India should 'fix its own caste system' before taking the knee against racism

[Maira La]

the problem with removing the caste system is that it is so intrinsically codified in religious scriptures and so essential to Hindu beliefs, the only real way to remove the caste system is to remove Hinduism.

Exactly. Caste system is the backbone of Hinduism. You can take out anything else from Hinduism, yet Hinduism will exist. Muslims and British banned Sati, Temple prostitution, Breast tax etc. but Hinduism survives because the caste system is left intact.

 

[PradoTLC]

So long as the people of this subcontinent blame their neighbours for the ills that affect the common man, leaders such as that are going to keep popping up.

agree 100% .. india's issue.

Pakistani blame where blame is due.

Indian terrorism in Pakistan is a fact. The only country that is actively hostile to CPEC is india which why terror attacks are directed towards China.

Patience, education and awareness seem to be the way forward, alas we are ruled by emotions easily swayed by populists, simply changing the leader is not going to help because the problem has its roots on both sides, not simply one

More applicable on india than Pakistan.

Indian leaders keep talking about war against Pakistan.. thanks to PAF it was silenced for a long time till recently...

 

[Krptonite]

agree 100% .. india's issue.

Pakistani blame where blame is due.

Indian terrorism in Pakistan is a fact. The only country that is actively hostile to CPEC is india which why terror attacks are directed towards China.



More applicable on india than Pakistan.

Indian leaders keep talking about war against Pakistan.. thanks to PAF it was silenced for a long time till recently...

Im not qualified to comment on Pakistani affairs so I won't venture there.

You wanna know a disturbing fact, what you just said is repeated verbatim from the orange brigade here with the obvious changes. So much so that it has percolated to the common man, another commonality found on your side of the fence.

One cannot deny each others part in screwing over the other over our chequered history.

Iss haman me hum barabar nange hai bhai.

 

[PradoTLC]

We're not so different in that way, our chequered history is replete with examples wherein when one wishes for peace the other usually has a leader that is least bothered wit

there is nothing in common between Pakistan and India people and it's leaders. India leader ship is vile, dishonest and is governed by a hateful ideology that often using violence

Pakistani state leader by IK seeks cooperation, economic development and inclusiveness.

The difference between Pakistani and indian people could not be even further. ... the i have yet to see Pakistani muslims beating Pakistani hindus for losing a match against India.

You wanna know a disturbing fact,

Facts are usually disturbing


.

what you just said is repeated verbatim from the orange brigade here with the obvious changes

Indian terrorism is a documented fact.

but like those orange dudes.. you believe Mr Yadav was a business man having a picnic as he was kidnapped by ISI.

One cannot deny each others part in screwing over the other over our chequered history.

may be if you did the right thing and just followed the rules of Partition to the letter may be this would not happen?

 

[Krptonite]

there is nothing in common between Pakistan and India people and it's leaders. India leader ship is vile, dishonest and is governed by a hateful ideology that often using violence

Pakistani state leader by IK seeks cooperation, economic development and inclusiveness.

The difference between Pakistani and indian people could not be even further. ... the i have yet to see Pakistani muslims beating Pakistani hindus for losing a match against India.


Facts are usually disturbings.



Indian terrorism is a documented fact.

but like those orange dudes.. you believe Mr Yadav was a business man having a picnic as he was kidnapped by ISI.



may be if you did the right thing and just followed the rules of Partition to the letter may be this would not happen?

The commonality in leadership I'm refering to is the historical trend in our relationship wherein if one side approaches or desires peace the other takes it as a sign of weakness.
The current pendulum is on GoP favouring peace initiatives, earlier it was on the Vajpayee Govt .

The rise of radicalism on the Indian side is disheartning and condemnable but it has not developed in a vacumm. You cannot deny the perception that exists on both sides regarding the terrorism propagated by the other. Im not here to debate the why or the who, simply pointing out that a majority populace on both sides believe the other to propagate terror on them. What a convinient tool for our polity to hammer on.

If you read up on disheartning news such as you've pointed it out, heres an anecdotal one from me, we had the most fun during India Pakistan matches. It was never one sided and despite the rivalry, the calibre of the Pakistani team has traditionally been such that even your rivals are forced to be praiseworthy of their performance. for every bigoted mongoloid sparking such news there are countless number of friends, families who do support pakistan in sports and enjoy matches with Indian supporters, should I ring up every newspaper in town to publish it?

Media reports are skewed, not untrue but skewed.

