Are Brahmins the Dalits of today?

Are Brahmins the Dalits of today?(An article frm rediff )

At a time when the Congress government wants to raise the quota for Other Backward Classes to 49.5 per cent in private and public sectors, nobody talks about the plight of the upper castes. The public image of the Brahmins, for instance, is that of an affluent, pampered class. But is it so today?


There are 50 Sulabh Shauchalayas (public toilets) in Delhi; all of them are cleaned and looked after by Brahmins (this very welcome public institution was started by a Brahmin). A far cry from the elitist image that Brahmins have!

There are five to six Brahmins manning each Shauchalaya. They came to Delhi eight to ten years back looking for a source of income, as they were a minority in most of their villages, where Dalits are in majority (60 per cent to 65 per cent). In most villages in UP and Bihar, Dalits have a union which helps them secure jobs in villages.


Did you know that you also stumble upon a number of Brahmins working as coolies at Delhi's railway stations? One of them, Kripa Shankar Sharma, says while his daughter is doing her Bachelors in Science he is not sure if she will secure a job.

"Dalits often have five to six kids, but they are confident of placing them easily and well," he says. As a result, the Dalit population is increasing in villages. He adds: "Dalits are provided with housing, even their pigs have spaces; whereas there is no provision for gaushalas (cowsheds) for the cows of the Brahmins."


You also find Brahmin rickshaw pullers in Delhi. 50 per cent of Patel Nagar's rickshaw pullers are Brahmins who like their brethren have moved to the city looking for jobs for lack of employment opportunities and poor education in their villages.

Even after toiling the whole day, Vijay Pratap and Sidharth Tiwari, two Brahmin rickshaw pullers, say they are hardly able to make ends meet. These men make about Rs 100 to Rs 150 on an average every day from which they pay a daily rent of Rs 25 for their rickshaws and Rs 500 to Rs 600 towards the rent of their rooms which is shared by 3 to 4 people or their families.

Did you also know that most rickshaw pullers in Banaras are Brahmins?


This reverse discrimination is also found in bureaucracy and politics. Most of the intellectual Brahmin Tamil class has emigrated outside Tamil Nadu. Only 5 seats out of 600 in the combined UP and Bihar assembly are held by Brahmins -- the rest are in the hands of the Yadavs.

400,000 Brahmins of the Kashmir valley, the once respected Kashmiri Pandits, now live as refugees in their own country, sometimes in refugee camps in Jammu and Delhi in appalling conditions. But who gives a damn about them? Their vote bank is negligible.

And this is not limited to the North alone. 75 per cent of domestic help and cooks in Andhra Pradesh are Brahmins. A study of the Brahmin community in a district in Andhra Pradesh (Brahmins of India by J Radhakrishna, published by Chugh Publications) reveals that today all purohits live below the poverty line.

Eighty per cent of those surveyed stated that their poverty and traditional style of dress and hair (tuft) had made them the butt of ridicule. Financial constraints coupled with the existing system of reservations for the 'backward classes' prevented them from providing secular education to their children.


In fact, according to this study there has been an overall decline in the number of Brahmin students. With the average income of Brahmins being less than that of non-Brahmins, a high percentage of Brahmin students drop out at the intermediate level. In the 5 to 18 year age group, 44 per cent Brahmin students stopped education at the primary level and 36 per cent at the pre-matriculation level.

The study also found that 55 per cent of all Brahmins lived below the poverty line -- below a per capita income of Rs 650 a month. Since 45 per cent of the total population of India is officially stated to be below the poverty line it follows that the percentage of destitute Brahmins is 10 per cent higher than the all-India figure.

There is no reason to believe that the condition of Brahmins in other parts of the country is different. In this connection it would be revealing to quote the per capita income of various communities as stated by the Karnataka finance minister in the state assembly: Christians Rs 1,562, Vokkaligas Rs 914, Muslims Rs 794, Scheduled castes Rs 680, Scheduled Tribes Rs 577 and Brahmins Rs 537.

Appalling poverty compels many Brahmins to migrate to towns leading to spatial dispersal and consequent decline in their local influence and institutions. Brahmins initially turned to government jobs and modern occupations such as law and medicine. But preferential policies for the non-Brahmins have forced Brahmins to retreat in these spheres as well.


