-spring_nw4434.html

Waiting for spring

April 2010
By: Nirupama Dutt


The emergence of a Dalit identity in Punjab is a recent development,
spurred in part by the failure of Sikhism to abandon caste
discrimination as it initially averred to do.

For us trees do not bear fruits
For us flowers do not bloom
For us there is no Spring
For us there is no Revolution …
– Lal Singh Dil


Poet for the revolution: Sant Ram Udasi in Barnala, c 1970.
These are lines from the last poem of Lal Singh Dil, hailed as the
foremost revolutionary poet of Punjab. He passed away in 2007. The
despondent note of the poem is both surprising and telling, for a poet
who had once declared that the song and dance in his heart would not
die, no matter how dire the circumstance. It took Dil a lifetime to
discover this sad yet provocative truth, against the backdrop of the
complexities of caste in Punjab. Yet centuries before Dil's birth, the
same frustration with caste was intricately linked to the emergence of
the Sikh religion.

When Sikhism came into being during the 15th century, it was primarily
as a protest against the caste system, in the same manner that leftist
and other progressive movements came into being in reaction to the
same malaise in modern times. In this context, the road to the Dalit
identity has been a long one in Punjab, largely because such an
identification was submerged in the Sikh identity, with much pride and
celebration in the earliest known Dalit writings of the 17th century.
The celebratory mood was one of overcoming the ills of caste-ridden
society. In time, however, the tone saddened, as a religion that had
started out to reform Hinduism fell prey to the same ills of
caste-ridden social hierarchy.

An important point to take away from this historical evolution is that
the contribution of those from the 'low' castes has never been
wanting, as far as struggle and movements for social justice go. The
story that was the turning point for the lower castes in Punjab was
that of Jaita, a follower of Guru Gobind Singh. Jaita played a
significant role in bringing the severed head of Guru Tegh Bahadur,
the ninth guru of Sikhism, back to Anandpur Sahib in Punjab, after he
was executed by Aurangzeb in Delhi in 1675. Seeing this act of bravery
and sentiment, Guru Gobind Singh adopted Jaita as his son. As such, a
popular rhyme in Punjab goes, "Ranghreta guru da beta" (The scavenger
is son of the guru), as Jaita belonged to the community of ranghrets,
scavengers, who had converted to Sikhism. Bhai Jaita, who died
fighting the last battle for the guru in 1705, was the first known
Dalit poet of Punjab. As Raj Kumar Hans, a professor of history, has
pointed out:

In its true egalitarian spirit, Sikhism had succeeded in integrating
the lowliest of the low, the former untouchables, the dalits, into its
folds … The way Bhai Jaita was integrated not only in Sikh religion
but also in the family of Guru Gobind Singh, it is understandable that
any other identity would have been meaningless to him.

Thus Bhai Jaita cries out in thanksgiving, "O! Jaite the saviour Guru
has saved the ranghretas/ The pure Guru has made us his sons."

Disowned ranghreta
Thereafter, the second known Dalit writer of Punjab was Peero Preman
(1830-72). Peero had earlier been a Muslim courtesan named Ayesha, and
later joined the Gulabdasia sect and inherited sainthood from her
mentor, Gulab Das. Ditt Singh Giani (1852-1901), another Dalit writer,
also made significant contributions to Punjabi literature,
particularly in terms of defining Sikh thought. He was also
founder-editor of a newspaper, Khalsa Akhbar, in Lahore. Similarly,
Sadhu Daya Singh Arif, also a Dalit, (1894-1946) was a theologist and
writer who enjoyed great popularity.

Before we step into modern times, it is important to note the reasons
for Dalits moving out of the Sikh fold. To begin with, Punjab has a
higher percentage of Dalits than any other state in modern-day India,
making up almost 30 percent of the population. However, this community
owns just 2.3 percent of the cultivated agricultural land in the
state. Some 70 percent of Sikhs live in rural Punjab, as did a major
chunk of the Dalits who worked as labourers in the fields before they
moved to other jobs, making way for migrant labour to take their
place. The relationship between the Jat landlords and their landless
labourers was a complex one. The lower castes worked with the
upper-caste Jats and, although the 'otherness' was the accepted order,
there were instances of close bonding and even addressing elders as
uncle (chacha or taya) or aunt (bhua, masi). The experience and skills
of the elders were respected; tilling of the land was a shared task,
and the relative well-being of everyone depended on it. This is
articulated best in the lines of the celebrated Dalit revolutionary
poet, Sant Ram Udasi: "The farmer embraces the labourer and weeps/
Water flows from the stacks of ruined crops." The lower castes took on
the caste name of their masters, and it was natural that there were
amorous ties. Yet the clear-cut caste divide was always there – as
were separate wells for drinking water, and separate cremation
grounds.

While Sikhism did not, in principle, recognise caste, in practice it
carried Hindu caste prejudices – hierarchies that went into
Christianity and Islam as well, when conversions took place. In the
customary scheme of working relationships, outcastes such as Mazhabi
(chura or sweeper Sikhs), Ramdasi (chamar or leatherworker Sikhs),
Balmiki, Ravidasi, Musalli, Teli, Mochi and others were not allowed to
own land, but were allowed to build temporary structures on the
shamlat, or village common land. How Dalits continue, even today, to
be the wretched of the earth can be seen in the village of Badal, home
to the ruling family of Punjab. Against plush structures of the Badal
clan, fancy rest houses and more, the Dalits live in filth and squalor
on the western side of the village – a common practice, lest the rays
of the sun be 'polluted' before reaching the upper-caste homes. None
have the foresight, compassion and love of the Tenth Guru to be able
to see the outcaste ranghretas as their own.

