Why American Children Need to Know Truth About Caste

This week, the California Board of Education will sign off on the final updates for textbooks used in the state’s middle schools, including how those books depict India’s caste system.

Even though I live in Seattle, I plan to attend the meeting in Sacramento and have been asked to say a few words.
In speaking out about caste — that complex structure of hereditary and occupation-based segregation sold to us Indians as part of our Hindu religion — I’m taking a position seemingly in direct conflict with my status as a “high”caste man.

A coalition of wealthy Hindu organizations, whose members are likewise “high” caste, has been pressing for textbook language that essentially dilutes what American children are taught about India’s history of dealing with sections of its society. Led by the Hindu American Foundation, their apparent goal is to sterilize caste, distort its origin by disconnecting links to the Hindu religion and advance discredited theories about India’s history. The truth, they content, leads to bullying of Hindu children in school.

This has led to a showdown between HAF and an interfaith, inter-caste organization called the South Asian Histories for All, that believes the story of caste apartheid and the resistance to it is one of the “most powerful historical lessons in world history.”

What gets included and left out of California textbooks is significant because the state sets textbook market standards for the rest of the US, including Washington State where I live.

Those pressing for change believe that as India has modernized and taken its rightful spot on the world economic stage, it is important to highlight the positive contributions it has made to the world, rather than what they see as negative relics from the country’s past.
As a Hindu myself, I believe this position is morally dishonest.

While I don’t dismiss the importance of showing all that the country has accomplished in the 70 years since Independence, I also believe the world needs to see and understand our country’s legacy, the hundreds of millions of people we have not only left behind but who are still subject to grinding oppression and mistreatment.

India’s “low”-caste population, known as Dalits, number more than 200 million, about 16.6 percent of the Indian population. They are relegated to the filthiest, most menial jobs as manual scavengers, janitors, animal-rearers and corpse handlers.  

I’ve not always held this conscious view of the caste system of which I am a privileged beneficiary. My childhood and adolescence were easy and filled with the joys of privilege. My bookish and idealistic view of caste belied the painful reality on the ground, a blindness that lasted almost all 20 years of my adult life. 

In recent years, however, the debate around white privilege in America has forced me to recognize my own caste privilege. Indian casteism and US racism are twin vessels of oppression in different lands. It had never occurred to me to look inward at my own privilege and measure it against the experiences of millions of my fellow countrymen. 

Now, as a father, I want my 1st grade son to have the full and complete understanding of this form of oppression that I didn’t have at his age.

American children deserve to know the truth about thousands of years of Indian history, because without it they cannot know the truth about India today. They need to understand why millions of Indian children drop out before graduating from high school. They need to understand why this country that produces some of the world’s greatest scholars and engineers has one of the world’s highest rates of illiteracy, hunger and poverty. 

They need to understand that when oppressive systems become part of religion, which is hard to question, they can wreak havoc in people’s lives for centuries. 

They need to know why 200 million people continue to fight for dignity even today. And they need to learn the name, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar -- this student of American philosopher John Dewey who would go on to lead the struggle for civil rights for millions in modern India. They need to know this because it’s only through such knowledge, that they will they come to know the challenges that Indian society has to overcome.

I believe American students need to recognize the universality of oppression, to understand that every society in the world has a shameful past and that it’s only through working to overcome that past, rather than sweeping it under that carpet, that we can emerge as more enlightened people.

Examples:

 

Chill Pill

I am grimly aware that I am slowly becoming a spoilsports at many friendly gatherings when it comes to appreciating certain events, jokes or even worries.  No no, its not that I am transforming in to boring dull personality.  I regularly find myself in a company where laughter is spontaneous and loud.  I still retain same old humor with word plays and self-deprecation.  It's just that it is changing.  And with the change are coming weird looks, allegations that I am trying to be over judgmental or moralistic.  Some even whisper that I have lost it.  Suggestions to "just take a chill pill" and relax and to be "normal" are common too.   This is a marked departure from my earlier reputation of a fun loving guy who had some decent access to humor store.

