Most of us who have been raised in metropolitan cities that entertains a certain amount of progressive (humane) thinking, aren't familiar with the grass root realities of the mural state of India. It's a hard wrenched fact and most of my education about India has been the past few years when I have travelled all over North India and met some fascinating people and heard some fascinating stories, and read some scholarly books. The problems of the city as we know it, are totally different from the problems of the rural places. But certain norms of life that may seem draconian to our uber-intellectual city dwellers are in fact the glorified ways of the rural Indian life that is yet to think for itself. The urban elite (like me) are often disrespectful of what the lower classes (rural India?) hold dear to them.
"I make statements like God doesn't exist, and our domestic help who often chats up with my mother looks at me with big eyes and wonders when god's wrath is going to strike me down."
My friend in Delhi points me out that whenever I write fiction I am a twenty something upper middle class elite Bengali youth- this whole label has its own repercussions, in other words, what she means perhaps is that being in an elitist (so called) progressive society from the far east I hardly acknowledge the realities that plague the heart of the mainland. My friend in criticizing my singular voice of the rebel writer and is trying to help me in choosing different voices that may improve and bring some variety in my fictions.
I must listen to the multitude voices of the many - the one of the oppressed Dalit farmer, the one of the dowry seeking IAS officer, the one of the over protective 'Bhaiya' who would not let their sisters mix with the boys, the casteist-patriarchal husband and so on. And sadly, the realities of the Indian State aren't limited to its northern frontiers, it’s pervasive as a dormant virus lurking beneath the putrid skin with all its’ stealth.
My friend, when she accuses me of my indifference towards the mass-thought of the common men, is actually pretty apt in saying so. I mostly deny myself the realities of the world in which I live in. I worry about love- day and night. I don’t think about God or religions either, and I worship Salman Rushdie. From my own juvenile understandings I have known only two social problems that India faces most- one of caste-ism and the other of religions. I am also of the opinion, “Abolish all the religions,” only after the word poor has lost its’ use.
Caste-ism ( one must keep in mind that it transcends religious boundaries too) is one of India's first and foremost problem, and it's a sad state that even in so called elite institutions like IIT (of which I have been a part for the past few years) one finds people who would vehemently defend the fact that,
"Yaar lower caste people are like that only. They should be treated like that
yaar, nahi toh , they will take advantage of you."
In India obviously people respect IITans and not everybody (trust me they are a bunch of very intelligent and mostly forward people) would resort to such an opinion but then there are always exceptions and one must keep in mind that it only takes one such example to tarnish the reputation of a brand. I am drifting off here a bit, ain't I?
If such an opinion is given adequate energy and channels, it may even become a popular thought. I, being from the far-east and always being taught about socialist formulas, have no idea about the petty problems of caste-ism that plagues India. This is where my problem lies. In my day to day life while interacting with these people, I deny the existence of caste and to me and my folks, I am very right. We have long repudiated the caste in our minds. A more apt thing to say, in our socialist dreams of comrade Lenin, we hardly acknowledge the existence of such an evil. Poor is just poor and we need socialism to eradicate the evils of poverty.
But then caste-ism is at large and the funny thing is it transcends economic boundaries. How do I make them understand caste-ism is wrong, from my own point of view who is thinking on a different plane altogether?
The elitist India tries to solve such problems (do they?) with the help of their scholarly allegories, hoping symbolisms and progressive thought with the help of technical and scholarly terms would trickle down to the lower strata, but this hardly happens. It's only for those coterie of intellectual masturbation.
(Am I being too optimistic in saying that they actually hope to solve problems or they just do it for the sake of their own scholarly pursuits, just wondering)
One needs the public to understand what they are doing and saying and how it will help them. I am sure many people with good intentions are out there doing so. I am just a mere observer in all of this, with faulty words that would hardly strike you.
I remember while I was stationed at one of the ashrams in Rajasthan a few years back, a kid had come up to me with manifold curiosity in his eyes. After a hearty conversation, he had disappointed me with the usual rhetoric of asking me about what my caste was- he was apparently a Brahmin. Frankly, I had no idea about my caste. I still don’t for that matter. Here lies the gulf between cultures and how we are raised and how some (irrelevant) things are so dear to some people.
“Why do you call yourself a Brahmin?” I asked
“II am a son of a Brahmin.” He replied.
I read this book on Hindu mythology (written by an Indian, since westerners can't be trusted) where it was written that castes was formed from the body parts of a certain God or someone, if my memory serves me. The Brahmin was the mouth, arms was the Kshatriya, thighs the Vaishya, and feet the Shudra.
Any person with a keen eye would notice the socialist order in such a stratification. It was an amazing feat if one comes to think of it. Our Indian society was really advanced in ancient days and castes were formed for societal order. Now yesterdays’ miracles become the troubles for tomorrow, and kitschy superheroes do not wake up anymore to save the world. It’s the way of the world.
A friend of mine took up this anatomical idea of the origin of castes and wrote a piece that was circulated in certain Indian villages. It was of the preachy theme that ' how if one cuts off the legs the head suffers'. It didn't do much good (majority people were illiterate too, a better form would have been to go and show them a movie with Salman Khan in it). Another reason could be that people in power, higher in the food chain wants to remain so, as long as they can, before their time runs out and the entire status quo is altered.
So when I deny the existence of caste-ism altogether and take the ideal route- I feel happy in my own way, I do not need to mix and churn out and save the world from itself by petty socio specific formulas in my writings. I take a defeatist position, but whatever I do, I try to treat a human as a human, and on some worse days I treat dogs as human, since I am of the opinion that dogs are better than humans. I only write about letters and love, and longing and parting. Do hell with the masses.
I would like to end by saying that much to the utter dismay of our literary pundits India needs 'Chetan Bhagats' who would at least tell the people that (I agree his books aren’t good enough.)
“Do not vote for your own caste, and find love in shaadi dot com”.
These are very important positions to take up in a society like India, where people like me with all their allegories, abstractions and symbolisms won’t be able to connect to the majority of the vast multitude of people who in their simple lives complicate the larger order.
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