#Caste

[timetravellingkitty]

I saw something on Twitter about how vegetarian (and specifically UC I think) condemning non-vegetarians for eating meat is casteist but I don't see how? I'm genuinely confused, please explain if possible 😭

because upper caste elites have attached moral purity to consuming only vegetarian food and shaming dalit communities for eating meat (especially beef) cause it makes them impure/dirty. dalits and muslims (who also eat beef) are regularly lynched on the mere SUSPICION of eating or handling beef

[lalsitare]

what we really need to explain to the brahmins collectively, with guns in their mouth, is that the first sign of equity among castes would be when they stop asking for reservations to be gone

[certified-yapper-guy]

the youth of india that has submitted to facism and right wing politics very conveniently complains about reservations but not about the lack of opportunities and seats by the government.

like do you really think by removing reservation, there would still be enough seats in institutions for lakhs of students?

the entire entrance system is a symptom of govt incapability to provide basic higher education and jobs and trap the youth into giving exams and blame their failure on students/candidates/people for not cracking them.

again, what good can come from the generation that believes that the government's responsibility is to build temples rather than focus on important things like education, infrastructure, development etc. these terms are almost non existent and alien.

[that-odd-puzzle-piece]

Something that Americans (and also other Western people, but especially Americans) need to understand is how much US hegemony affects non americans, and how much power you guys hold over us.

The only problems we talk about are the ones that the west notices, because all of social media, and honestly, all of power, is held by America and the west. We don't talk about genocides that have been happening for centuries and problems like caste that pervade south Asian and the treatment of indigenous populations in different countries because Americans don't talk about it.

The only reason the world is noticing Palestine is because the west decided to take interest, and the only way Palestine will be free and all these problems will be brought into the world's eye is through the west's (and Americans') continued interest.

Look into these problems, talk about these problems. We wear jeans and watch American shows and eat from American food joints. The kind of soft power you guys hold is unimaginable. Use it.

[haveyoureadthisbook-poll]

[breadpakodaa]

every day i scroll through the casteism tag on tumblr and it makes me want to cry because like. how can you hate us so much? after killing us, after raping us, after everything, how can you possibly hate us this much? simply because we try to climb up the social ladder. we dream of being your equals? that is our crime?

my great grandmother had to raise four kids on her own in the 50s, because her husband died in a raid. why was he part of the raid? because there was a literal law preventing him from getting a job, getting an education because apparently my people are 'criminal by nature'. but he had to feed his children. so he became what they perceived him as. he turned to crime. the people in my village were lined up and inspected on a daily basis. i can't even begin to imagine what that must have been like.

i grew up on stories of persecution. persecution of my people.you put them through that yet you hate us? simply for wanting social dignity?

[rileycruel]

[aut2imagineart]

As challenging as arthropods are to draw, I wanted to create a detailed look at one of my two uplifted which I call the Sprites. I actually imagine a story line with these and the other new uplifted the Scurachin who will get their own dedicated post.

Like the rest of the uplifted from my Centauri Universe, the Sprites are hybrids of various Earth animals that possess human level sapience. In their case, the Sprites are a combination of ants, bees, and portia spiders. They consist of four main castes (workers, warriors, drones, and queens) and communicate primarily through pheromones, visuals, and vibrations. The workers, the most numerous caste, and responsible for constructing elaborate nests and communication systems (a network of vibrating web strands) as well as hunting and gathering. Like bees and ants respectively, Sprites are callable of making honey and growing fungi as alternate food sources. Though all castes have venomous vangs, the warriors are the only caste to possess stingers and can spray formic acid. Their role is to protect their colonies as well as assist in hunting more dangerous prey. In normal bee and ant colonies, the drones sole purpose is to breed with the queens (often perishing shorty afterwards). Sprite drones serve a similar purpose but have more individual intelligence due to their larger size they play some leadership roles along with the queens. Being the largest caste members, the queens have the most individual intelligence as their size allows larger brains and more neuron density. Due to this, they play major roles in leadership as well as breed. However, much like bees, sprites actually have a democratic system where important actions (moving locations, gathering spots, attacking targets, etc) are voted on by the other caste members with even the workers suggesting key actions.

As mentioned previously I'll do a dedicated post to my other new uplifted at some point in the future. I'm working full time now so my posts will unfortunately be a little less frequent.

As always, comments and critiques are welcome.

[timetravellingkitty]

i cannot keep having the same conversation. when we say abolish hinduism we mean the abolition of a system espousing a form of social stratification that hinges on notions of purity. it means the abolition of a colonial synthesis of disparate traditions into one standard vedic religion. this could only be made possible by the process of sanskritisation. hinduism is a continuation of historical brahminism and we must do away with the chains of caste society

[panimalar]

From 2012 but worth a read. The so called progressive states btw

[enigma-the-mysterious]

Genuine question for the upper caste people in desiblr. Why do you think "caste is in the past"? Everytime I have seen someone confidently proclaiming that caste is a problem of a bygone era it is always a UC. You guys don't live our reality. You guys don't know the first thing about what it is like from our side. So why do you feel comfortable speaking for us? Would you like it if a British person were to proclaim that colonialism wasn't actually so bad? No? Then why is it different for us?