 

If that was not enough, there are problems on the opposite side too.  Things that infuriate people around me don’t seem to matter much to me either.  It seems like I am taking the "chill pill" when I shouldn’t.  Things like Obama chewing gum during parade or some movie star blurting a controversial statement, a love affair, bad play by the favorite sports team, in fact most of the controversies on news outlets like TOI and CNN don’t seem to provoke me.

 

Following the gruesome Charlie Hedbo incident that happened recently and the amount of discussion it generated I decided to look at the humor department first.  Here is an excellent post that made me analyze my world.

 

The curious case of lost humor

 

This is what seems to be happening to me.  If I identify myself to be in company of group X.  Let there be a group Y where X and Y are not so friendly and Y is the under-privileged among them.  Then degrading, murderous, insulting, offensive jokes about group Y do not impress me.  In fact, based on the degree of malice in them they provoke negative response from me.  This does end up spoiling the, otherwise, giggly mood in the gathering.  Me trying to explain my position makes the matter worse.

 

I have been accused of trying to capture the moral high grounds, but on a little pondering I realized that it was the opposite.  It was a result of being humbled with a flood of information that found its way to me few years ago.  This new information made me lose whatever rationale I had to convince myself for laughing at misery of the said target groups.  I think that the only reason we are able to laugh at jokes that degrade others is because somehow we have convinced ourselves that they are less of a human than us,  it also sometimes require us to be convinced that we are a victim of them.  When the parameters to these two functions are altered the response is altered too.   It is in these situations that those who retain original parameters find the folks with new parameters- abnormal.

 

Examples of changing parameters

 

I will give you few examples.  They will also demonstrate that I too have my origins in "normal" behavior.  Some of these put me to shame even today, not because I think less of who I was then.  What I feel embarrassed about is how come, for so long, I was uninformed about so much.  How, when I could have been more helpful,  I must have hurt those around me due to lack of sufficient information. It is very interesting that many of these changes involved only a few hours of education.

Contempt of Transgendered:   
Perhaps the most shameful of all contempt I ever participated in was by holding the Transgendered community as a butt of many jokes that are common among school/college students in places I grew in. Using derogatory names for them like "Chakkas" and teasing others as if they were one was something I engaged in. I recall many jokes that friends and I occasionally cracked and laughed till our belly hurt. They were to be laughed at, to be shunned and to be scared of if you were caught alone. It wasn’t till I accidentally started reading about their side of story. That how they were fully human as me, perhaps more because I am not sure if I would remain a human if the society treated me the way we treat them. I am sure there are better resources out there, but a documentary I saw almost had me hate myself for not ever pausing to check on the other side, whose insult I was occasionally rolling in. A lot can be said here but for the purpose of this article I will leave it for another day.

Contempt of Dalit(depressed section of Hindu society):
While the contempt of transgendereds was limited to insults and laughing at, I can perhaps convince myself that as a school/college boy there was hardly I could have done anything for them. The contempt of Dalits however hindered me from fulfilling my responsibilities. There were numerous jokes (mostly fake) about how incompetent they were, how unworthy they were of reservation. They were represented as free riders and threat to our career. If they were part of your "project/viva team" you were so screwed. It took me many years to open my eyes to their plight. Books like Untouchability in rural India and books and writings from P. Sainath educated me about many things that I wish I can meaningfully share with my friends someday. I am not going to argue about reservation here because that is not the purpose of this text. Forget about if they deserved to be there on that. What I am saying is that if I pride myself as someone who has some amount of kindness in me, doesn’t it feel weird to have engaged in this mockery of depressed and those struggling? How do I resolve my self-assessment as a "helpful person" when I did not, for a moment, paused to help a classmate for something he/she was struggling with? How could I engage in laughing at their situation? Do you see my problem? I owe a lot to my classmates for helping me in my studies, being someone with hearing loss my class notes were always sparse. So basically as a "struggling" person I wasn’t shy of seeking help, then what stopped me from giving some? Now do you really think I will laugh with you on a joke that involves Dalits?

Contempt of Blonde/Sikh jokes
Who can laugh at Blonde/Sikh jokes.   I'll tell you, one who has not really known them.  After knowing some of the smartest folks from these set it is hard to not question why mentioning Blonde/Sikh was central to a joke?  The saddest part is knowing the origin of the midnight/12'o clock jokes about Sikh.  Story goes that it originated when the Sikh started midnight raids on invader Nadir Shah's to protect the civilians of Delhi.   Precisely the people who will later on crack the midnight/12'o clock jokes about Sikhs.


