By Manoj Kumar Paras
India is the country of unity in diversity. Close look of Indian society give you more insight on diversity than unity. The foremost reason for this division is the caste system. This exists irrespective of the religion. Defeat of Dr. Ambedkar in the general assembly election could be considered as the outcome of hated system. It is beyond imagination that how a person could lose election after writing constitution. If he would not have signed Poona pact in 1932, British would have created one more division of the country. Finally he adopted Buddhism to get rid of the abhorrence system of caste.
In the independent India, Many think that reservation given to the depressed caste is injustices to them. Now demands have been made to revise caste system on economy ground not on caste. While making such demand they just ignore the fact that caste is directly related to the financial condition in the majority of cases. Person from lower caste are engaged in lower jobs. This makes them to struggle for them to earn livelihood. In this circumstance caste and financial condition of particular community cannot be seen separately.
In the past caste system were made on the basis of work. Like “Rajput” were meant to rule and protect society. “Brahmin” was supposed to be involved in intellectual activities. However mediocre caste like “Yadav” was associated with cattle while “Kurmi” were engaged in agriculture. Moreover lower caste were directly or indirectly assisting middle and upper level to perform their duties. Caste of person was supposed to be changed as per work. If a person from middle level caste is capable to do duty of upper caste, then his caste was supposed to be changed. Similarly a lower caste person can also move to upper or middle level on the basis of capability. Same time person born in upper caste can move to lower strata of society due to his incapability or inefficiency.
Work was determinant of caste not the family in which one took the birth.
Caste was not supposed to be an identity which can be passed to children or can be taken from ancestor.
It was supposed to be earned from work on the basis of capability and performance.
In the history we have seen that when a king tried to give his empire to incapable children. The kingdom was either won by other ruler or citizen has revolted. Unfortunately same thing has happened in Indian society. Affection towards children had made caste system transferrable. Many people from upper strata of society wanted to retain the resources for their family. Hence they started transferring their work. Resultantly many incapable people were started holding the top most job inspite of their inability. To further protect their position they had started harassing capable people who born in the lower strata of society. This had given birth to most filthy practice in the Indian society.
Now many incapable person wanted abolition of reservation system. One needs to understand that this is not special privilege given to any community. This is an opportunity given to person who was under privilege from centuries. The atrocities made by inefficient resource owner had changed their thought process. This had made them timid. This can be easily observed in office where clerk belonging to upper caste are bolder than officer from under privilege class. Most of people claim that reservation gives an opportunity to incapable person to get position. Cut off marks for different categories were base of most of those discussions. But I believe this is not comparable. You are trying to compare two different samples which have been taken from different environment. If you really want to compare then sample should be homogenous. For example keep 500 kids from different caste at one place. Do not revile their parents of family identity to them. Let them to grow with equal resources in similar environment. Then take test and put them into different work according to performance and put them into different caste/strata of society.
If any religious leaders really want to bring reform in the Indian society, they should take step forward to revise caste system. If there are any people from upper strata of society asking for reservation due to poverty, put them in lower strata. Similarly person from lower strata should be moved to upper on the ground of their capability and work. On the basis of this all defence personnel and political should be redefined into “Rajput”. All businessmen should be termed as “Vasya”. Intellectual working in the different field should be called as “Brahmin”. Work and performance will be only parameter for moving up or down in strata of society. This would be greatest revolution in Indian society. This will leads our country and society at new level.
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Manoj Kumar Paras is Doctoral researcher at university of Boras, Sweden.