My previous article had the on the “resurgence of brahminim” deliberately left a few questions unanswered. I want to take those questions, and also elaborate on why brahminism cannot be eradicated without contesting brahmins.
- Brahmins aren’t the only people who are obsessed with their caste? Why are you taking them on and not everyone else? Do you think they are a soft target or are you scared of taking any other caste on?
- Why use the word brahminism instead of casteism?
- There are plenty of rich people in the society and not just brahmins. Brahmins are a minority. Further, there are plenty of poor brahmins. How can brahmins be responsible?
I am sure there are plenty of others but they either variants of the above question or too stupid to answer.
As I mentioned in my article, I do not consider the modern brahmins as just the traditional brahmins, while they do form a part of it. Brahminism according to me is a social construct which has a community at the top dictating or at least having control over the progress of the society. There are few key social constructs which drive any heterogeneous progressive society, which eventually aims be a land of opportunity. The first one is access to quality education for all, the second construct is to remove any barriers of discrimination and the third construct is to provide health care. These three key constructs which will drive progress have been controlled and dragged by the modern brahmins.
Let me start with education. My parents like pretty much most people of their generation studied in a government school. Furthermore, they were from rural India. They ended up as professor and school teacher in government-aided institutions. Every baby boomer in India who is from an upper middle class to a lower class background would have studied in a government school. All their children went to private schools. I studied in a truly secular, affordable private school but even there the behaviours were extremely discriminatory. The government schools over the years lost their funding and the quality has been let down deliberately. The private schools where teachers are paid less than a living wage are supposed to be of better quality. When I got admission to study engineering, there was twice the number of private engineering institutions as the state-run ones. Today the percentage has quadrupled. Further, the path to get into better institutions have been curtailed a lot through co-curricular addendums which cannot be afforded by everyone. Education has been bought over by the rich.
Secondly, the emancipation of the discriminated classes in India has not gone well with the modern brahmins. There is an abject condemnation of the miserable state of the discriminated classes. One needs to understand that the slavery was abolished in the US before the caste-based discrimination got legally abolished in India. A vast majority of these people have parents who were not allowed to enter some streets in their village. I prefer the word brahminism instead of the caste system. Caste system refers to the system of having different communities. Brahminism, on the other hand, are the rules enabling the discrimination of these communities and the laws governing their social status. There are people in my own extended family circle and acquaintances who believe they are superior to the other communities.
The most common argument is that not all brahmins are rich and their biggest regret is the reservation system in India. While I do agree that the reservation system in India has its flaws and can definitely be improved, poor brahmin fetches just as much sympathy from me as a wounded terrorist. The moment a person is referring to oneself as a brahmin, then she/he doesn’t deserve the pity. The acknowledgement to belong to a class which has ordained itself the right to discriminate after knowing everything they have done in the past will only get my ire, not sympathy. I always see these brahmins complain about reservation depriving of their opportunities but never about wealthy individuals doing the same, even though the latter takes a larger share of the pie.
So, why has this problem become relevant now? If we scratch the surface the deeper cunning brahminism exists even today. The classic example is Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Gandhi was born to a trader community in India and was a staunch Hindu. When he realised that Dr. B.R. Ambedkar has started to mobilise all the classes of the discriminated people with him, Gandhi played one of the cheapest possible tricks. He plagiarised the word Harijan, meaning people of Vishnu. He used that to describe the discriminated classes indicating that they were the people of the Hindu God. That diluted their movement to federate and self-determinate. The situation on the ground hasn’t changed a lot since. The modern brahmins are just waiting for the right opportunity. It is not possible to eradicate brahminsm without tackling them. The key attribute of the resurgence now is a sense of pride in belonging to the community that has come to the present generation. It has been portrayed as a benign, moderate, scientific culture which is no different from any other groups. Society can only ignore it at the peril of civilisation. The roots of these people come from a dangerous book Manusmriti (Laws of Manu). It is a dangerous cult which is no different from fascism, national socialism (of which they are sympathisers), wahabism or the KKK. Brahminism is a dangerous ideology and should be eliminated and eradicated. It should be learnt in the history book as the rest of the horrific ideologies of the past but not practiced. Brahmins are the custodians of Brahminism. I finally came to the conclusion which EV Ramasamy did, “Brahminism cannot be eradicated without fighting Brahmins”.
Demystifying a skeptic's world 