It is against this backdrop that contemporary Dalit writing emerged.
The early Dalit writers of modern times were distinctly leftwing in
their approach, with a strong belief in an equal social order. And
with this began the emergence of Dalit consciousness. The first poet
to voice these concerns was Gurdas Ram Alam (1912-89). Born in a poor
Dalit family in Bundala village in Jalandhar District, Alam sang about
the deprived and oppressed-caste communities with a hopeful and
celebratory note for the future:

Oh! The untouchable, open your eyes and see
I have a prescription for thee
Strength, unity and education will set you free.

Direct descendants of Alam's creed were Sant Ram Udasi (1939-86) and
Lal Singh Dil (1943-2007), revolutionary poets whose work served as
inspiration for the Naxalite uprisings of the 1960s. If Udasi calls
out, "Smile Forever O' Sun on the Hutments of the Workers", Dil sees
joy in the dance of the little children as their mother cooks the
evening meal:

When the labourer woman
Roasts her heart on the tawa
The moon laughs from behind the tree
The father amuses the younger one
Making music with bowl and plate
The older one tinkles the bells
Tied to his waist and he dances
These songs do not die
nor either the dance in the heart …

Celebration and pride are a part of the Dalit writing of Punjab, even
as irony, loss and deprivation are never absent.

In this context, the past decade has also seen the emergence of the
autobiography, including those of Dil, Madhopuri, Prem Gorkhi and
Attarjit. The latter two are accomplished short-fiction writers, and
have explored the Dalit consciousness through their reality. These
stories bring to the fore many truths we wish to ignore. In addition,
Gorkhi and Attarjit, Des Raj Kali, Bhagwant Rasoolpuri, Mohal Lal
Phillauria and Nachhatar are among other contemporary fiction writers
exploring the Dalit consciousness. For instance, Attarjit, in his
celebrated story "Thuan" (Scorpion), studies the caste divide from a
different angle. The low-caste worker, who once worked as a daily-wage
earner in Jat fields, is now an educated, prosperous lawyer who lives
in the city, and has taken on an urban, upper-caste second name. In
the wake of an agricultural crisis, a son of the Jats is forced to do
construction labour at the former's house. The caste prejudice now
flares up in reverse, shattering two worlds.

At present, Dalit and women's writing are occupying centre stage in
the world of Punjabi letters, motivated as they are by the struggle
against oppression. This is because what is counted as 'mainstream'
literature is related neither to struggle nor social justice. Bhagwant
Rasoolpuri, in his brilliant story "Kasoorwar" (Sinful), raises the
issue of the Dalit woman. This is the rambling memoirs of an old
woman, one who knows that keeping body and soul together is not for
the wretched, and that a woman is damned not only by the other but
also by her kin.

'No caste' in Pakistan
Across the border, meanwhile, in the context of Pakistani Punjab,
there is ample evidence of Dalit identity submerging itself in the
Muslim one. Sadly, however, the Hindu malaise of the caste system was
transferred even to Islam, and caste stratification can today be found
in Pakistan. Indeed, the titles used in the two Punjabs for Dalits who
were taken into the folds of Sikhism and Islam – mazhabi (one who has
a religion) is used for the Dalit who embraced Sikhism, while and
musalli (one who offers prayers) for those who have embraced Islam –
are technically positive, but are generally used offensively. This
implies that a change of name need not necessarily be accompanied with
a change of attitude.

In contrast to the situation in Indian Punjab, Pakistan does not have
Dalit writing as such, unlike the voluminous writing on the Dalits in
India, especially from the left. In East Punjab, in his classic novel
Marhi da Diva, Gurdial Singh immortalised Jagsir – the landless
protagonist who toils and dies unsung but for the wife of the
upper-caste Jat, who goes and lights a lamp on his humble tomb, as
they shared unexpressed love for each other; and in West Punjab,
meanwhile, Major Ishaq Mohammad, founding president of the Mazdoor
Kissan Party (MKP) and a revolutionary thinker, poet, playwright, told
the unhappy tale in his very popular play called Musalli. Ishaq
Mohammad, the son of a peasant, had a great aptitude for learning, and
secured scholarships all the way through his enrolment at MAO College
in Amritsar, where Faiz Ahmed Faiz was among his teachers. His studies
were interrupted only by the onset of World War II and, like Faiz,
Ishaq decided to join the British Indian Army to oppose the Nazi
invasion of the Soviet Union. Later, both Faiz and Ishaq were
implicated in the attempted coup of 1951, better known as the
Rawalpindi Conspiracy, and imprisoned. It was in jail that Ishaq wrote
Musalli, which chronicled the deeply rooted apartheid in Punjabi
society – a fact that many Pakistanis are loath to admit, because they
believe that Muslims cannot practice caste-like discrimination.

Yet writers in Pakistan admit that caste prejudice is alive and
kicking, living on in rules regarding kitchen utensils and those
preventing inter-marriages. The word chura (sweeper), for instance,
ranks among one of the most common abuses. Even Mohammad Iqbal, the
great reformist poet, lamented in one of his couplets:

Yun tau syed bhi ho, mirza bhi ho, afghan bhi ho
Tum sabhi kuch ho, batao tau mussalman bhi ho

You are syeds, mirzas and Afghans
You are everything but Muslims.


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