The Caste system extended

The Caste system extended

Several years back in Chicago I met an engineer working for an American MNC. He had recently immigrated to USA from Poland. During conversation he mentioned the Indian caste system. I told him I was surprised he knew of it. He explained that it was a part of their social studies text in school. It was one of the only two specific things he knew about India. The other was the Taj Mahal. In retrospect, I should not have been surprised at all. The Indian (or Hindu) caste system is a uniquely Indian tragedy, and considering the size of the Indian population it is a huge tragedy. It is unique and large enough to have found its way into a textbook in Poland.

Now as if our historical sins were not enough, we often extend this caste system to other spheres of life. I will cite some examples from working life.

• In India, nursing is regarded as a very low end profession. The social distance between a doctor and a nurse is huge, and a nurse can rarely break out of this “caste” and be accepted a social equal to doctors. In fact a few months back, following a controversy in the salary fixed by the Pay-commission for doctors and nurses in the Armed forces , some top brass of the Army made a rather stupid statement. In effect in order to defend a higher salary for army doctors, he insulted the army nurses. See the link below for more details (copy and paste to your browser window)

http://www.outlookindia.com/rantsmag.asp?fodname=20081027&fname=Army+chiefs+letters+(F)&sid=1

• The same “class” distinction applies in the areas of technical professions. After school (10+2) one can get into an engineering college and get a B Tech/ B E degree in 4 years. Or after 10th standard one can get into a polytechnic and get a Diploma in engineering in 3 years. Now these diploma holders, no matter how hard they work and how smart they are, forever remain second class citizens. The Indian work environment will RARELY lets them forget their origins.
• And here is one many of you will identify with. You are in an elevator that is going up (or down). It stops at a floor that is not your destination. The door opens and you see one or more housekeeping staff wanting to get in. Chances are they won’t get in and wait for the next one. There is no policy that housekeeping staff should not enter the elevator when regular employees are inside, but dig deeper and you will find that someone (usually their supervisor) has told them that that is what is expected of them.
• Once in a while we hear that so-and-so working in USA/ Australia rose from an office secretary’s position to the Chief Executive. But we never hear this in India. In fact we never hear this even from UK , because the UK has it own very strong “class’ system.

As the caste system has been around for 2000 years in India, none of this is surprising. Old habits die hard, and ancient ones even harder. Only in the last 20 years or so, have wee seen any kind of serious assault, by the government on the caste system. But this has been mostly limited to reservations in jobs and education. It has also generated a certain amount of ill-will among many upper-caste hindus. I think there is also a need for a communications campaign.

Veg or Non-Veg

Veg or Non-Veg

This is another phrase which has been contributed to the English language (as spoken in India) by Indian Airlines. Who can forget the bored air-hostesses of Indian Airlines as they handed out veg/non-veg packets to you ? I always stuck with Non-veg for breakfast and Veg for meals.

Now here are some interesting things about non-vegetarian, shortened to non-veg, and often abbreviated further to NV.

Non-vegetarian is not a word to be found in a standard English dictionary. So while it is widely used in India by Indians, the guys who define “official” English have yet to take note of it. It does not appear in the online versions of Oxford and Chambers dictionaries, nor in the Freeonline dictionary. What official English does have is Vegetarian.

Then again, the  Indian concept of a non-vegetarian is very different from then Western one, in qualitative as well as quantitative terms. Here a non-vegetarian is someone who eats ANY flesh, including fish and fowl. A vegetarian, accordingly is someone who does not eat ANY flesh. This can lead to some funny situations. I have known Indians who when traveling abroad said they were vegetarians and have then been offered fish or chicken as an alternative to beef and pork. Then again there is the issue of quantity. In India if you eat two pieces of chicken in a week , you are non-veg and do you think that’s going to help in Europe where they eat a quarter kilo of meat every day !!

It is widely believed abroad and to an extent in India, that most Indians are vegetarians. This is not at all true. About 65 % of Indians are actually non-veg.. again non-veg being defined in the Indian way. If that looks too high a figure, here is some simple maths. In India 14% of the population is Muslim and 1 % Christian and 3 percent Sikh. All three communities are mostly non-veg. Among Hindus, in the traditional caste system only Brahmins and Vaishyas are vegetarian. Together they constitute no more than 10 % of the Hindu population. So, contrary to popular belief, India is a not a vegetarian majority country. However, given our humongous population, even at 35 percent vegetarians, we have nearly 375 million people who are veg… this is higher than the population of USA, and nearly equal to all of Europe. There is no similarly large group of vegetarians anywhere else in the world.

So where does this Indians-are-vegetarians come from ? From the fact that most of the Indians who travel abroad are from the vegetarian communities. And so strange is this vegetarianism to foreigners, that some people have actually asked me, could people survive without eating meat … to which m answer has always been to cite the elephant.

