Dr. Joseph D'souza
President - Dalit Freedom Network
(www.dalitnetwork.
org)
President - All India Christian Council
(www.aiccindia.
org)
On February 23, 2007, the Indian government
delegation appearing before the UN treaty body
the CERD (International Convention of the Elimination
of Racial Discrimination) testified that in
India there are no more Brahmins, Kshatriyas,
Vaishyas, Sudras and Dalits! It is unbelievable
that the Government spokesperson for this viewpoint
was the Jawaharlal Nehru University Professor
Deepankar Gupta. The CERD body was not amused
by this blatant denial of the operation of the
caste system and the kind of unconvincing answers
given by the Indian delegation to the pertinent
and straight forward questions raised by the
CERD experts on the issue of Dalits discrimination.
India is a signatory to this International Convention.
Over a week ago, the States of Uttarkhand and
Punjab held their State elections. Pollsters
were openly describing the impact of the Upper
Caste vote bank, the Dalit vote, the Jat Vote
and the Backward Caste vote.
Hello Mr. Deepankar Gupta! Which India and New
Delhi are you living in that you can deny that
the caste system exists? Is it the city of the
`Hindustan Times' newspaper which weekly carries
pages of matrimonial columns where the marriage
advertisements are sub-divided along caste lines?
Or do you also deny that these advertisements
occur week after week? Perhaps we should deny
that even a paper like the `Hindustan Times'
exists before the CERD committee. Alas, how
far we Indians have fallen as we deny our soul-destroying
social disorder.
The Indian Government and the economic bosses
of India need to know that just as the phenomenon
of `the world is flat' has benefited India enormously
in terms of jobs, economy and global presence,
the same `flat world' now fully reveals what
was hidden about India for thousands of years
– the social disorder of
the caste system.
Fifty years after India's Independence, the
atrocities against Dalits have increased and
not decreased. There are over 100,000 registered
cases annually of violence against the Dalits
today! The lack of a social conscience among
the power brokers of Indian society stands exposed
in the flat world.
We are only fooling ourselves by not addressing
our social disorder.
The flat world does not believe that the caste
system is abolished. They now know that caste
dominates Indian politics more than ever in
our history. Caste polarization is a political
and social reality. As the Dalit delegates to
the UN conference at Durban announced, caste
is worse than racism. The Prime Minister has
compared the Dalit problem to apartheid in South
Africa. So it is a moot point to enter into
a philosophical discourse on whether casteism
and racism are the same. The Dalits who are
violated daily do not live in the lecturers'
hall of the universities. They live outside
in the slums, the towns, the villages, in the
bastis. They are found among the child laborers
and the girls trafficked in the sex trade all
across India.
The same disorder of caste ideology which devalues
women and the girl child is causing havoc with
our social balance. On December 12, 2006, UNICEF
finally declared that we Indians kill off 2.5
million unborn female babies each year. This
is nothing but the genocide of Indian women
and there will be terrible consequences in the
years to come as the ratio of men and women
falls rapidly in many parts of the country.
This is the time to banish the caste system
out of our social structure, minds, lives and
society, and not the time to bluff the world
in Global Forums. Time has run out for the caste
system and its blatant devaluation and dehumanization
of human beings.
Source from
http://www.dalitnet work.org/ go?/dfn/blog/
the_end_of_ upper_caste_ propag anda_in_global_
forums
Posted by: "grimgargantua" grimgargantua@email.com
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