#sure there's rural poor people but in areas like mine it's all rich and upper middle class landowners

[corbinite]

The amount of customers I've had who come in from the country who just admit that they wanna be able to shoot poor people

[thoughtconfrontation-blog]

A letter to people against Reservation in India

4 July 2017

Hello,

My name is Praveen. My interest is to confront thoughts. 

[PLEASE READ UNTIL THE END OR DON’T BOTHER AT ALL]

There are a lot of thoughts that go into the debate about reservation for backward classes in India. I want to share mine because why the hell not? Agree or disagree, I really don’t care but I’m writing this because I think it’s necessary to say and I just want to let it out.

There is a huge history related to Caste-system and discrimination in India that dates back to about 2500 years. Now that’s a long history to cover. In short, the Caste-system, for whatever reason, was made to give a structure to society, as the Hinduism followers say. Frankly, I don’t care what it intended. Just like any other religion based atrocity, I can’t ignore the reality that bred out of this ‘Varna-system’. Almost similar to any racial discrimination, the caste system allowed the upper caste to enslave, oppress, abuse and reign the lower caste. History is the proof and there’s no debate about it. When the Indian constitution was written, B.R. Ambedkar made a point of giving the low caste people, called ‘Dalits’ the equality and dignity every human deserves in a civilized society. And hence, as a result, we ended up with reservation for backwards classes. Needless to say, there is a continued backlash from a certain group of people against reservation. I’m trying to address as many major arguments they give and counter it at the core.

#1. The major argument of the people opposed to reservation, who more often than not, belong to the general category or upper caste as defined by a discriminatory culture that is about 2500 years old, is that “Why punish us with reservation for something that happened in past?” They either don’t understand why reservation exists or they are deliberately trying to blur the fact by playing victim just after 67 years of reservation. The reservation which is intended to boost the social, economical, political, psychological, social and cultural condition of the SCs/STs that suffered discrimination, hate and existential insult for those 2500 years. [continued in the later points]

#2. Second is, about the “real talent” being ruined by giving jobs, seats and opportunities to “undeserving” people because they are not as talented. There are two things that need to be addressed here. First is, the way they imply that lower caste is “undeserving” is just another form of hate speech, which shows a lot about them as a person and what kind of thinking they have. Anyways, the “undeserving” people lack talent, especially compared to these “talented” people is because there’s a difference in the way they have experienced their upbringing. The “talented” ones got the better end of the stick when their forefathers implemented caste-system to oppress the low castes and maintain a monopoly on power, wealth, status, education and culture, while the “undeserving” people come from families that experienced discrimination, have struggled to have ends meet and, due to the lack of exposure cause by the deliberate attempt of upper castes to isolate the growth of lower castes, have struggled to stay updated with educational and social advancements. THAT’S the after effect of all those “things done in the past”. Secondly, this concept itself is flawed when all the dots are connect, because then it is apparent that the “lack of talent”(if any. i think it’s just untapped potential) in low castes is the direct result  of the historical cheating of upper castes to maintain an upper hand in the matter. I mean, if the ‘Varna-system’ was based only on the type of work and not birth, then why would you stop a ‘shudras’ son to opt for the job of ‘brahman’? They way it was justified was ‘Shudras’ are not worthy enough because they can’t comprehend the profound nature of a ‘brahman’s’ work as mentioned by a lot of fundamentalist and extremist religious ‘sadhus’ of hinduism, and that’s how it has been practiced. the reason only seems the deliberate attempt to keep the low caste dominated.