Since the eating of flesh is linked to caste and hence to religion, it carries some peculiar Indian ideas. So, it’s a sin for a Brahmin to eat meat, but okay for a Kshatriya to do so. One man’s meat is another man’s poi-sin ! And to carry this non-veg as “sin” concept further, we label adult jokes as non-veg.

The M factor

The M factor

Some time back I bumped into this guy,let us call him Mr X, in the lobby of a hotel in Geneva. He was an NRI in the US and was in Geneva on a software project by WIPRO. He was a Kannadiga who had lived in Ahmedabad most of his life. After some time the talk veered to Muslims in India. He was of the firm opinion that most, if not all, of the ills in India could be linked to the M factor…as he preferred to call Indian Muslims, either in order to be politically correct or to ensure that anyone eavesdropping on us would not know what we were talking about. Of course the 2G scam had not then become public, nor the CWG or Swiss Accounts and Adarsh Housing (all of which involved mostly Hindus) or he would have found it difficult to substantiate his stand.

He was not only openly a bigot, he wanted us (me and another younger colleague) to share and participate in his bigotry. But then this is something which I have come across in many NRIs. They seem to have an impression, that “IF SOMETHING IS NOT DONE IMMEDIATELY” hamara Bharat would shortly become the Islamic Republic of Hindustan. He , as usual quoted the higher fertility of the Indian Muslims and the fear of being “SOON OUTNUMBERED”.

So in the lobby of that Geneva hotel Mr X thus exhorted my younger colleague “ You youngsters must DO something” .. what exactly , he did not specify but I have a good idea what he wanted. We listened to him patiently for a while, occasionally refuting his “logic”, but can u make ever straighten a dog’s tail ? After a while I grew impatient and let him have it straight between the eyes. I told him, if he was so concerned why was he sitting in the US and preaching us instead of coming back to India and fighting the battle? Also why was he working for WIPRO, an organization owned by an Indian Muslim? Well that was the end of our interactions. I never saw him again.

While X is probably still in the US and worrying himself sick on the M factor, what’s worrying for me is that I keep coming across many educated middle class/ professional people with the same ideas. Since, in India, saying anything against muslims (or other minorities) in public or private dialogue is politically incorrect , very few people actually do speak ill. So my guess is that the number of people who share Mr X’s views on the M factor is probably significant. And that is worrying.

Now the problem with the M Factor people is that while they blame the muslims for all the ills of India, they have no idea on how to solve the problem. Ask them and they twiddle their thumbs. The BJP , self proclaimed defenders of the hindu faith will repeatedly talk of “minority appeasement” and “pseudo secularism” , but ask them for a solution and they either go into a maun vrata or say something profound like “Muslims should convert to Hinduism”. As if a change in religion of Muslims will make the Indian economy sky-rocket. The latest joker to join the pack is Subramaniam Swamy who said something similarly asinine. And this comes from followers of Hinduism where “Vasudheva Kutiumbakam” is a tenet.

There was a recent TV debate on the Uttar Pradesh Govt giving job reservations to Muslims on the basis of economic criteria. The anchor mentioned that the highest levels of poverty were found among OBC and Muslims. Tarun Vijay, the BJP spokesman was one of the guests. He, predictably said, Muslims cannot be given reservations because in Islam there is no concept of caste. Hence only us (cruel) Hindus who have a caste system can feel righteously justified in giving reservations to Hindu SC/ ST/ OBC. If Mr Tarun had spent as much time on some facts as he does in oiling his hair, he would have come to know that most of the poor Muslims in India were poor OBC/ SC/ ST Hindus who converted from Hindusim to islam… and so great is the influence of the this 2000 year old system that they carried their castes into Islam. (The caste system still thrives among most Christian communities across the country. In Goa one can find Brahmin Christians not mingling with the non-Brahmin Christians) .

My advice to Mr Tarun , and other closet bigots, is to wake up, if not in the interest of the nation, at least in your own interest. The Muslim population in India is too large to be politically ignored and no party can hope to come to power by antagonizing the Muslims. Every time anyone in the Sangh Parivar makes such statements as Mr Tarun, they are shooting themselves in the foot. The BJP has already seen how Nitish Kumar, CM Bihar, kept Narendra Modi away in the last state election in Bihar. Also how Varun Gandhi’s stupidity cost the BJP. Only a moderate Vajpayi could lead the BJP to power. But alas.. kutte’ kid dum kaise’ seeedhi ki jaaye’ ?

So, Mr Tarun, if we see a benefit in bringing our Hindu SC/ ST/ OBC into the mainstream, we should undoubtedly see an even bigger benefit in seeing poor Muslims joining the mainstream. 

PS: This post was written several months back, prior to the UP elections . Subsequently the BJP fared very poorly in the UP state elections . Mayawati blamed it on the muslim vote getting polarised (away from her and in favour of SP/ Mulayam) because , according to her, the BJP hardline of Muslim reservations made the muslims feel insecure.