Contempt of Blacks ...[essay still in progress]

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Misery

Experience has taught me that the leading cause of misery among humans is our refusal to tap into our ability(otherwise called Empathy) to feel each other's pain. This enables us to, both, inflict misery on others and to inflate our own misery.  With right nurturing this ability (that helped us humans survive so long) can be enhanced but it is almost fashionable these days to display apathy (to appear carefree). 

Hyderabad blast

The comment here is too little too late, but had to be made.  Totally condemn the act of horrendous violence committed in Hyderabad this week.  I hope we can keep the focus on the affected families and utilize our common resources in providing any and every help to them.  The perpatuators of these acts have tried to take these lives for granted, let us prove them wrong.  In fact let us attack this notion of using violence to teach a lesson/as a deterrant/ make a point.  I also hope we will soon learn why this act was carried out and work towards finding a way out of this madness, rather than finding a few scapegoats, sacrificing them(with much celebration) and then moving on.  And while we are working on others not taking lives for granted we can also start looking at the lives lost in India to hunger(5000 kids a day), farmer suicides and state sponsored violence(direct or structural) and work towards addressing them. To paraphrase MLK, let us not repress or cause outburts of anger, let us harness anger under discipline for maximum effect.

Working with ourselves to build a safer future

They say to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers- MLK in his Eulogy of the girls who died in the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing. 

This weekend should have been no different. After all, I am used to reading news of little children dying horrible deaths thousands of miles away. Usually it results in very little action from my side because I proceed to carry on with my day after fuming a bit and may be a posting here or there on a social networking site. But this one was different, this one hit closer home and kept me and my wife worried. We were worried about what are we doing to protect the future of little children in our lives. Isn't it shameful that an act so monstrous in scale has to be enacted to wake us from our slumber. Isn't it shameful that we keep quite when our own President approves the bombing missions that kill many children in other countries, some in schools, some while sleeping? 

Why am I asking this, how is this relevant?  People tell me not to worry.  It is a small statistics, the crime rates are falling etc.  But isn't the madness rising?  When I sat down to reflect upon the horrible tragedy I did not merely question the motive of the killer or focused on this tragedy, instead I tried to look in the mirror. Was he the only one who was brutally murdering children.  Was I doing something similar, just in a more sophisticated and detached way.  If so I tried to find what I can do to address it.

 

I don’t have a silver bullet, even though there are some common sense solutions to restrict it temporarily. But there is also a bigger picture, a part of which I see. In it I see that there is lot to be done that we all can individually contribute to reduce this madness.  There is a lot we can do to remove violence from our society, both implicit and explicit.  Direct and structural. This is my attempt to add my voice to the conversation, and yes we need one desperately, and tell what I see.

What follows is the recollection of the questions I explored and the answers I came up with.

Q: I am shocked at these occurrences of mad violence. I am fearful of it but what can I do? What can we do to address this?

A: I think we have to break out of this confusion and fear cycle and make some concrete efforts towards a more peaceful future. Not all is lost. The acts of self sacrifice and bravery by the teachers gives me some hope and courage and let me know that not everything is broken. But it might be worthwhile to inspect what needs to change.

I agree that I am tempted to put some sort of gun control law at this time. At least for acquiring automatic weapons that can take down many in a short duration. There has also been some talks that such acts are done to hog some attention, we could also start by denying that. A sort of non-cooperation with the killers. Hence-forth we and the media together anonymize the next killer. We don't want to see their pictures, we dont want to hear their thoughts, we dont even want to know their name.

But I am aware that any such thing would just be symptomatic treatment and won't last very long. Like for gun control just enacting a law without changing hearts and mind would be a partial success. The bigger problem is that the poison has spread inside us and we need to detox and also dismantle or slowdown the factory that keeps producing the poison. The good news is that even though it looks like a tougher task it is much more achievable because we need to start at ourselves and given enough will power we can change ourselves?

Q: So how do you propose we go about gun control?

