National Geographic is not renowned for being an activist magazine.
But NG achieved a hard-hitting article describing the predicament of India's untouchables.
A few choice quotes from the 7-page article
[
ngm.nationalgeographic.com]
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Bairwa decided to bathe in the village pond, off-limits to Untouchables. That evening a mob surrounded his house and threatened to kill him. Bairwa filed reports with the police and a human rights organization. Now he never travels alone for fear of attack. Bairwa expects that because of his legal challenge the pond will eventually become open to all castes. In the meantime he fights quietly and lives the only way he can. "I am clean. I don't smoke or drink or eat meat. I work hard. I do everything right. Why am I Untouchable?"
Because he was born one. One hundred sixty million Indians serve this life sentence.
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But for all the laws and regulations on the books, the hard heart of caste remains unmoved. There are 160 million Untouchables in India—a country that trumpets itself as a model for developing nations: the world's most populous democracy, a modern power outfitted with software industries, communication satellites, and plants for making nuclear energy and nuclear bombs. During the winter I spent in India, hardly a day passed that I didn't hear or read of acid thrown in a boy's face, or a wife raped in front of her husband, or some other act whose provocation was simply that an Untouchable didn't know his or her place.
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The Hindu caste system has its own instruction manual. The Laws of Manu, compiled at least 2,000 years ago by Brahman priests, prescribes for each varna what to eat, whom to marry, how to earn money, when to fight, how to keep clean, whom to avoid. "Manu is engraved inside every Hindu," said Umashankar Tripathy, a Brahman priest I met in Varanasi, the revered pilgrimage city located on the banks of the Ganges River. Tripathy sat cross-legged on a straw mat in the temple where he teaches. He wore the traditional dhoti, a long loincloth with a tunic buttoned over it. His clothes were spotless, his hands as soft as fine leather gloves.
Tripathy hews to the words of Manu. He explained that as a Brahman he must uphold the code of purity, the basis for dividing society from top to bottom. "I do not eat meat or drink alcohol. I will not eat vegetables like ginger or onion that are grown in the ground. My mind should be as clean as my clothes."
(Corboy: The Hare Krishnas, the sect in which Butler got his training, also
utlise the Law of Manu. [
www.google.com])
A proper Brahman should never come in contact with an Untouchable, Tripathy instructed. "A Brahman wouldn't even touch the feet of Gandhi," he said, referring to the deified leader of India's independence. "Gandhi was a Vaisya; Brahmans are superior."
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To identify potential activists in Untouchable villages, Macwan has a simple test: "I look for anger." What ignites the anger is usually an act of violence, witnessing it or suffering it. In recent years the reported cases of caste-based violence against Untouchables have risen as much as 25 to 30 percent in states like Bihar and Tamil Nadu, where large Untouchable populations live. Community activists see the surge in violence as a direct response to the new assertiveness of Untouchables. They also contend that the official numbers fail to represent the true extent of the violence, since only a small fraction of the crimes against Untouchables are reported, and fewer are investigated by the police.
There was anger—along with fear and helplessness—in the faces of the crime victims I met. In a farm shed in Rajasthan, where he was hiding with his family, Laxman Singh described how friends and relatives of the village council president beat him one night with stones and iron rods and "left me for dead." He lost both legs to gangrene after lying untreated on a hospital floor for three days. His offense: filing a complaint with police after being denied wages for construction work he did on the council president's home.
This is very different from the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence -- the secular mission statement for the
United States of America.
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When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
This was written by a man who profited from owning slaves and exacting every bit of effort from them.
And today, thanks to the USA remaining an open society, we are capable of recognizing that Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, was no infallible God, no saint, not even an avatar, but a fallible human being.
Jefferson failed to live up to the full implications of the Declaration of Independence.
It remains for us to answer that challenge.
And for us to choose elected officials who, when asked to choose, will be guided by Declaration of Independence -- not the documents which justify the Hindu caste system.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/05/2015 06:40AM by corboy.