[curtwilde]

"High Tea at the Kapurs" by Karuna Ezara Parikh

[naxalbari1967]

Hindutva Is the Death of the Living

Hindutva is not a religion. It is not faith. It is not culture. It is a fascist political machine built by caste elites, financed by capital, and protected by the state. It has nothing to do with worship and everything to do with power. It is not trying to kill everyone in its path. It is trying to break them down into obedient workers, housewives, soldiers, informants. Hindutva is slavery rebuilt as nationalism. It is caste apartheid in the uniform of a soldier. It is the enemy of every worker, every student, every farmer, every woman, every Muslim, every Dalit, every voice that does not bend the knee. And the only reason it rules is because the Indian state let it.

The British never ruled India alone. They ruled with Brahmins, zamindars, and merchant castes. The same people who today run Hindutva ran colonial India for the empire. In return for loyalty, the British gave them the tools to dominate the rest of the population. They rewrote local customs as religion, froze caste into law, turned myths into history, and armed the top of the caste ladder with state power. The word Hinduism itself is a colonial invention. There was no such unified thing before. There was only Brahmanism and a patchwork of regional cults, practices, deities, and caste hierarchies. The British wanted a census, so they invented categories. They wanted allies, so they elevated Brahmins. They wanted loyalty, so they gave land and education to collaborators. Then they funded race science in Europe, built the myth of Aryan superiority, and the Indian elites swallowed it whole.

Savarkar read this garbage and saw his future. A Hindu Reich modeled after Nazi Germany, where blood and soil would replace freedom and solidarity. He rejected spirituality and built a racial identity. Hindus were not a religion anymore. They were a race. Their land was sacred, their enemies were internal. Muslims, Christians, communists, and anyone who refused to submit became the target. The RSS was born as a paramilitary. Uniforms, drills, marching, flags, oaths. Children were trained to hate. Hate the Other, worship the State, obey the Party. Hindu Rashtra was never about belief. It was about control. It still is.

Congress never destroyed it. Congress coexisted with it. They banned books, outlawed Maoists, gunned down revolutionaries, passed emergency laws, and jailed trade unionists. But they never touched the RSS. They never dismantled caste power. They never gave land to the landless. They never rebuilt the police or courts or textbooks after empire. The only reason Hindutva was in the shadows for decades was because it didn’t need to rule directly. Congress was already doing its work. The difference now is that the mask is off. The temples are corporate headquarters. The universities are jails. The TV studios are war rooms. The police are gangs. The laws are weapons.

This is not religion. This is fascism. It is modern, not ancient. It was built in the twentieth century. It is backed by billionaires, arms dealers, tech companies, and the same international powers that once backed colonialism. It has no interest in truth. It wants myths. It has no interest in harmony. It wants silence. It has no interest in peace. It wants surrender. It is not interested in killing everybody. That would be too inefficient. It wants you alive, afraid, watching your words, proving your loyalty, hating your neighbors, fearing your children, blaming the weak. It wants you broken.

This is what makes it more dangerous than other forms of fascism. It doesn’t only rely on the military. It lives inside the family, the school, the marriage, the temple, the wedding, the water tank, the office, the village council, the WhatsApp group, the TV remote. It does not knock on your door. It is already inside your head. And it is not going anywhere unless you tear it out.

You cannot vote it out. You cannot debate it. You cannot negotiate with it. You cannot educate it. You cannot reason with people who see rape as tradition, lynching as justice, poverty as karma, and genocide as purity. You can only organize against it. And to organize you need to name it. Hindutva is the enemy. Not Islam. Not Maoism. Not separatism. Not corruption. Not foreign influence. Hindutva. The union of Brahmanism and capital. The weapon of caste power. The shadow of empire. The enforcer of slavery.

The left must stop acting like this is a culture war. It is not. It is a class war where caste is the frontline. Every communist must understand that caste is not a side issue. It is the central structure holding up the entire system. The Indian state is built on caste. The economy is built on caste. The army, the schools, the elections, the bureaucracy, the media, all of it is caste. And Hindutva is the armed wing of that caste structure.

If you do not fight it, it will eat you. Not all at once. Slowly. From within. Like rust in iron. Like poison in water. Like fire in dry grass.

[papenathys]

Sign this petition and show your solidarity to Yashica Dutt, Dalit writer and activist whose life experiences and immensely personal narratives of caste identity were plagiarized from her memoir, for an episode storyline by the makers of a famous Indian show, "Made in Heaven" without any credit to Dutt.

Worse, when Dutt recognized the similarities between her writing/life and the characters in the show, the makers of the show including famous Bollywood directors Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti humiliated her, issued a formal statement on social media accusing her of seeking attention and spearheaded a hate campaign against her, allied with bigshots of the Hindi film industry, included noted casteist filmmaker Anurag Kashyap.

Casteism is one of the evils in India that even faux-progressive liberals don't want to talk about, because it hurts their veneer of being perfect activists in every other spectrum (religion, sexuality, political ideology). By sharing your support towards this author, you help in resisting the campaign by savarna rich Bollywood celebrities trying to silence a Dalit academic.

[life-spire]

@ vish.px