A: We are a pretty polarized society so it is definitely not going to be an easy discussion. The first problem is that just enacting a law without changing hearts and mind would be a partial success. We have to find a way to change hearts here. If we jumped to debating it may never end. We can present facts on both the sides but it would work only if people on both sides were listening.

If we were to talk about snatching  away their guns they would feel victimized and would fight back again so it may not be a permanent solution.   I don’t think we should wait for the government to "do something about it".  I think we can all start participating in this quickly if we can organize.  We can start informational - picketing the gun shops where such weapons are sold.  Get arrested if needed and suffer for it.  The people in favor of gun ownership are still people and their hearts will eventually melt.  The tragedies must have softened it a little already and our sufferings will bring them closer to us to have a dialogue.  As Martin Luther King pointed out in his speech after the bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist church our unearned suffering will be redemptive.

Before we can have any meaningful  dialogue with them we first need to remove the threat from the equation. We must be very clear that we want them to give up on this setup that allows anyone to amass such killing power. If they claim "Right to bear arms" reason with them. History is full of examples where people got rid of the despotic government without blowing things up. If they claim self-defense educate them about the statistics that even though in few situation it has been helpful to posses a gun, by and large the chance of dying a violent death is 4 times higher if you are in possession of gun (and in most cases these are accidents without provocation). If they want to go hunting work with them to find out why they would need a 100 rounds a minute shooter?

Q: I don’t think the gun lovers are capable of understanding.

A:One thing to remember is that you must never give up on the humanity of the other side. I will give you an example. The Pathan tribes of Afghanistan were known to be fierce warriors and they lived and died by their sword/guns for centuries before Khan Abdul Gaffer Khan (also called Frontier Gandhi) walked that land. Long story short, he was able to raise an army of 100000 from among these tribe that was known as Khudai Kidmatgaars some even called them the Red Shirts (not to confused with the Russians). The unique thing about this army was that the soldiers carried no weapons and faced their adversary thus. Their story of how they nonviolently faced the whole British army platoon at Kissa Kahani Bazaar is well known in nonviolent circle. So much so that the British employed Nepali/Indian soldiers refused to fire on them after sometime even when they were threatened with court martials (which was eventually imposed on them). If such a change can be brought in people considered ruthless weapon wielders who cannot be changed? You have to know how to appeal to their heart, like Khan was able to do.

In the NV circle we talk about the Laws of Suffering where the NV actor goes thru voluntary sufferings to bring out the suffering already inherent in the situation. When doing so he opens a channel for dialogue and perhaps a change of heart. For example in the story above the Khudai Khidmatgaars did not beat themselves nor ran away. They stood their grounds to let the soldiers on the other side know the kind of suffering their actions were causing to essentially "good" people. Thus changing their heart and allowing both sides to see each others as humans.

Q:So we can picket and argue our way out of this misery?

A:No it will useful but not sufficient.  We should keep opposing the guns but we also need to work on ourselves.

 

 

Q: What do you mean? What do we need to change in ourselves, what is in our control that is causing these incidences of violence?

A: I don't think I am in a position to give you the exact formula. But I can talk about a few factors. I will leave it up to you to judge what you want to change and what you want to keep. There are several factors some we can change some we cannot but we can address many of them. For example you cannot change the history and the violence in the past, but we can definitely address it. There is promotion of violence in the general atmosphere. This should not be hard to change if you can stop buying this idea that we need violence to solve problems. Look at the movies where the lead character mows down everyone in sight only to emerge virtuous and victorious. Look at the way you conduct businesses where the rivals are supposed to "bury each other" or "crush" the competition. Vandana Shiva has a good phrase on how we do business in the language of war. This we can change quite fast by our own will power, by opting out of it. Boycott the movies/art that degrades the human image or alienate us from each other. Be a bit more compassionate in your day to day life and refuse to cooperate in acts that degrades value of any human. I know it is easier said than done, but we have to start somewhere. So I would recommend that we start addressing these problems around ourselves . A general plan would be like

1. Reduce the promotion of violence in and around yourself.

2. Deal with the violence that is already within you.

3. Deal with the violence carried out in your name.

4. Address the violence you have committed.

5. Acknowledge and work with the victims of any violence.

6. Educate the young ones on the dangers of violent mindset and power of love/non-violence.

 

Q: What is the promotion of violence you talk about?