#3. Equality is a liberal issue originated from a progressive mentality and I fully understand the meaning of liberalism. If extreme conservatives had their way, there’d be no democracy, so clearly, democracy is a result of progressive mentality combined with sensible flexibility of conservative mentality. But a concept is as good as it’s use and context. So, the third point is about the argument of some self proclaimed liberals of upper castes that say, “I don’t agree with caste system and it’s bad, but caste shouldn’t be the criteria for reservations. The criteria should be economic.” It’s agreed upon that caste-system and caste-ism is bad and is just another form of racism and yes, the economical struggle of majority of Indian population is very real. But, that economical struggle is very different from the struggle of people discriminated based on caste (to a majority of them, the economical struggles happened because of the discrimination. Even the now above average low caste people have managed to endure that economical struggle with the help of reservation but that number is very few). So, the economical struggle is a problem on it’s own which didn’t originate from reservation but is solved for some by it. Economical struggle happens because of the wealth inequality where the rich gets richer and poor gets poorer. That is something that can be dealt by government because it has that power but Indian government isn’t very reliable with money and power but I hope that’ll change. Now, observation will show that most riches are resting on the laps of those who hail from the upper castes. And sure, there’s a majority of upper caste people who are struggling but so are the majority of low castes. There’s a big difference in the number of rich upper caste people and rich lower caste people. I’ll give you three guesses to guess which number is bigger than the other. Now, the second par of the problem is the desperate attempt of such people to deny any and all existence of caste based discrimination in India, right after the start reservation, almost like the few white people in US who insist racism was a long time ago. [I recommend that you check out what Louis C.K., the comedian, said about this *https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MD6Rjyo77NY* 9:45 to 11:40 minutes ]. As Louis C.K. said, in Indian context it’s not like things have been great after reservation happened. it’s not like a clean dump after which you don’t have to wipe. It’s still a factor in how people live their lives in India. If you think caste isn’t a factor in “modern India” they you are ignorant at best, stupid at neutral and diabolical at worst. The “rich” low castes whose success is such an eye sore still has to deal with caste based discrimination, should he/she mention his/her caste.And he/she will have to mention it because that’s the basis for treating others, our behavior around them and mostly, to judge them as human beings.

#4. The next is the argument of upper castes advocating the needs of those low caste people who never receive the reservation and it’s benefits, which says, “only a select few have received the reservation and continue to benefit from it while those poor people who need it never get it.” This argument may seem noble, but in reality it’s just a tool to undermine the positive effects of reservation by giving that as a reason why reservation is not effective. i mean, Calm the fuck down. It’s only been 67 years. there’s at least 2400 or so years more to go. This argument shows that the upper castes, now, care so much about those lower caste people who never get reservation when it fits their agenda to disrupt whatever growth is occurring in low caste communities. Maybe it’s not deliberate but it’s an ugly example of selfish nature of humanity at the very least. I think, they need to understand that, because of all the oppression done in the past, a lot of low caste people don’t have the thought process to understand how reservation is beneficial for them, especially while dealing with all the economical, social and cultural drawbacks. Most of them just want to live their life peacefully. They are not particularly ambitious but it’s time that they should be. Even after the reservation was established in Indian constitution, it took a while for low caste people to be bold enough to trust themselves and the government(because authorities have been mostly oppressive to them), to take necessary steps. It’ll take time. I don’t think you can blame someone who has been forced to live a certain way for the majority of his/her existence, to take a while to find the confidence to even take a step to change things for better. And as for the (economically and only economically) above average low castes, they are leading by example, don’t think there’s no contribution done by reservation. So, now, Upper castes need to either really put in the effort to uplift the lower caste and go to rural areas to tell the low castes about reservation and it’s benefits, maybe at least practice tolerance, compassion and acceptance in their way of thinking and encourage their fellow upper castes, who might be prejudiced towards lower castes, to practice acceptance and compassion OR realize that their whining from the comfort of their social, cultural and psychological security is not doing anybody any good.

#5. Some upper caste people think that this is about power. That is simply because they are either naive and don’t understand the situation completely or they are worried they’d lose their upper hand in this power play. And given the historical proof of the abuse of the power in caste based discrimination, it is necessary that some equilibrium is established. And about the argument that low caste people with above average salary shouldn’t get reservation, i think it would make sense only when the low caste people have achieved equality and equity in all aspects of civil existence of India i.e social, economical, authoritarian, psychological, cultural and human. Until that is achieved, reservation is justified.

    After mentioning all that is said above, it is clear why reservation is needed and justified, but there’s still a big belief of upper castes that the reservation is some sort of punishment against upper castes. Give the history of this issue and the things that have been done, some would say a punishment seems only fair but that’s not how we grow as a society. And the people who wrote the constitution understood that. Punishment for upper castes is not what low caste is looking for. All it wants is reimbursement for all the losses that it had to suffer throughout the history of India. And that’s what reservation does. It’s was the first and still is a step on government front to achieve equality at economical, political and social level. Now, all that is left to be done is the achievement of equality at the psychological, cultural and human level, which is ultimately depended on the people from both castes. If you are still so greedy, selfish, ignorant and arrogant to neglect this fact then i think there’s not much hope for India.