Recently, we had a beautiful Saturday Sidebar question from our Sidebar editor Eva Fannon, titled, ‘I have a dream’. This is my longer answer to that question:
Martin Luther King spoke about the ghosts of racism. Here, in India, racism exists too – but a different kind of racism. It is called the caste system.
If you do not have a prior knowledge of the caste system, briefly it is like this – there is the concept of a higher (or forward or upper) caste of people comprising of Brahmins and such. The lower (or backward) caste comprises of Dalits and such. The lower castes were economically, educationally and socially underprivileged. And so the Indian government created laws, sixty years ago, which alloted a percentage of college seats and jobs for them so that their standard of living could improve. With that background, now you may read on…
Any Indian, who has been a victim of the caste system, could write volumes about it, but I will restrict myself to giving you just one link here for now to understand this better. It is called Reservation system based on caste. Someone unfamiliar with the caste system would be appalled reading just the first few lines of this wiki entry. But this general wiki link is the most muted version of the actual reality.
Reservations in educational institutions and government jobs for the so-called “underprivileged” do not happen the way they were intended to some sixty years ago, before Indian Independence. Uplifting the social and educational status of people should be the goal of such reservation systems, and it should be based on their financial and economic background rather than on the caste system.
Imagine, there is a law, which actually allows my own classmate–whose father could be my father’s colleague–to get admission into an engineering institution just because he was born into a “backward caste.” You could ignore the fact that one’s parents are wealthy. You could ignore the fact that one’s parents may both be highly educated. You could also ignore the fact that someone else with higher grades might not get the seat because he was born in a “forward caste.” Oh, and did I mention that people born as Christians or Muslims also get a percentage of reservations in government jobs?
I am not here to say what is right or wrong, and I also am not questioning the law. I just feel that people should be judged by what they are and what they are capable of. The reason such laws could have come into existence more than half-a-century ago might be different but times are now different. Equality of all human beings is more the need of the hour.
So, where do I stand? I won’t disclose into which caste I was born into, but I will say that I would like my child to be judged by his grades, not his caste. I would like him to be judged by what he is capable of and not by which community he was born into and, of course, his own intellectual acumen, mental stamina and goodness of heart. Some schools in India don’t let you fill in the details concerning your caste but, when applying for government jobs, you are forced to fill it out, otherwise your application gets rejected.
My husband broke the system in his own personal way. He got a national rank which enabled him to choose whatever path he wanted in whichever institute he wanted. He is of the very few whose IQ permits them to be nonchalant about such things. But his parents were not wealthy.
I do not even want to imagine what would have happened if he was merely an above average student with a normal life. Where would he be now? ‘Nowhere’ is the answer.
He would not have reached his dreams of being a physician. Medical college did you say? Do you know how much a medical college admission costs if you are born into a forward class with just decent grades? 45 lakh rupees says this legitimate news link. It converts to approximately US$90,000. This is just the admission fees, excluding tuition and dorm fees.
As for me, I am not super intelligent. I was more a princess to my father, a pet to my teachers, a best friend to all the girls in my class, and a favourite for Lady Luck to smile upon. I have been lucky with everything in my life. The only reason I didn’t get victimized was out of pure luck. But a lot of my close friends were not so lucky; their dreams shattered when they had to enter college. Affluent people with lesser grades got admissions just because they belonged to lower castes.
Reservation system is not an answer for social inequality. Perhaps it could have been a stepping stone sixty years ago, but now we need to understand the past, present and analyse the future demands.
Reservation is an antithesis to democracy.
This type of reservation can not improve development of the nation. It will only lead to more corruption, more negativity and bitterness to budding adults at the tender ages of nineteen and twenty. And need I really remind anyone how poverty, economic and financial instability, is not an issue only of the backward castes? It is actually present in the forward caste as well. There is government data which you can read here as a wiki entry. (Check the above image 2 of this post.)
India is the largest democracy in the world and shouldn’t the spirit of democracy be retained?
Returning to my perspective as a mother, I cannot say how my son’s life will turn out, but in twelve years he will be ready to get admitted to college. I want him to grow up in an environment where there are equal opportunities. For now, the scenario looks like it needs a massive paradigm shift in the minds of the government, politicians and general populace in order for equality to get reinstated.
Please, people, think beyond gender, caste, community, religion. Think about being united as a single community of PEOPLE!
I pray to God that my son leads a happy, peaceful, successful and grace filled life.
Please share the criteria for gaining admittance to educational institutions in your country. Are there any quota systems for getting government jobs? In view of such things, how would you train your child(ren) to cope with such future situations?
This is an original post to World Moms Blog by The Alchemist, our Indian mother writing from Chennai, India. Her contributions to the World Moms Blog can be found here. She also rambles at The Alchemist’s Blog.