A: In general when we give consent to the notion that might is right we set a bad example. For those around us and most importantly for the kids. When we given consent to the notion of our separateness that we are all sort of individuals who have no common grounds or goals, when we give consent to a lifestyle where we each exist in a separate compartment we deliver the second blow. And when we project that some lives are more worthy than others we deliver the third and final blow. All of this is blatantly promoted by today's media culture and unfortunately for most people it is delivered through the medium that has no intention of addressing this problem.

Q: Can you elaborate it?

A: Let's see, I don't know the full extent but this is what scares me. Kids in this country spend 2-3 hours in front of TV everyday, forming their perception of the world based on unrealistic portrayal. They see 3000-5000 commercial messages a day. Many play violent video games for long hours. Did you know that the US Army uses some of these games for its soldiers? Not to make them a better marksman but to enable them to kill without remorse. 

Not only that, many parents believe that this is probably OK that somehow their kid will escape any ill-effects of such blitzkrieg . That somehow everything will clear up soon, that somehow "evolution" will take care of this and the "crazy ones" will soon take themselves out of the gene pool and the ones who cannot be misled by such programming will prevail. It is really wishful thinking.

Q: You mention the ill effects the mainstream movie violence is having on the society, the psychological effects this culture of greed, fear and mean-world portrayal in news, TV programs are having. I watch these movies all the time. I don’t go out shooting.

A: You just gave me statistics of 1. A vast majority of people who share this common experience have led a different life than you. It affects them differently. When studies after studies are showing that statistically it is causing a great harm to our youths isn't it time to notice it?

Q: But the Japanese make more violent movies than us. They don’t have these problems?

A: Each culture-society reacts differently to different input. While abortion technology is stated to bring free choice to women in the West, it is the cause of a large scale feticides in India where close to 20 million females were never allowed to be born. If the violent movies are working for them, great. I don't agree that we have the right support structure here to handle the after effects of such conditioning. Hence I am opting out of these sources of "entertainment".

Q: So you are now blaming it on the TV?

I don’t intend to say that TV/Cinema by itself is evil, but the control of programming in the hands of few(about 8 companies right now), in the hands of those few who would like us to believe that we will achieve peace and happiness by buying stuff is harmful to us. Our mainstream TV/Cinema world exist for and on advertisements. Remember how we were sold one TV once “Neighbor’s envy, owner’s pride”? Such business prospers on our alienation. Humans don’t function well when they are alienated and when this happens in large number it becomes dangerous.

So I am not proposing a ban on TV, what I am asking is that you use your judgment when exposing yourself and the young ones to the TV and perhaps look for the alternatives. May be it has not done it to you but these mediums have enslaved a large population in this country . My request is that you assist in breaking out of this chain and help free up the others by forming alternatives.

Q: But wouldn’t life be boring without these means of entertainment?

A: True,you could start slow or become more selective. For example a few years ago I used to be in theater every weekend. Sometimes twice every weekend. But today I have been to theater only once in past two years. I still watch TV once in a while but my viewership is receding. Soon it will be limited to watching Democracy Now and few documentaries. The best part of looking for alternatives is that you will need more friends and people and it will work on your alienation problem as well. If you look around you will be surprised at options available where people come together and have a good time . Over time I have realized that no movie made me laugh as hard as some of my friends and kids do. I am blessed to have them around. And unlike the reports about Hollywood stars they get more beautiful with time.

Q: You also believe that there is a history to such violent built up?

A: Yes like many other societies the one we currently live in was built up on large scale violence. Be it the Native American genocide, inhumane slavery or the third world colonization and ravaging (Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan), nuclear bombing the list is endless. And our society has been complicit (if not an active participant) in all of these episodes. The effects of these were not isolated but they spread all around. It propelled the most violent institutions in to more powerful positions from where they could make life changing decisions. It also fed the thought that after all might is right and that some lives were disposable. I would claim that there is fair amount of guilt consciousness and probably some fear that if we aren't alert enough we might be a victim ourselves. This has also led us to adopt an attacking posture with a hand on trigger all the time and made it easy for anyone to convince us that slaying of someone was necessary.