 

[Novus ordu seclorum]

Exactly. Caste system is the backbone of Hinduism. You can take out anything else from Hinduism, yet Hinduism will exist. Muslims and British banned Sati, Temple prostitution, Breast tax etc. but Hinduism survives because the caste system is left intact.

Not possible to ban something which exists as personal or family identity. Should make it illegal to discriminate on the basis of race, religion, caste, creed, and color. America probably leads the world in anti-discrimination laws.

 

[jamahir]

I read up on your posts, I admire them

Thank you.

Fortunately or unfortunately, our constitution has no punitive damages for being a dull witted racist or a manipulative one. What should be done and what can is hampered by the system made by our founding fathers. In their wisdom, they recognised what could be changed and what should be kicked down the line for the wisdom of the parliament to decide, in that at least they were wise enough to recognise operational limitations.

Yes, the founding fathers were wise in some things ( like enabling for the people the right to form or join workers' unions ) but the Western parliamentary system they enabled - with its party-based system, its complicated political structure, its four-yearly elections and the decisions done by parties and not by the people directly issue-wise and idea-wise - they didn't consider that it might not be an actually democratic system but will become a dictatorship of the majority where the minority's losing candidate in the election is being done an injustice and the minority side may be in the correct. Please read below what an actually democracy will be.

Stupidity is an inherent right for those free to speak.

Agreed but only as long as it doesn't create injustices and wrongs.

I read up on your posts, I admire them, but in my opinion they are an idealistic solution with no leverage to adapt to the nitty gritty of actual polity and our populace. The human nature is too varied and inherently self serving for an utopian system to establish itself or survive. it simply does not survive contact with actual operational problems in the long term. its been tried countless times and mayhap our version might be the most correct implementation in the spirit as well as application, but data indicates otherwise. Many have tried it, many have failed. The current system is not a perfect one, it barely gets the job done and is often at whims of populist measures, but its a complex problem to solve with no perfect answers.

Isn't idealism the source of progressive change at some point ? Has happened throughout history, I am just a tiny tiny part in this. And I only speak of simplifying things and these are very much possible. Does Nature, which is most supreme, write in the night sky through alphabet formation by stars that we should keep living through non-scientific, anti-democratic and anti-human political and socio-economic processes ? Around 2500 years ago the Greeks thought up the concept of Demokratia - people's direct rule, direct democracy - but their version was flawed because it didn't involve participation by women and it maintained the slave system. But one place in modern times where they had evolved such historical progressiveness and simplified the political and socio-economic processes was in Libya until 2011. Even the otherwise hostile-to-Gaddafi New York Times acknowledged it. From a 2015 thread :

Under Gaddafi’s unique system of direct democracy, traditional institutions of government were disbanded and abolished, and power belonged to the people directly through various committees and congresses.

Far from control being in the hands of one man, Libya was highly decentralized and divided into several small communities that were essentially “mini-autonomous States” within a State. These autonomous States had control over their districts and could make a range of decisions including how to allocate oil revenue and budgetary funds. Within these mini autonomous States, the three main bodies of Libya’s democracy were Local Committees, Basic People’s Congresses and Executive Revolutionary Councils.

The Basic People’s Congress (BPC), or Mu’tamar shaʿbi asāsi was essentially Libya’s functional equivalent of the House of Commons in the United Kingdom or the House of Representatives in the United States. However, Libya’s People’s Congress was not comprised merely of elected representatives who discussed and proposed legislation on behalf of the people; rather, the Congress allowed all Libyans to directly participate in this process. Eight hundred People’s Congresses were set up across the country and all Libyans were free to attend and shape national policy and make decisions over all major issues including budgets, education, industry, and the economy.

In 2009, Gaddafi invited the New York Times to Libya to spend two weeks observing the nation’s direct democracy. The New York Times, that has traditionally been highly critical of Colonel Gaddafi’s democratic experiment, conceded that in Libya, the intention was that

“everyone is involved in every decision…Tens of thousands of people take part in local committee meetings to discuss issues and vote on everything from foreign treaties to building schools.”

The fundamental difference between western democratic systems and the Libyan Jamahiriya’s direct democracy is that in Libya all citizens were allowed to voice their views directly – not in one parliament of only a few hundred wealthy politicians – but in hundreds of committees attended by tens of thousands of ordinary citizens. Far from being a military dictatorship, Libya under Mr. Gaddafi was Africa’s most prosperous democracy.

