Caste matters : Family alleges harassment by teachers after Dalit boy found dead in Rajasthan school
Caste matters : Family alleges harassment by teachers after Dalit boy found dead in Rajasthan school
A 15-year-old student was found dead in his classroom at Pragpura in Kotputli-Behror district of Rajasthan. Police have registered a case of murder after the Dalit student’s family alleged that two of his schoolteachers were harassing him with casteist slurs.
Family of the boy in Rajasthan says he was harassed by two of his teachers who used casteist slurs against him and that the school principal did not take action even after complaints
In India, caste is a hereditary classification that every Indian is born into. The system too supports it as legally religion can be changed, but not caste. In the hierarchical caste system, Dalits are considered as belonging to the lowest caste and Brahmins are considered as the highest caste.
Dalits are severely oppressed and treated as inhumanely as possible by the oppressor upper castes. They are subject to a lifetime of ,marginalisation, exclusion and human rights violations. To this day, they are subject to systematic and systemised discrimination, marginalisation, stigma and violence in all its forms.
Caste based crimes like this abound in India and caste-based discrimination is rife even among Indians outside India. A couple of months back in another state Madhya Pradesh, an Adivasi man was urinated on by a Brahmin member of the ruling political party, the BJP.
Laws preventing caste discrimnation, like the one recently passed in Seattle, are essential to ensuing basic human dignity to all, Pro-Hindu groups oppose these anti-discrimination efforts.
https://time.com/6146141/caste-discrimination-us-opposition-grows/
Please support laws preventing caste discrimination!
A week back in Tamil Nadu, India, a Dalit student was attacked by his fellow students for studying well - https://www.newsclick.in/tn-dalit-student-attacked-studying-well-anti-caste-groups-ring-alarm. A group of high school students broke into his home and hacked him with a sickle.
Harrasing the victim's family who are already dealing with a loss is also not new in India. Most times, if the victim's family files a police case/ lodges an FIR to report the crime, the offendor's family slaps a fake case on them and then the police join in in coercing the victim's family to withdraw their case.
We send missions to Mars & the Moon, but are yet to send a mission to reclaim our humanity.
Just awful. This child deserved better.
I kind of know the answer, but why can't the caste system be outlawed?
tl;dr : Those who are in positions of power are from the oppressor uppercastes and don't want the oppressed lower castes to be equal to them.
Long answer:
India's Constitution is firm about equality for all castes, religions, and genders. But that chafes those in the oppessor castes and patriarchy who derive their identity from it. The architect of India's Constitution is Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar who is hated by Brahminism and the patriarchy because 1) he is from the oppressed lower castes 2) he dared to educate himself and architected the Constitution that forces them to be equal to all others 3) he passed the Hindu Code bill that gave equal rights to Hindu women.
Caste allows a person to wield power over others without earning it, just by being born into a oppressor caste family.
Hinduism is a collection of castes. It's communities are based on caste and it's foundation is the caste system. Caste is hierarchial and almost always there's someone lower on the hierarchy who can be oppressed. The sadism of this makes the person forget that almost always there's someone higher on the hierarchy who can oppress, humiliate, and persecute him. This hierarchial system of oppression is so pervasive that thee are sub-castes within a caste which makes every caste itself hierarchial and makes it difficult for people of a caste to unite. In every caste & every subcaste, women are the bottom. This ensures patriarchy is maintained by all castes & subcastes, and gives every frustrated man someone he can punch down to take his anger & frustrations out on. How can any such man who practices hierachial oppression within the confines of his own home take a stand against the hierarchial oppression he suffers from other men out of his home?
Brahmin men are on the very top of the caste pyramid as they authored religious texts on caste and put themselves on top, and their only claim to superiority and an excuse for the many cruelties they've created & imposed on everyone else is based on the caste system. Dalits & Adivasis are at the very bottom, and are at the receiving end of every violence and indignity that the oppressor castes come up with.
We have a law to fight casteist oppression and violence against Dalits & Adivasis called the Prevention of Atrocities against SC/ST Act. But those in charge of implementing this law are from the oppressor upper castes. So the law is rarely applied even though caste atrocities abound.
Caste is a barbaric custom and as Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar has rightly said, caste must be annihilated.
Because it's inherently tied to Hindu beliefs, and has become culturally pervasive to the point that the attitude follows converts to other systems, including Christianity and Islam which in theory reject it but in practice love them some heirarchy.
They practice it because those in power in those communities
- benefit from it and
- are descendants of oppressor upper castes who converted to Islam or Christianity . They changed their religion, but refuse to be civilised even though both Islam & Christianity are religions of equality.
Sikhism was created to rebel against Hindu casteism, yet nowadays we can see caste is prominent in Sikhs as well and for the same 2 reasons.
Let's just outlaw racism too while we're at it!
Correct.