Daily injustice.Thank you for highlighting casteism (Combating Caste caste [Port., casta=basket], ranked groups based on heredity within rigid systems of social stratification, especially those that constitute Hindu India. Some scholars, in fact, deny that true caste systems are found outside India. , NI 380). For more than 2,500 years Dalits (untouchables untouchables: see Harijans. Untouchables lowest caste in India; social outcasts. [Ind. Culture: Brewer Dictionary, 1118] See : Banishment ) have suffered under casteism. Even when India was celebrating its Independence Day in August 2005, houses of Dalits in Gohana (just 60 kilometres from the capital New Delhi New Delhi (dĕl`ē), city (1991 pop. 294,149), capital of India and of Delhi state, N central India, on the right bank of the Yamuna River. ) were being burnt under orders from the municipal government. Human rights champion Dr BR Ambedkar (1891-1956), a Dalit leader, wrote in a paper submitted to the World Peace Conference in Montreal, Canada in 1942: 'What I fear is that the problem of the untouchables (Dalits) may be forgotten as it has been so far. That would indeed be a calamity. For the ills that the untouchables are suffering, if they are not as much advertised as those of Jews Jews [from Judah], traditionally, descendants of Judah, the fourth son of Jacob, whose tribe, with that of his half brother Benjamin, made up the kingdom of Judah; historically, members of the worldwide community of adherents to Judaism. , are not less real. Nor are the means and the methods of suppression used by Hindus against the untouchables less effective because they are less bloody than the ways which the Nazis have adopted against the Jews. Therefore the world owes a duty to the untouchables as it does to all suppressed sup·press tr.v. sup·pressed, sup·press·ing, sup·press·es 1. To put an end to forcibly; subdue. 2. To curtail or prohibit the activities of. 3. people to break their shackles and set them free.' Yash Mehay Vancouver, Canada |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion