Pundits, I write about you

"No matter how hard they try, there's no escaping their identity. The merit list displayed on the notice board announces it. This rank is their introduction to upper-caste seniors, during friendly ragging sessions, which could later become an outlet for the frustration of general category students. Like the final-year AIIMS (All India Institute of Medical Sciences) student, who made a reserved category fresher sit on the ground while a brahmin fresher sat on a chair, next to him. The senior asked him to say, "I am from a lower caste," repeatedly, to show him his place in the premises, where he had gained an "easy" entry this year. Hostels then become ghettoes. In AIIMS, quota students chiefly occupy the top two floors of the hostel. An engraved message on the door of one quota student on another floor asked him to "get out of this wing". Final-year student Ajay Kumar Singh still recalls the day he shifted from room number 43, which had leakage problems, to number 45. The whole wing was otherwise occupied by general category students, who promptly put up a board on top of the common carrom board, "Everyone except occupant of room number 45 can play." A reserved category student, who managed to become the gym secretary of AIIMS, resigned from his post as the financial secretary (a general category student) refused to release him funds. "He was chased around and beaten up by the executive heads of the student council," says Sunil Chumber, sub-dean of AIIMS. It is believed that several professors are on the side of the anti-reservation battalion. That's why during the recent agitation, some pro-reservation students hid their faces behind their placards, so that their professors wouldn't spot them. Once their pro-reservation rally was even mistaken by newspapers as an anti-reservation demonstration. Dalit students survive through a hard skin formed after a whole life replete with insults." Times.

Also at AIIMS : "The second student, who resides in Hostel 2, apparently incurred the wrath of his seniors for coming to the rescue of his friend on several occasions. "I have been subjected to mental and physical torture from my very first day in this institute...I was abused on my caste and...in the last few days my room had been locked from outside because of which I was unable to attend classes," his complaint reads. Both students are from the reserved category. Their complaints were submitted on Friday, along with a memorandum signed by 40 students recounting several cases of caste-based abuse in recent times — including the instances of a seventh-semester student "who...was forced to shift after abuses were written on his door." "

A pundit on Desipundit implies in a snide comment here that I write about 'sanskriti and parampara'. I think I write about institutions, formal and informal,..that block/censor/kill anything that questions our 'sanskriti and parampara'. Like Desipundit... which has certified, more than once, that the students (whose sankriti and parampara the newsreport describes), fighting for 'equality' are non-political, non-violent.

The poor, illiterate...oppressor

"In sum, an Upper Caste Hindu in either rural or urban India is significantly more likely to be less illiterate, have lower drop-out rates and therefore be better educated, hold better jobs and have much higher consumtion levels than all other social groups. Given that Upper Caste Hindus are a lot less illiterate and far better educated they are least likely to be poor. Equally importantly, the higher the consumption level the more likely the presence of Upper Caste Hindus. Whereas the these differences are true for both Rural and Urban India, they are far more marked in Urban India where Upper Caste Hindus are over-represented. Finally, in Urban India, STs, Scs and OBCs are far more similar than dissimilar in terms of education attainments and consumption levels.
In Rural India, relatively, it is the SCs that are worst off followed by STs, OBCs and with the Upper Caste Hindus at the top. In Urban India however it is the relative position of OBCs which is the worst, followed by SCs, STs and finally the Upper Caste Hindus at the top. Equally importantly, in Urban India, the differences between STs, SCs and OBCs in terms of relative positioning are very similar and they look a lot more like each other and very different from Upper Caste Hindus."

Read this.

Friends of South Asia

"We believe that affirmative action policies such as reservations play a key role in the empowerment of historically marginalized communities. The reservation policy in India is designed to compensate for centuries of caste-based oppression faced by lower-caste communities, and the subsequent inequalities that have resulted. Hence we are disappointed and saddened by the recent spate of protests by students of elite institutions and urban professionals in India against the Indian federal government's proposed policy to provide reservations for an array of socially and economically disadvantaged communities, officially designated as Other Backward Classes (OBCs). It is furthermore disappointing to note that such sentiment of holding on to privilege and denial of real inequalities in India finds support among Indian Americans in the SF Bay Area. We call upon members of the Indian/Indian American community to reject positions that seek to further upper-caste privilege at the expense of true social justice, and seek solutions that truly benefit ALL of Indian society. "

Came across this press release from the 'Friends of South Asia' very late. I guess not all Indians in distant lands are myopic. Thank you, FoSA.