From: Vidya Bhushan Rawat <vbrawat@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Jul 1, 2011 at 2:45 PM
Subject: Why Manu Excites our academic Institutions ?
To:
A certificate course in racism
By Vidya Bhushan Rawat
Several years ago, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, in New
Delhi became the heart of 'agitation' against discrimination in
government services. The Hindu students of medical sciences there were
perturbed as why the shudras and ati shudras were getting into this
institution which was the sole preserve of the high caste Hindus. The
media gave lot of stories of them and the 'poor' doctors forgot their
basic duty of looking after the patience. Instead they were raising
slogan for 'equality' and started an organisation called 'Youth for
Equality'. Interestingly, these youth for equality do not know the
meaning of equality. Equality for them is only possible when we
maintain the varna dharma which is based on 'purity' of 'soul' and
'merit' of human being. To strengthen their point they say that they
are not against 'poor'. That the basis of reservation should be
'economic' and not ' caste'. Unfortunately, the basis of reservation
is the social identity of the person and not economic but even for a
moment we accept their argument even then it will go to the same
people who are getting due to their caste.
Anyway, this 'youth of equality' was nothing but a tool to maintain
the status quo ante and suppress the voices of the Dalits and OBCs.
Unfortunately, OBCs are unable to even fight their battle so Dalits
took up the lead and also became target of insinuation by the caste
forces. OBCs reserved their energy to hit the Dalits in the villages
which they are quite expert in and providing fodder to Hindutva's
street thugs against Muslims.
The issue of reservation in India has always been burning heart of our
friends for years. Unfortunately, none of them raise their voice
against the reservation for Brahmins who control our temples and
ashrams and which is absolutely birth based, as well as reservation
for manual scavengers who hail from a particular community. We still
have not been able to eliminate the manual scavenging. Those champions
of equality actually usually protest in the street sweeping and
polishing shoes which means that if they are not there in the AIIMS,
they would have to do such work which is not meant for them. Our
students feel it the same way. That cleaning, sweeping, scavenging,
farming are not their work. It is the duty for those which is
prescribed by Lord Manu.
Therefore none should be surprised what IIT Delhi is proposing in
terms of 'educating' the Dalit students. It is simply following what
AIIMS student started several years back. We all know its director
Indrasen has been notoriously writing against reservation and has
filed a case in the Supreme Court related to OBC quota.
Indian Institute of Technology is a brand name world over for high
quality technical education. Unfortunately, these institutions
surviving on the extraordinary budget of the government do not provide
people who have not only quality and ability but also a commitment to
India. Today, these institutions have become den of the forces who
look down upon anything which reflect diversity of India and fair
play. The issue of reservations of seats for Scheduled Castes and
other groups like the Scheduled Tribe and OBCs has been powerfully
resisted by the IITians of different hues in the name of merit.
One can not ignore the fact that merit is important in our life but
the basic point is how do you estimate merit? Is there any criterion
which can judge merit in India which suffers from Dronacharya syndrome
and where academics are turning worst than the former Guru of
Mahabharata who created all kind of obstacles for Eklavya, a tribal
boy, to become numerouno archer of the world? One does not need to
repeat this mythological story as how Dronacharya in his attempt to
foil the hard work of Eklavya used his devotion to him as a tool to
promote his favourite Arjuna as the number one archer of the world,
asked Eklavya to offer him his thumb. So, one can not believe in such
teachers for evaluating the merit of those who they feel suffer from
inferiority. These are the academics who have not been able to clean
their mind and heart.
The issue of reservation has to be seen in wider context of respecting
diversity of communities at all the level of our academic institutions
and governance structure. Unfortunately, it seems, that the caste
Hindus feel that merit and nationalism is their domain and therefore
they have got the fundamental right to rule and lord over the country.
It is an unfortunate situation. Definitely one of the issue is that
every one want to be part of these institutions and hence government
must increase the strength also but that apart a diverse country like
India can not survive if our places of learning do not have space for
the vast variety of ethnic, linguistic, religious and caste groups in
these institutions. In the absence of the presence of these groups, we
only create stereotypes about them.
It is more than shocking to hear the circular of IIT Delhi for the
Dalit-OBC students to learn etiquettes and manners. What does it mean?
Do the students hailing from these categories suffer from cultural
inadequacies? Can we really call it like that? What are the learned
professors of our IITs going to teach to these students? Why are such
classes necessary for the Dalits, tribal and OBCs only? Why the
University and these 'meritorious' institutions not offer these
classes of manners and etiquettes for the so-called upper caste Hindus
too.