According to the Andhra Pradesh study, the largest percentage of Brahmins today are employed as domestic servants. The unemployment rate among them is as high as 75 per cent. Seventy percent of Brahmins are still relying on their hereditary vocation. There are hundreds of families that are surviving on just Rs 500 per month as priests in various temples (Department of Endowments statistics).

Priests are under tremendous difficulty today, sometimes even forced to beg for alms for survival. There are innumerable instances in which Brahmin priests who spent a lifetime studying Vedas are being ridiculed and disrespected.

At Tamil Nadu's Ranganathaswamy Temple, a priest's monthly salary is Rs 300 (Census Department studies) and a daily allowance of one measure of rice. The government staff at the same temple receive Rs 2,500 plus per month. But these facts have not modified the priests' reputation as 'haves' and as 'exploiters.' The destitution of Hindu priests has moved none, not even the parties known for Hindu sympathy.

The tragedy of modern India is that the combined votes of Dalits/OBC and Muslims are enough for any government to be elected. The Congress quickly cashed in on it after Independence, but probably no other government than Sonia Gandhi's has gone so far in shamelessly dividing Indian society for garnering votes.

The Indian government gives Rs 1,000 crores (Rs 10 billion) for salaries of imams in mosques and Rs 200 crores (Rs 2 billion) as Haj subsidies. But no such help is available to Brahmins and upper castes. As a result, not only the Brahmins, but also some of the other upper castes in the lower middle class are suffering in silence today, seeing the minorities slowly taking control of their majority.



Anti-Brahminism originated in, and still prospers in anti-Hindu circles. It is particularly welcome among Marxists, missionaries, Muslims, separatists and Christian-backed Dalit movements of different hues. When they attack Brahmins, their target is unmistakably Hinduism.

So the question has to be asked: are the Brahmins (and other upper castes) of yesterday becoming the Dalits of today?

 

[upendra_food]

the brahmanic conspiracy

hello friend
wat rubbbish you are taking about the conditions of dalits.first of all you quote the source from where you have got this totally irrrelevant data.50 toilets,dalits having 5-6 children.dont you think brahmins dont have 5-6 childrens.and who says that their jobs are secure.

do you have any idea about the percentage of dalit people having topmost positions in government sector?just get the complete figres from ministry of social justice & enpowerment.but i can give you an idea class A-2-5%,class d 60-65%.that means thier condition is not good in goverment sector.

now my friend wat is happeniing today,its just the result of the seeds that wre sown by brahmins several years ago.

A SHORT STORY

The Tamilian race of people is of an ancient stock. Some scholars are convinced that the Tamils originated from the continent of Lemuria that was later lost to the ocean. The Tamils were a sophisticated people in that they developed complex social structures. Their culture possessed spiritually sensitive art forms - prose and poetry; music; dance and drama. The exquisite Tamil language couched the esoteric essence of its people with intricate grammar. Some ancient literary works (6BC) place Tamils as the first circumnavigators. Essentially the Tamils were a spiritual people. Tamilians have practised twin form of spirituality namely Saivism and Thirumalism until the incremental invasion of the Aryans. That is to say, that the Tamils acquired not only the worship of icons/idols but also the practice of offering fire sacrifices (Verlvi) as a result of northern invasion. Sivan or Thirumal worship in its purest form meant that the Tamils worshipped the ubiquitous Cosmic Spirit – the invisible One without any aid of iconography. Formation of such seminal thoughts could be traced in ancient Tamil literature including the Sitthar padalgal. For example, a Sitthar Tamil poem sings: “Natta Kallai suttriyai; Naalu puspam sathiyai; sutri vanthu mona mona yendru sollum manthiram yethadar; natta kallum pesumo nathan ullil erukaiyil?” The mystic through this song raises the question as to why one should worship an inanimate object while “Nathan” - the indwelling Spirit / the Master of the universe is residing within one self. The divine interiority of each person was paramount to the Tamil mind. It is not far from the truth to say that the Tamils have adhered to a monotheistic framework and referred to God either as Thirumal or Sivan.

We propose that much cultural/spiritual corruption came via the Brahmins as they conspired to enslave the Tamils, inter alios, politically, intellectually, and spiritually.