Photo credit to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PovertyLevelFC.jpg and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dharnaeithflag.jpg
Purnima Ramakrishnan
Purnima Ramakrishnan is an UNCA award winning journalist and the recipient of the fellowship in Journalism by International Reporting Project, John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Her International reports from Brazil are found here . She is also the recipient of the BlogHer '13 International Activist Scholarship Award . She is a Senior Editor at World Moms Blog who writes passionately about social and other causes in India. Her parental journey is documented both here at World Moms Blog and also at her personal Blog, The Alchemist's Blog. She can be reached through this page . She also contributes to Huffington Post . Purnima was once a tech-savvy gal who lived in the corporate world of sleek vehicles and their electronics. She has a Master's degree in Electronics Engineering, but after working for 6 years as a Design Engineer, she decided to quit it all to become a Stay-At-Home-Mom to be with her son! This smart mom was born and raised in India, and she has moved to live in coastal India with her husband, who is a physician, and her son who is in primary grade school. She is a practitioner and trainer of Heartfulness Meditation.
Follow Me:
Thank you so much for writing about this issue and the impact that it has. It will be people like you who make that paradigm shift happen! Keep fighting the good fight in India!
Thank you so much. Thats such a kind word to tell.
Hats off Alchemist! About time someone brought this huge issue in India out into the open. So many in India are victimised on the basis of caste alone – in all spheres of life – school, college, jobs, marriage, elections – just about everywhere.
At the time of India’s independence from Great Britain, the upper castes were always at the forefront in every walk of life – be it education or jobs. This was because all the wealth was with the upper castes and they literally terrorised the lower castes into remaining under their thumb. WIth the advent of Independence, law-makers drafted the law that reserved seats for the less-privileged – which proved to be their salvation. With this law, the underprivileged in India forged ahead in education, jobs and everywhere that they were denied access. However, something curious also began to happen – the so called ‘upper’ castes were slowly losing their hold over their lands and wealth and many fell on hard times – something that no one foresaw, least of all the upper castes.
Things slowly went to such a state that the lower-castes amassed huge amounts of wealth, while the upper castes stagnated on the lower end of the economic scale. This, coupled with the law-reforms which literally halved the school and college seats available to the general public (i.e. to people who are not ‘privileged’ enough to be born into a lower caste or tribal family), the land reforms which awarded land to the lower castes by taking them from anyone who owned more than a certain amount of land, the job reservations – all together added to a miserable existence for the upper castes. Most of the upper castes depended on their lands for their wealth. With their lands taken away from them, they had no other option but to be educated. However, this too was denied to them as almost 50% of seats were reserved for the lower castes.
Hence, even if an upper-caste student scored 85% for a public exam, and a lower caste student scored merely 65%, the lower caste student is guaranteed a seat in a good college while paying a few measly rupees as the fees, while the upper caste student may be forced to cough up lakhs (1 lakh = 100,000) of rupees just to gain admission, in addition to the fees – as highlighted in the Alchemist’s article.
I can understand the need for reservation in the 1950s – when the lower castes really needed to be uplifted and this seemed to be the best way to do it. However, today we are in the 21st century, and the need of the hour is economic reservation, i.e., reserving some seats for the financially under-privileged irrespective of their caste and creed. It is the financially backward students in the upper castes and lower castes, who need coddling now, rather than those who are simply born/adopted into a family of a lower caste.
Fire Crystals, thank you for your additional well-outlined explanation of this system. Even after editing this post and being in touch with The Alchemist about it, there were still some areas I didn’t understand. Between your comment and the article, I now understand better what you’re both facing in India.
Glad to know that! I suppose my comment looked like some kind of a politically motivated post, but it is just that when we face such things everyday in India, we tend to make a big fuss of it.
Fire Crystals, Thank you for that comemnt. It puts more light to the article itself. Look at the way things have evolved. This and all other social evils of India have totally unexpected beginnings. Perhaps, we should write more about such things.
I really appreciate your comment!
Well explained, Alchemist. I think as a westerner this helped explain the terms — by the “lower” caste being the more privileged and the “upper” caste being less privileged in India. Here, in the US, it is the “upper” class who are referred to as more wealthy.
It is possible for people in the US to break the income level hierarchies. However, a big obstacle that holds people back is the high cost of healthcare in the US.
But educationally, if you do well in school and are motivated, I truly believe that your teachers want to see you succeed and guide you in the right direction, in my experience. However, the US is large, so I can’t speak for everyone’s experience. We do have governmental and individual university money available for children who can’t afford it, but it can be competitive, or sometimes not enough.
Thank you for shedding light on the Reservation system in India. I hope to read more about these type of issues from our writers around the world!