On numerous occasions Mr. Gaddafi’s proposals were rejected by popular vote during Congresses and the opposite was approved and enacted as legislation.

For instance, on many occasions Mr. Gaddafi proposed the abolition of capital punishment and he pushed for home schooling over traditional schools. However, the People’s Congresses wanted to maintain the death penalty and classic schools, and the will of the People’s Congresses prevailed. Similarly, in 2009, Colonel Gaddafi put forward a proposal to essentially abolish the central government altogether and give all the oil proceeds directly to each family. The People’s Congresses rejected this idea too.

For over four decades, Gaddafi promoted economic democracy and used the nationalized oil wealth to sustain progressive social welfare programs for all Libyans. Under Gaddafi’s rule, Libyans enjoyed not only free health-care and free education, but also free electricity and interest-free loans. Now thanks to NATO’s intervention the health-care sector is on the verge of collapse as thousands of Filipino health workers flee the country, institutions of higher education across the East of the country are shut down, and black outs are a common occurrence in once thriving Tripoli.

Unlike in the West, Libyans did not vote once every four years for a President and an invariably wealthy local parliamentarian who would then make all decisions for them. Ordinary Libyans made decisions regarding foreign, domestic and economic policy themselves.

This system in Libya was called Jamahiriya and was coupled with a Socialist socio-economic welfare-based arrangement. The Jamahiriya system was adapted to Venezuela by the late Hugo Chavez. These are simple systems which can be applied anywhere where humanity resides irrespective of local dynamics. If the dynamics include wrong elements then those elements have to be removed or at least modified. Please read this thread of mine where I describe the technical workings of the Jamahiriya system and how the MPCs can be the 748 districts in India.

A side note : Two weeks ago a question's background in Kaun Banega Crorepati was that in Himachal Pradesh a village or region claimed to have among the world's democratic systems. The question was which king's descendants did these particular Himachali claim to be. I correctly guessed Alexander the Great. It is certain that Alexander's people brought the concept of Demokratia to this Himachali place.

Another simple I thought up was - maybe you have read it - a new socio-economic system which is simple, can be applied to any society, and realizes the desire of Communism to abolish economic classes ( rich, middle, poor ) though the system retains the money system ( Communism desiring to abolish it altogether ) but an evolved money system only because ATM despite new, simplifying technologies like 3D Printing, Vertical Farms and lab-grown meat there is no way to produce everything for free.

IF one could conjure up the apple of Eden as a panacea for all ills and asked people to eat it sincerely and obtain their salvation. We would still manage to find a way to bungle that up. Asking anyone to do anything sincerely from a rambunctious bunch like us, simply becomes an excuse later to justify the eventual pitfalls of whatever plan is in action, a system that ignores the base quality of its constituents is incapable of addressing their problems effectively.

Understood but as long the people are guided by some who have the mellowness, the gentleness and the wisdom of the cat I think a progressive society will continue.

 

[Maira La]

Not possible to ban something which exists as personal or family identity. Should make it illegal to discriminate on the basis of race, religion, caste, creed, and color. America probably leads the world in anti discriminatory laws.

Nice humane approach will not work. Caste system can only be ended with an iron fist. Force Brahmin men to marry only Dalit women. The liberated Brahmin women can have babies with non-Brahmins. Problem solved.

 

[Novus ordu seclorum]

Nice humane approach will not work. Caste system can only be ended with an iron fist. Force Brahmin men to marry only Dalit women. The liberated Brahmin women can have babies with non-Brahmins. Problem solved.

Uh no. Cannot force personal choices. That is another thing that should be made illegal in India and probably in some developing countries. The only people who matter in marriage are the people marrying and their families, at the end it is the free choice of the people who are marrying.

 

[Krptonite]

Nice humane approach will not work. Caste system can only be ended with an iron fist. Force Brahmin men to marry only Dalit women. The liberated Brahmin women can have babies with non-Brahmins. Problem solved.

Dear sir, if it was that easy to change people with force our collective history would have been different. If I might be impertinent and point out that it is time, patience and a humane hand that changes societal values, as evidenced by the social change Islam brought about after its inception. That took time and "rehmat" to catch hold and root out ills.

This scourge will end when the people themselves see it for what it is. No amount of forces will be condusive to that.

Thank you.



Yes, the founding fathers were wise in some things ( like enabling for the people the right to form or join workers' unions ) but the Western parliamentary system they enabled - with its party-based system, its complicated political structure, its four-yearly elections and the decisions done by parties and not by the people directly issue-wise and idea-wise - they didn't consider that it might not be an actually democratic system but will become a dictatorship of the majority where the minority's losing candidate in the election is being done an injustice and the minority side may be in the correct. Please read below what an actually democracy will be.