IITs and other such institutions have been domain of caste based
discrimination in India. The Dalit students and the students from OBC
community face discrimination at every phase right from their
admission till evaluation. The female students opting for Ph.Ds often
face the sexual harassment. Many of these students were compelled to
commit suicide. The dirt in India's academic world need to be cleaned
and it is only possible with diverse participation these institutions.
Today, these institutions have high level of nepotism and corruption
which is not exposed so far. The links matter a lot in India and
particularly in bureaucracy and academics. Better assignment, good
postings and wonderful evaluation are hallmark of our wonder world. In
such a scenario when these institutions want special training to learn
etiquette for the Dalits and OBCs then we have to seriously think of
the merit of these teachers and other academic staff. It clearly
envisage that the Dalit and others who are not really caste Hindus
suffer from lack of etiquettes and hence need to be 'educated' for
that too. Should we call it a new 'sansrktisation' process where
students may be asked to condemn themselves rather than questioning
the wrong?
Indians grow in their caste and have never allowed developing linkages
and friendship beyond their caste. The beyond caste friendship is just
due to some compulsion otherwise we would not be happy in exploring
that. When you grow up in hearing things about the glories of your
caste and contempt of others, you only develop a false notion about
others. Our academic institutions actually suffer from that as they
were educating just one kind of people there. They should understand
that thousands of Dalit OBC students are now challenging the status
quo and coming up with flying colors. If they do not know, I would
like to emphasize that 10 years down the line, the maximum competition
and merit would come from the Dalit students. So the education sector
is witnessing the biggest change and that is the participation of
Dalit-OBC-tribal students and Universities, colleges and other
academic institutions need to understand that. It is not scenario of
1980s when they would say that in the absence of 'eligible' students
they recruited the 'others'. Today, there is no dearth of students
from these communities who have come up and performed much better than
others. Hence the institutions have to prepare them to face new
realities and not re-impose their outdated caste mind on the young
mind. They do not realize that they are living in 21st century and for
this they need 21st century ideas. On the one side we want to claim
that we have highly talented young minds coming from these
'prestigious' institutions but the darker side is that they are
churning pathetic caste mindsets who have nothing to with India and
mostly who are looking for greener pastures.
IITs and academics should come out of their isolated megalomaniac
world and face the realities of the 21st century where their act may
be pursued as violation of fundamental rights of individuals. They
need to learn from the world that there are UN Declaration of human
rights and India is signatory to all this. They should also know the
political changes in the country. These teachers are a shame to India
who suffers from Dronacharya syndrome. In today's world Dronacharya
would not only have been suspended from the job but would have faced
prosecution in the court of the law. One sincerely hope that the
decision of Delhi IIT and any other institution will be taken back
otherwise it will amount to racial and caste based discrimination and
the director or Vice chancellor of such institutions must be
prosecuted for that.
Those champions of 'merit' who oppose reservation for Dalits and OBCs
keep mum on when their friends buy seats in the technical
institutions. They pay money and get admission abroad too. None of
them ever raised a slogan against private colleges which levy huge
capitation fees or when they can buy ticket for anything by just
paying a few bucks extra.
Issue of merit is often repeated and Dalit-OBC-Muslim question can not
be related to that. It is the question of share in power structure. If
the government is so afraid, then we will need more AMUs, more Jamias
and more the likes that for the Dalits and OBCs too. If the caste
based discrimination against them continue, there is nothing wrong in
demanding special universities for each segments of our society.
We have seen how the students are bringing fictitious certificates of
different categories to get admission in the university and we have
plenty of information related to that in the past also. The only
point, I wish to make is that the student do not know what to do for
the admission. It is there 'meritorious' teachers who must have told
them to get these fake certificates. What could be the 'merit' of
these goons who are ready throw away lakhs of rupees to get admission
into these 'prestigious' colleges.
It would be better to rename AIIMS as All India Institute of Manuwadi
Studies which actually would really reflect the nature of the
institution. Already, we have the statue of Manu inside the campus of
Jaipur High Court and nobody dare to remove that. It would be good to
install these statues at other places such as IITs and AIIMS so that
people world over could know what is the importance of this man Manu.
In fact, government of India, should also help strengthen Manuwad all
over the country by printing original Manu smriti in all the languages
of India so that people could know why Manu excites so much to our
academic institutions and IITs.
--
Vidya Bhushan Rawat
Visit my blog at
www.manukhsi.blogspot.com
For information on the issues, movements and priorities of Scavenger
community in India please log on to
www.swachchakar.blogspot.com
For information on civil society initiatives on Muslims in UP please log on to
www.rehnumaa.blogspot.com
Follow me on twitter at freetohumanity
Skype at vbrawat
For Social action, land rights, right to food and hunger issues
support Social Development Foundation at www.thesdf.org
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