Violence is also prevalent in all of our institutions. Look at how we treat our sick ones, the weak and our old ones. We send the message that you are on your own and we make people insecure in general. Not only that we some how rationalize the loss these of lives (even before they die) with very convoluted logics. We some home accept extremem economic disparity in a system where nothing moves without money.  Our prisons hold the largest population and it is so obviously tainted with racism that we use the statistics to reverse blame the races for being criminal by birth! We can't fight eradicate violence with first addressing the structural/systemic violence.

Q: But clearly we cannot change the history.

A: Yes but we can still address them. We can start by accepting as a nation that what we did was wrong and make a sincere effort to correct it. This in turn will be the best lesson we give to our young ones that such violent acts are wrong but there is a way out of the hell. If you caused someone harm today how would you try to fix it. Would you not do your best to make sure that the harmed ones can get back on their feet and carry on with their lives, try to fill the void. Wouldn’t you make a pledge to be double sure you do not repeat this mistake ever. Have we done this in the cases I cited above? What does our action teach our young ones?

You can also address the present before it becomes history. How much discussion do we have when our president approves missions abroad that blows up little children with high tech machinery operated from a comfortable office in CA? Isn't that a cold blooded murder too? Eventually the chicken come home to roost, because some kid down here learns that it is OK to blow up some innocent bystanders to get what you want. Remember the wise words of MKL? "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere"?

Q: Finally what do you propose should we do about the education of the young ones? How do we teach them the art and science of NV?

A: We need to first purge the violence of our education system. By that I don’t mean just the physical aspects of it but the inherent violence in a system that pushes and reserves the right to punish. We can educate the children about the peace and justice system a few techniques to do dispute resolution etc. But perhaps the best way to impart this education is when the teachers and the school administration starts practicing this art. We need to work on how we treat low performance. In NV setting we internalize that every kid is gifted in a unique way and if they aren't performing well in certain areas it is not because they aren't useful but it is because we probably don’t have the right challenges for them. In such cases instead of punishing them or labeling them we need to find a more constructive outlet for their energies. Everyone has a need to be respected and we need to ensure our education system addresses that. If there are trouble creators we need to be little more proactive about engaging them and helping them give meaning to their lives. Of course you are going to tell me that is lot of effort. But that just means you need to staff better, train better and invest more money in the education system. We aren't doing that, instead we are cutting the funds and increasing the stress on teachers. Practice of NV requires lots of time and patience and we are taking both away from the teachers.

The other thing we can address at school level is to help them unlearn the myths they pick up in the mainstream culture. All the generalization that exists in the culture that guys have to be macho and girls have to be good looking objects. We have left that to parenting which under the pressure of current economic system is falling behind as well. We have seen increased amount of materialism among the children and they feel very deprived and frustrated when they are denied stuff that they crave. In a NV setting kids learn to connect with themselves and each other and get happiness thru accomplishing meaningful stuff.

 

It is my belief that these kids, who will be spared the violent ideas that our generation has cooked up for so long, will build a more just and peaceful world. 

Hindi Cinema

It feels weird to realize that for past few decades adult male lyricists/producers have been expressing/selecting female and child feelings in Hindi cinema and in the process shaping them too! No wonder "Munni badnaam hui"!

Obituary

RIP Oticon Tego. You were a good friend, constant companion and above all a great listener. I will never forget the day you first whispered into my ears. You died on a Tuesday morning when you started emitting sound worse than the SA Vuvuzela. You were unable to survive the heat and humidity of my land where you went to accompany me. You were 4 years old.

Growing food

The need to shout!

One his recent trip to Iowa, President Obama was “heckled”
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sc-dc-obama-healthcare-20100325,0,641546.story

The president was heckled at one point by a man in the crowd who said the bill should have gone farther and included a "public option'' – a government-run program that would compete with private insurance plans.
"That's not in it,'' Obama said.
"Why not?'' came the reply.
"Because we couldn't get it through Congress, that's why,'' Obama said, adding: "There's no need to shout, young man.''

Well there is a need to shout, Sir. You have the mike, he doesn’t.