Untouchables, again...

2011-05-04T08:38:00+02:00

I will finish my story on the “Backwards” (cfhttp://www.indiandacoit.com/archive/2011/04/14/and-you-what-s-your-little-name.html )

I have been told that my note was full of contempt and condescension.

But this system is really contemptible!

I will quote here an expert, Marc Boulet who wrote this book “In the skin of an Intouchable” – he basically learned Hindi perfectly, took drugs to get a tan and lived on the street as an Intouchable beggar for months…

“Westerners completely fall for it. They rightly fight racism and anti-Semitism but they see the caste system with a lot of indulgence and consider that it is part of the Indian cultural heritage, like the Tâj Mahal. They don’t get shocked, outraged, by the caste system; it is far away. And I also think that their benevolence comes from the fact they admire the brahman civilisation and they get disgusted by sweepers and other untouchables, altogether with beggars and lepers for whom they only think of a contemptuous charity. […] I am not scared of words anymore. The caste system is a segregationist system, just as Apartheid in South Africa. As revolting, as condemnable.”

Then I had a word about it with Indian friends. This world “backward” was found by the Government after independence. The idea was to create quotas (for education, for public-sector jobs (22.5%), for seats in the parliament (17.5%)) for underprivileged and women. These quotas had been created for 10 years.

When the Government revised it, in the late 80’s, they estimated that the deadline should be extended, created the “Other Backward” class and increased the quotas.

Since mostly “Backwards” vote and they represent more than 50% of the population, the quotas stopped being a temporary solution…

And that upset other people because quotas target only the cast and not the revenue. But you now have rich Untouchables (who get the quotas) and poor Brahmans (who don’t)…

Not easy…

Source : My friends and http://reason.com/archives/2010/05/04/indias-government-by-quota

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Untouchables, again...