United States is the World's oldest and largest Democracy with a creed that ALL men are created EQUAL
US Think Tanks & State Department please note
Washington, D.C., Wednesday, September 10, 2003 - How can an oligarchic state like India, (currently being misruled by the minority Brahmin-caste-dominated Hindutva-fundamentalists of the BJP, (who worship the Swastika and flaunt a medieval, caste-ridden, racist concept, a la Apartheid, that, ALL MEN ARE BORN UNEQUAL which thinking dominates the social and economic life of a billion people captive within its borders) be paraded in front of the world as a Democracy, and accepted as such by not only democratic Europe and Japan but by the world's largest (and oldest) working democracy, the United States?Despite the fact that caste-ridden India has - to its eternal shame - the world's largest group of both economically underprivileged and ritually discriminated-against human beings, it has had the chutzpah to quietly usurp (by constant repetition with shrewdly planted Goebellian disinformation) the title of 'the world's largest democracy', from the United States whose Think Tanks, opinion/decision makers and socalled South Asia 'experts' didn't utter a squeek in protest or disbelief. It is hoped that this column will give some food for thought on the subject and perhaps induce patriotuic elements in the United States to reclaim its well-deserved title of being the world's largest and oldest functioning democracy since 1776. At that point in time, India did not even exist and the subcontinent was divided into hundreds of Princely states, fighting with each other, who were about to fall into the lap of the intrigant, and very greedy robber-merchants of the British East India Company following the decisive victory won, by an Englishman adventurer, Robert Clive (1725-1774 A.D.), in the 1757 battle of Plassey, a village situated North of Calcutta in present day Indian state of West Bengal. That historic battle gave birth to the South Asian 'Quisling' and 'Benedict Arnold' rolled into one, a treasonous character called 'Mir Jaffer'.
The ancient Hindu Caste System, sanctioned by the Rig Veda and codified by Manu's Samriti, and very much prevalent today in India (an under-developed country ranked way down there at 127th out of 175 countries in the latest UN's Human Development Report-2003 - See www.khalistan-affairs.org/khalistancalling/2003/july16.aspx) is one of the world's longest surviving forms of social and economic stratification. The caste system has been embedded in South Asian Hindu culture for thousands of years. It follows a basic precept of Vedic society that, ALL MEN ARE CREATED UNEQUAL (unlike the American concept that ALL men are born EQUAL) and has resulted in the division of India's current Hindu population (about 82% of the over one billion total) into four varnas (colors or major divisions or castes or Zaats or jatis) which are:- Brahmins-about 3%; Kashatriyas (the Warrior caste); Vashiyas (the traders caste), Shudras (the lowest caste) and the outcasts called the Untouchables or achuts. This fifth group, is considered too impure, too polluted to rank as worthy beings and its members are shunned and insulted, banned from temples and higher caste homes and it is not uncommon for them to be raped, beaten, humiliated, burned, lynched and murdered for no apparent reason.
This ancient belief system, that created India's lower castes and untouchables, has overpowered most modern Laws, drafted and promulgated, by the Indian parliament like the Indian Constitution which forbids caste discrimination and is supposed to have abolished Untouchability. Some supposition! The Rig Vedas and the Instruction Manual of the Hindu Caste System - the racist Laws of Manu, drafted about 2,500 years ago, prescribe for each caste whom to marry, what to eat, how to earn money, whom to fight, how to keep clean, and whom to avoid etc., etc. Castes are the building blocks of Hindu society. Membership of a caste is by birth: one may lose one's caste identity by being thrown out of one's caste for severe misconduct but one does not become a member of another caste. Castes reproduce themselves through endogamy ie., marriage within a defined group. Caste occupations are usually hereditary particularly among artisan and 'service' castes. Each caste and subcaste (there may be over 3, 000) stands below, above or on a par with others in a system of strict social ranking.