Agreed but only as long as it doesn't create injustices and wrongs.



Isn't idealism the source of progressive change at some point ? Has happened throughout history, I am just a tiny tiny part in this. And I only speak of simplifying things and these are very much possible. Does Nature, which is most supreme, write in the night sky through alphabet formation by stars that we should keep living through non-scientific, anti-democratic and anti-human political and socio-economic processes ? Around 2500 years ago the Greeks thought up the concept of Demokratia - people's direct rule, direct democracy - but their version was flawed because it didn't involve participation by women and it maintained the slave system. But one place in modern times where they had evolved such historical progressiveness and simplified the political and socio-economic processes was in Libya until 2011. Even the otherwise hostile-to-Gaddafi New York Times acknowledged it. From a 2015 thread :

This system in Libya was called Jamahiriya and was coupled with a Socialist socio-economic welfare-based arrangement. The Jamahiriya system was adapted to Venezuela by the late Hugo Chavez. These are simple systems which can be applied anywhere where humanity resides irrespective of local dynamics. If the dynamics include wrong elements then those elements have to be removed or at least modified. Please read this thread of mine where I describe the technical workings of the Jamahiriya system and how the MPCs can be the 748 districts in India.

A side note : Two weeks ago a question's background in Kaun Banega Crorepati was that in Himachal Pradesh a village or region claimed to have among the world's democratic systems. The question was which king's descendants did these particular Himachali claim to be. I correctly guessed Alexander the Great. It is certain that Alexander's people brought the concept of Demokratia to this Himachali place.

Another simple I thought up was - maybe you have read it - a new socio-economic system which is simple, can be applied to any society, and realizes the desire of Communism to abolish economic classes ( rich, middle, poor ) though the system retains the money system ( Communism desiring to abolish it altogether ) but an evolved money system only because ATM despite new, simplifying technologies like 3D Printing, Vertical Farms and lab-grown meat there is no way to produce everything for free.



Understood but as long the people are guided by some who have the mellowness, the gentleness and the wisdom of the cat I think a progressive society will continue.

Striving towards the light eh! Can't argue with that, only the path leading there is contested

 

[Maira La]

Uh no. Cannot force personal choices.

Democratic approach will not solve a 3500 year old problem.

This scourge will end when the people themselves see it for what it is.

So yeah when the very naïve upper caste figures out what it is and that they are benefitting from caste slavery they will end it. Good luck.

 

[Novus ordu seclorum]

Democratic approach will not solve a 3500 year old problem.

You are assuming you can fix a social and political problem by forcing people to mate like cattle. Humans don't work that way. There is nothing wrong with racial, national, ethnic, tribal, or caste identity. The problem is discrimination.

 

[jamahir]

Striving towards the light eh! Can't argue with that, only the path leading there is contested

??

You are assuming you can fix a social and political problem by forcing people to mate like cattle. Humans don't work that way. There is nothing wrong with racial, national, ethnic, tribal, or caste identity. The problem is discrimination.

Separating Oneself from The Other through racial, national, caste, ethnic etc lines is tribalism which is obsolete. Doesn't Communism desire a world where the artificial national boundaries have been eradicated ? When there are human settlements on Mars in 15 years or so should the settlers still operate on that new, historically non-human world, carry along their historical Earth-bound differences ?

 

[FuturePAF]

There is a book written by an “Untouchable” making the rounds globally, called Ants among Elephants. Saw it on the local news, here in New York, yesterday. Interesting interview; she seems to want western audiences, especially African Americans to read it.

 

[Novus ordu seclorum]

Separating Oneself from The Other through racial, national, caste, ethnic etc lines is tribalism which is obsolete. Doesn't Communism desire a world where the artificial national boundaries have been eradicated ? When there are human settlements on Mars in 15 years or so should the settlers still operate on that new, historically non-human world, carry along their historical Earth-bound differences ?

Your family is related by blood. How is that unnatural? The point is to recognize and respect differences, not make everyone robotic clones of each other which is unnatural. Communist China takes much pride in the Chinese identity, so nothing natural about communist theory since it is based on the denial of human rights; and the first right is your inherited personal/family identity. One can argue some of the caste identities are unnatural in the sense they are professions, yet at the same time they can be blood identities, such as tribe or clan.