We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality

Throughout my school days, I knew there were people who belonged to the "scheduled castes."  SC, as it was often shortened to.  As I got closer to completing high school and getting to college, I came to understand firsthand the affirmative action--reservations--for various groups, including for SC.

The extended family with whom I interacted a lot were all brahmins.  Brahmins friends with brahmins, and brahmins marrying brahmins.  When we visited grandmothers' villages, the streets were all brahmin households.

My first real awareness of the separate-and-unequal existence of peoples came when I went with my father and his uncle to visit with that uncle's friend.  I went along because that older man was also the grandfather of a classmate of mine.

I was perhaps in the beginning phase of my teenage years.  The questioning self was slowly being made.  All I sensed was that there was something seriously wrong with the world.

We crossed the main road.  And then went to another part of the village.  There were no brahmins here.  Muslims were in a different part.

Much later in life, without explicitly talking about racism, I asked my father whether he was ok with such geographic separation of religions and castes and subcastes.  His reply was a simple one: That's how things were.

The older I got, and especially after getting to America, the more I thought about all these.  In one of my early letters to my parents when I was in graduate school, I wrote about the luck of the draw.  I wrote to them that had I been born in a different house, I might have grown up a Muslim or an untouchable.  The randomness of these bothered me, and it pissed me off that the traditional explanations conveniently justified all these as divine!

A couple of years ago, when proudly posting my family's old photographs in Facebook, it occurred to me that only those of us who grew up in privileged backgrounds even had photos from the past.  The poorer people, and the lower castes, had barely anything and, therefore, there was no question of photos of their grandparents and greatgrandparents.  A privilege that I had taken for granted.

Last year, I went to a gathering of a few old school mates.  I felt uncomfortable that it was an all-brahmin crowd, with three exceptions.  I went to an 80th birthday celebration, and it was mostly an all-brahmin crowd there too.  The paths don't seem to cross much :(

MLK famously observed that the long arc of the moral universe bends towards justice.  Maybe.  Had the randomness in the cosmos made me a Dalit and not a brahmin by birth, I know for certain that I would have been an angry young man, an angry middle-aged man, and perhaps a bitter old man, unable to forget the atrocities that were committed against my people.  After all, even as one who was born a brahmin, who lives in the US, I am not convinced about any arc bending towards justice.

There's something seriously wrong with the world, and I can't do a damn thing about it!

The unbearable burdens of the years past

There are at least two important reasons why I continue to read and think about the caste issues in the old country, and about slavery in the adopted home.  As one who was born into the privileged Brahmin caste, I want to apologize and compensate by at least understanding the sociopolitical aspects of the atrocious caste system that has left India messed up.  In the adopted home, being in the privileged stratum, the least I can do is understand slavery and racism that have seriously screwed up the country.

There is also one other reason.  I am always, always, amazed that the oppressed lower castes and the "untouchables" of India, and the blacks and Native Americans here, are not intensely angry and unforgiving.  The fact that there is no violence and blood over these issues intrigues me.  After all, for instance, I continue to be pissed off at the bastards who looted India or the white supremacist whose actions resulted in a million deaths.  I am angry man!  If I--with all the privilege--can be so angry, then ...

Hence, the post on "Strange Fruit."  While such cruelty is simply beyond my absolutely wildest imagination, I force myself to make my own sense of that horrific past.   As one who does not care for forget or forgive, the tragic transgressions are more than mere history to me.

A new day dawns and then I read this in the New York Times:

More than a dozen universities — including Brown, Columbia, Harvard and the University of Virginia — have publicly recognized their ties to slavery and the slave trade. But the 1838 slave sale organized by the Jesuits, who founded and ran Georgetown, stands out for its sheer size, historians say.
At Georgetown, slavery and scholarship were inextricably linked. The college relied on Jesuit plantations in Maryland to help finance its operations, university officials say. (Slaves were often donated by prosperous parishioners.) And the 1838 sale — worth about $3.3 million in today’s dollars — was organized by two of Georgetown’s early presidents, both Jesuit priests.
Some of that money helped to pay off the debts of the struggling college

Think about this.  A highly respected university. And a Jesuit university. But, even its very presence today--leave alone its reputation--was made possible by the 272 men, women and children it sold in order to pay off its debts.  How can we not continue to have conversations on slavery and racism?

researchers have used archival records to follow their footsteps, from the Jesuit plantations in Maryland, to the docks of New Orleans, to three plantations west and south of Baton Rouge, La.

I will be mad as hell if I were one of those descendants.

Life is hard enough, and on top of that there are assholes who love to mess around with the lives of others.  We shall over come. Some day, we shall overcome!

Let them eat cakes!

It appears that Kim Davis has exhausted her fifteen Andy Warhol minutes.  She might be gone from our news radars, but the struggle between faith-based personal values versus the larger collective, social policies will continue on for a very long time.

Here in the US, we might struggle through the issues, yes.  As that cigar-chomping English racist remarked, Americans will always do the right thing, only after we have tried everything else.  Makes me wonder why we always have to take the long, long, long road to do the right thing.

But, at least here we end up doing the right thing.  I increasingly worry that the trend in the old country is one of doing the wrong things.  Today's exhibit:  vegetarianism.

Of course, this is not the first time that I am blogging about the vegetarian existence.  But, here is an important distinction to keep in mind: I don't make an "ism" out of a preferred way of life.  The moment an "ism" is framed, it immediately leads to an us-versus-them, which is what is rapidly unfolding in India.

The problem is that when vegetarianism—and what you eat in general—is associated with morality, it serves to strengthen distinctions, marking class, education and other indicators of status.

Any holier-than-thou approach, especially in the political space, is bound to be disastrous.

In a national landscape moving towards a narrow definition of what it means to be Indian—specifically, Hindu and high caste, and specifically not Muslim—such distinctions have potentially serious consequences.

Ah, yes, the caste issue comes up again.  The religion issue comes up again.  And you thought food is an easy topic, eh!

We can already see its effects in cities such as Mumbai, where the discourse of purity and pollution around what you eat is so powerful that certain groups are denied access to the housing market on account of their dietary choices. If you belong to the “non-vegetarian” groups—including anyone from Muslims to Christians to Maharashtrians to Dalits—it can be difficult to purchase or rent an apartment. Potential buyers are turned away, presumably, because smells from their kitchen might pollute a neighbour’s flat. With vegetarianism used as a distinguisher between “us” and “them”, Mumbai is becoming an increasingly hostile place for religious minorities.

The struggle will not be resolved anytime soon in the old country.  Nor here in the US.  When individuals claim that their "faith" prevents them from supporting a commercial transaction, societies will have quite a struggle trying to resolve the incompatibility between a secular political democracy with those faith-based practices.  Here in the US, chances are high that the food fight will end up in the Supreme Court.  Remember the bakery here in Oregon that refused service to a same-sex couple?  The baker in Colorado?

The ACLU (yes, I am a card-carrying member) argues:

There’s a growing body of court decisions saying that while religion is central to what makes America America, religion can’t be used as an excuse to discriminate

The other side argues:

Government has a duty to protect people’s freedom to follow their beliefs personally and professionally rather than force them to adopt the government’s views

Here it is cakes.  There it is meat.  All I know is this: we Americans will always do the right thing, only after we have tried everything else.  I can't say that about the old country, however.