Corrupting Influence




Advanced civilisation of the Tamils divided the habitable landscape into four distinct areas. That distinction of habitation reflected their art and culture respectively. The four separate areas were 1) Kurungee: mountainous terrain 2) Mullai: Forest and the surrounding area 3) Marutham: Cleared area of ‘green site’ settlements 4) Naithal: Sea and dwellings along the coastline.

The cultural perception of the ancient Tamil mind was not to separate people, as some wrongly propagates, into castes. The system of caste entered the mindset of the Tamils only when the Brahmins arrived at the scene. The primary violence however, the Brahmin did to the spiritual mind of the Tamil was to evict the Tamil language from the act of worship by surreptitiously introducing an unknown tongue, Sanskrit as the “sacred” language of the gods. This was an ideal political move on the part of the Aryans in order they might colonise initially the Dravidian mind. They understood the significance of capturing and occupying the mind first by promoting a superior notion of a ‘heavenly’ language. This was a convenient arrangement to exclude the masses. Only a ‘divinely authorised’ cognitive class was enabled to pronounce the mantra and robe the role of a ‘go between’ the common worshipper and newly introduced gods.

When someone needed to communicate to the gods, one would now require the assistance of the Brahmin who could articulate ‘god language’. It was a bit like the Latin Mass! Such religious monopoly was utterly new to the spiritually minded Tamil!

Then the secondary assault of inferiority had its knock on effect through the belief-system of caste consciousness. This was indeed again a very much a novel idea to the Tamils, or for that matter to all Dravidians in the continent.

In order for the Brahmin to be on the top of the hierarchical pyramid they were obliged to invent the theology of Varna. Prior to delving into that, we must note another subtle shift. It is widely believed by cultural Anthropologist that within the spirituality of the Tamils there was found a singular practise of agrarian offering as opposed to the later Brahmanic introduction of animal sacrifices in the context of Verlvi/Yakam. It is further understood, that originally, the Tamils were highly complexed in their understanding of spirituality and in that, unlike other ancient peoples, there seem to be no evidence of engaging in the worship of Fire nor did they ever incorporate fire in their modes of worship. It is deliberate that their worship of God did not spring out of fear. Human or animal sacrifice was hardly practised among the ancient Tamils. We are reminded of the “Foundational sacrificial murder” of Abel that arose within the context of worship. This narrative is found in the book of Genesis in the Hebrew Scripture. It is relevant to observe here that Cain’s first offering to God was an agrarian ‘sacrifice’. The ancient Tamils similarly offered to God only such ‘sacrifice’. Their perception of God might have pictured a compassionate Supreme Being that needed no appeasing with blood. Such peaceful spirituality must have impacted the way they related within the community.

As the influence of the Brahmins grew and captured the fertile imagination of the Tamil mind their sole deity Sivan/Thirumal was subtly displaced by Brahmanism. Owing to the Brahmanic intellectual chauvinism the Tamils were coerced in to the idea of a pantheon of gods and began to view the Supreme as Brahma. It was uniquely an internal religious conversion. This was a paradigm shift in terms of indigenous belief system. By giving room to such a minor adjustment, the thraldom of caste consciousness was to make a cancerous impact on the minds of the Tamils. It was designed to divide, degrade and of course rule the Tamils thereafter! Remember however, the Brahmin occupied the next highest place to God. Such an ingenious theological invention virtually abetted the ascendancy of the Brahmin. It must be pointed out that the Buddha challenged the authority of the Brahmins. He further questioned the sacrificial ritual in his philosophy and got rid of Brahma as the Creator. By doing so, Buddha challenged the caste-system, which is the heartbeat of the Vedic religion.

The complexion of VarnaVarnam means colour. The Brahmanic system of colour, put in contemporary language, would be nothing but a system of apartheid. Some scholars, in order to preserve the system of caste, tend to propose that the four varnas are merely a stratification of society – a social ordering if you like. The Brahmins like the Afrikaners masked such abominable thinking in rich religious connotation in order to brain wash the masses. They introduced the idea of ritualistic purity/holiness, which was totally alien to the Tamil. The degradation of the out castes as impure was immense, to say the least. It is inherently a warped deterministic worldview. Thankfully the current debate on Dalit theologies knock out of joint such colossal myths.