While the top (Brahmins) and bottom rungs (Shudras & Untouchables) of the social order are fairly well defined there is some competition for the middle positions. According to the traditional Caste ideology, the Brahmin's brain-child, the key to the rank order lies in the notion of ritual purity. Acquisition of wealth is generally inadequate to enable a caste to cross the barrier of purity and pollution. To see the Hindutva ideology at work, in present-day India, please looksee an article, "Cow-Wardly turn', by Ms. Anita Partap in an Indian English language weekly news magazine, THE OUTLOOK, which laments the state of the Indian state, please click at: www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20030324&fname=Column+Anita+Pratap+%28F%29&sid=1
Under the ancient Manu's Draconian Law (Manu Simriti) an untouchable parent gives birth to an untouchable child condemned as unclean from its first breath on this earth. To get an idea of Manu's Law in practice please read an article, headlined, 'Killing for Caste-honor' in the latest issue (September 12, 2003) of India's top English language weekly news magazine, FRONTLINE, by clicking at: www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2018/stories/20030912003403800.htm
This fifth group of Untouchables, much below the Shudras, number nearly 170 million, according to the June 2003, issue of the prestigious National Geographic magazine. They along with other lower castes (about 50% of India's population) plus the monotheistic minorities (Christians;2.9%: Muslims;12%: & Sikhs; 2.4%) make up nearly 84% of India's population ruled by a criminal 16 % minority alliance of the Brahmins (3%) with Kashatriyas and some Bania (traders) castes. To read Tom O'Neil's excellent National Geographic illustrated article, headlined, 'India's Untouchables', please click at: magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0306/feature1/index.html
India's 30 million Christians, the 120 million Muslims - both persecuted monotheistic minorities are called Malaichas (they are Avaran - they are placed outside the caste system) by the Hindutva crowd. No wonder the Christian Nagas declared their independence on August 14, 1947, on which date the Muslims of British India too (who had voted for separation) created Pakistan and unfurled their green flag in Karachi. The Muslim-majority Bangladeshis also refused to merge with India in 1971, and every Sikh - all 24 million of them - pray daily, in every Gurdwara, for Sikh rule - SIKHS WILL RULE:- Raj Karayga Khalsa; Aaaqi Rahaya nah Koyay: Khawar hoiyey Sab Milaingay; Bachay Sharan Joh Hoyay: DILLI Takht Par Bahay Gee; Aap Guru Kee Fauj: Chattar Chulayn gay Sis Par; Barri Karaygee Mauj."
These two, Muslim and Christian, communities (and probably the Sikhs too) along with the 80 million widows of all castes, called Randis (who have to share that vernacular name with prostitutes who are also called Randis) are placed in the Hindu Caste system at a level lower than the fourth caste of Shudras, about the same level as the Untouchables. It is also claimed by Hindutva ideogues that these two monotheistic communities (Christians and Muslims) are all lower caste Hindu converts and they lost their original caste, by pollution, when their forefathers converted as if the cruel Mogul rulers, who did not believe in any Human Rights, allowed the Brahmins to take a census to count as to which Hindu caste was being converted.
The Brahmins have not yet publicly ruled as to where the peaceful and egalitarian Sikhs fit in, in the Hindu caste system as this muscular, egalitarian, vociferous, monotheistic Indian minority (2.4% - 24 million) is frustrating all attempts to Hinduize their religion through covert attempts like the building of the architectural copy of the Golden Temple (Darbar Sahib) - replete with Hindu idols inside - being feverishly completed at the Durgiana temple in Amritsar, located two miles from the original, and covert attempts to open membership to non-Sikhs in Sikh religious institutions etc., etc.
There has indeed been a small social change in the caste-bound Hindu society in India in some areas, like Bihar for example, (and UP to some extent) because of electoral politics based on universal adult franchise. While political power has traditionally been the preserve of the Upper castes, all over India, but these castes are now unable to retain power in some areas without the support of the numerous lower caste associations and vote banks in which financial arrangements (bribery) and criminality has become a major factor in electoral politics. The Indian government is trumpeting this small change in politics as a 'Silent Rvolution' with help of Indophile Western authors and columnists like Christophe Jaffrelot, a director of the Centre d'Etudes et Recherches Internationales (CERI), part of the Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques in Paris, France. He has written a book titled, "India's Silent Revolution - The Rise of the Lower Castes in North India," in which he argues that this trend constitutes a genuine 'democratization' of India and that the social and economic effects of this 'silent revolution' are bound to multiply in the years to come. Some revolution!
This Christophe Jaffrelot's book is currently being discussed in the forums of the widely-read, Washington-based, South Asia Tribune, two million hits a month, (> http://www.satribune.com/thread.jsp?forum=3&thread=941&tstart=0&trange=100 < where an American-Pakistani correspondent, Mr. Ahmed Sheikh, a time-tested sincere friend of the Sikhs and Convenor of; The Committee for a Vatican-like-Status for Gurdwara Janumasthan, Nankana Sahib & Durbar Sahib, Amritsar: ridiculed the author by writing that the Indian Caste system and democracy are not compatible. He wrote in the South Asia Tribune forum, and I quote, that, "Democracy was defined in the land where it was born in the following words written by that great Greek historian, Thucydides (460 B.C.-400 B.C.), in Peloponnesian War; 'We are called a Democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the many and not of the few.' End quote. For a Sikh backgrounder on Indian Democracy please see our newsletter, headlined, "Indian Democracy? By the Brahmin, of the Brahmin and for the Brahmin and the Cow," at: > www.khalistan-affairs.org/khalistancalling/2003/august13.aspx.
In India the administration is in the hands of the few, 'a criminal alliance between the dominant Brahmin castes, a few Kashatriya castes and some wealthy Banias of the Vashiya castes', to use the wise observation of the 'father' of the Indian Constitution, a lower caste Shudra, the late Dr. Bhimrao Ambedhkar whose inumerable statues grace every squalidly ghetto/shanty-town, and there are tens of thousands of them in urban and rural India without even clean drinking water or basic latrines, inhabited by the unfortunate - the oppressed lower and out-castes of Indian Brahminocracy who number nearly 700 million if not more.!