Jen 🙂
Thank you for the platform Jen. I hope to cover more such topics in the future.
Such private educational loans and aids are present here too. But it is not enough like you have said for the world’s second largest population. And it is far too competitive too.
Alchemist, when I spent three months in India in 1998, I started to get a sense of the caste system. I spent some time working with Mother Teresa’s charity in Calcutta and experienced the abject poverty of the “Untouchables.” I did not know, however, that some Brahmins also had fallen into financial hardship, I assumed that they were all elite, as their caste name suggested.
Through your article, I am gaining a greater understanding of the social strata in India and for this, I thank you. I hope you’ll write more about these sorts of challenges in the future.
Oh yes, poverty exists amongst the dalits (untouchables). But it also exists among the Brahmins and other upper castes as well. Even the government has recognised this fact. The image 2 in this article shows the levels of poverty in brahmins and other higher castes. but after recognising this fact, it would have been just natural on the part of the government to tweak their reforms and laws to cater to financially less endowed people. but that it not happen. The laws still cater to lower castes (both wealthy and poor) rather than the poor (of all castes – lower and upper).
Yes, I have started exploring this possibility of writing about such social evils in India. After all, writing about them is very powerful in such an international forum so that it gets noticed all over the world. And Jen and I are in discussion about various such topics of social injustice in India.
Thanks so much for your comment 🙂
What an absolutely powerful post! I had the pleasure of visiting India briefly through my journey to Nepal and learned a little about the caste system. It amazes me how much racism exists around the world. It is everywhere and there are stories like India’s all around the world. In the US, we have a similar situation in which minorities/people of color are allowed into schools with lesser test scores, grades and backgrounds. The policy has a lot of people for and against it. It can be argued that it has helped pull some disadvantaged people out of poverty but there are still cases where perhaps not the brightest on with the best credentials gets in. Thus it is a tricky, slippery situation.
The India system sounds even trickier. Thanks for shedding light on this policy and I agree one hundred percent in the hope that people are judged more for who they are than what they are. We can only continue to have that dream, even here in the US.
Oh yes, I agree. It is so much trickier. Because there are still so many types of people who are still backward in education and social status. Uplifting everyone based on certain categories gets more and more trickier and the gap keeps widening.
When the brightest is denied admissions because of having fallen into some category, it gets frustrating! I think some type of system should be devised so that the really bright gets to pursue his dreams and the most needy gets help in certain ways.
Ah, so much more trickier!!!
I have lots of Indian connections, but I didn’t understand this aspect of the caste system – that the Brahmins can also be poor and that the “untouchables” can also be rich. So at first I didn’t understand what was wrong with the gov’t reforms. But now I see what you’re saying – let assistance be based on need or merit and not on caste.
Interestingly enough we have a similar situation here in the US (although I think many would not want to admit it). Around the same time as your laws were passes we had our own which said that schools had to accept certain % of minority races in order to get government funding. At the time, it made perfect sense, since it was allowing the underprivileged an opportunity to better themselves through a good education and ultimately a good job. Today, those laws still exists, so you could have students, that were admitted to a university based on their race, even though their grades were not as good as a “white” student. Or even better yet, they may be charged less (through use of government grants) than other, more deserving students. Last year a group of students at Berkley College had a bake sale, where prices were based on race (you can read about it here: http://www.opposingviews.com/i/politics/satirical-bake-sale-will-charge-people-race). They did this to prove the point that it is not fair to use someone’s race to determine the cost (or entrance) for higher education. In my mind, if you remove the race from being on the college entrance forms, you will have a diverse, more competetive and deserving (based on grades and performance) group of students.
I should also mention, that there are students who absolutely deserve the additional help, but that should be based purely on economic need, not race.
This is such an eye opening post and thought provoking. Thank you so much for sharing this. The Balinese people here have caste system as well but it’s not as wide spread or as used much in daily lives.
Agree that you should write more about this and be the voice that represent your country. Great post, Alchemist!
chanakyas introduced caste system in India for administration purpose. They separated the technical professionals like carpenters, goldsmith, shoemakers, accountants etc … as Shiva Devotees and gave them their recognition for maintaining the technology for generations till this decade. Rishis of olden days in india who were gnanis who were bachelors or widowers, who were suppporting the rulers (rajas) and they gave warnings and wishes to kings decisions because they knew the law of nature.In ramayana it is said that rama the vishnu devotee with nama on his head follows the rishi with vibudi on his head worshiping lord shiva in vanavasa. the caste system in India can be broken by giving Scheduled caste benefits to the down trodden people like village farm workers and the city corporation street workers who clean the city dump.the electrician the plumber and the mason should be given the scheduled caste benefits.