The genius of the Varna was to derive the Brahmin from Brahma (God). It seems to the modern mind as a sinister word play. Such tinkering of the minds devalues other human persons as lower castes. Those persons who do not come into the periphery of the caste system are demonised as outcastes and therefore, deemed to be simply “things” or non-entities.

The four castes are Brahmin; Sathriya; Vaisiya; Soothra. A religious propaganda was advanced that God has created Brahman out of his head/face meaning that Brahmin is the face of God to the masses (a bit like the Hebrew Moses!) and they were the chosen priests and scribes. A little lower, Sathriya was said to be created out of God’s shoulder. That meant they were the warriors and aristocrats who were the strength and protection to society. Further lower down, the Vaisiya, who was created out of God’s thigh; meaning that these were the merchants who supported both the Brahman and the Sathriya. On the bottom were the Soothra who was destined to serve the above castes because they were created from the feet. This system as it seems, on the surface, disguises its venom as the division of labour. The toxin of such thinking works much deeper than that. The castes were also given colour coding: White; red; gold and black. It is no surprise that the supremacy of the Brahmin grades black to be the colour of the poor. Such poisonous ideas were injected into the Dravidian mind as religious thought.

Recovery

In the past, there have been many attempts made by various Dravidian progressive political parties and social reform movements, particularly in South India, in order to detox society from the addiction to Brahmanic myths. It is no easy task they found, to uproot archaic thought patterns. Once you believe a system of dangerous lies, when it’s presented as a religious idea in particular, then it becomes a near impossibility to eliminate

One begins to dream however, in the context of the liberation struggle of the Ceylon Tamils, such tyrannical ideas and thought patterns could be replaced in the young minds from drawing from Tamilian root ideas and authentic spiritual beliefs and original social values.

There are reasons to believe that the ruling elitist Brahmins in India seem to be instinctively threatened by the “danger” of the emancipatory praxis of the Ceylon Tamils. Therefore, they will continue to undermine the quest for liberty. We wish to advance the idea of Thamil Eelam as more than a political entity that encompasses spiritual, social and intellectual liberation to Tamils – who are among one of the most ancient and culturally unique and distinct race of people on this planet.

That is the reason why Bharathiyar sang: Thamilan Endru sollada; Thalai Nemirnthu nillada. This is not to be interpreted as an inflated nationalistic pride. On the contrary, it is to be viewed from an angle of redeeming Tamil consciousness from inferiority complex. It is looked in terms of human rights: one’s intrinsic value and inherent right to determine his/her spiritual, socio-political, cultural destiny. In the light of current liberative praxis, the tyranny of a centuries old cyclic conspiracy is totally incompatible.

Epilogue: The authors are clear that this article should not be misinterpreted as a personal attack on any particular religion or on any individual Brahmin. The whole argument is advanced against both the intellectual tyranny and the thraldom of mind to the consciousness and the system of caste in the name of God. This is an attempt to show the illogical stance of such theologies and to high light the incompatibility of such thinking not only to the modern mind but also in particular to the ancient Tamil mind.

 

[gaurav200x]

Re: the brahmanic conspiracy

Everyone knows what was there in the past and i don't deny that. However, what u need to realise is that the "good" can't be done by doing "bad" to someone. So it is irrevelant to quote the whole history...

If we just start doing it like this... then, one day, we might as well demand that the british ruled us for 200 yrs.. and now they must repay for it. So now we will rule them for 200 yrs.. What do u have to say about it?

Things dont work like this.

 

[dinu83]

Re: the brahmanic conspiracy

i agree with gaurav......in the 21st century, we talk about equality of gender and race...there is no use talking about history.......we should be thinking about how this equality can be achieved to the fullest extent.......just for the simple reason that 100+ years ago, the lower castes were ill-treated does not provide a justification for the same to be done to bramhins/upper castes today......Do u think japan should drop 2 nuclear bombs in America for the massacre of 2nd world war?.....whatever happened in history was unfortunate....but as a society and civilization, we should be moving forward...not backward or sideways...

Everyone knows what was there in the past and i don't deny that. However, what u need to realise is that the "good" can't be done by doing "bad" to someone. So it is irrevelant to quote the whole history...

If we just start doing it like this... then, one day, we might as well demand that the british ruled us for 200 yrs.. and now they must repay for it. So now we will rule them for 200 yrs.. What do u have to say about it?

Things dont work like this.