What all things come to our mind when we hear the name of a place/country? The geography,people, famous personalities, monuments,food,culture,climate etc. Take the case of Australia, the moment we hear it, a virtual slide show happen in our minds comprising Kangaroos, Sydney opera house, the great barrier reef,the cricket team etc. If its India, it will be Mahatma Gandhi, Taj Mahal,curry etc. Definitely the picture will be different for people who had been to a place and who had not been.
Whenever I get opportunity to interact with people of other nationalities, I share thoughts about culture,history, lifestyle etc. During such a conversation,I got a few questions from an English guy which really 'shook' me. He was a friendly guy with a good sense of humour.He worked in almost all deepwater oil hubs (Gulf of mexico,North sea, West africa, middle east,SE Asia ,NW Australia etc) and had a fair amount of knowledge about history and culture across the globe.It was his first assignment in India and was working for a project management consultant to my company.
For ease, let me call him Mr.H.. here goes his first question.....
Mr.H: Why do Indians shit publicly on road and all?
Me : Who told that?
Mr.H: I ve seen people doing that.
Me : Ok , I guess you might have seen this at Kakinada, right? If you go to rural areas like that, It ll be a common sight. The people over there are very poor and mostly are peasants and are illiterate. They don't have enough money to built a toilet.
Mr.H:To your surprise ,I ve seen that in a city, Vizag. If the people are too poor, then why dont the government do it?
Me : If you take the case of my state Kerala, you can hardly find a house without toilet. You know why? The people are educated and through local self govts,poor people got aid .I think the governments should educate people on this regard and aid them.
Shame on the govt!! Can you imagine even in your weirdest thoughts ,people shitting publicly in Singapore or Paris?
Lets move on to his next question.He thought that I was a christian and asked me whether I was one.Hearing that I am a Hindu he went on like this.
Mr.H: I ve heard that the Hindu society is divided into 4 classes. Whats the need to divide your society?
Me : You re talking about the caste system. To be frank I don't really know why it still exist.
Mr.H: So which class do you belong to among the four?
Me : I don't belong to any of those.
Mr.H: Why?
Me : My forefathers were said to be Buddhists. Somewhere in the history, they converted to Hinduism. It wasn't a sudden conversion, but a gradual one and they weren't allowed into the mainstream Hinduism. Historians have got different versions of this story.
Mr.H: Ok,I guess the classes are based on profession.
Me : Yeah, it was based on profession, but don't know really why people carry caste and subcastes even in this age. Let me tell my family history, from maternal side, my grandfather was a businessman, he was into textile business in my hometown. His dad was the manager of a transport company in erstwhile Travancore. From my paternal side, My grandfather was a farmer.My dad was a coating/painting inspector in the Middle east, now he is into books/stationery business.
Mr.H: Dividing the society on such basis doesn't do any good.
Me : People should realise that. Nobody is superior or inferior to others.And funniest thing is that nobody can convert to another caste like religious conversion. ha ha.
Mr.H: thats effing funny.
As an Indian,I really felt ashamed . I read in Abhilash Sir's Blog about a Korean Buddhist whom he met commenting about casteism in India. For me casteism is no different from apartheid.
And his third question was about arranged marriages.
Mr.H: I am unable to digest the concept of arranged marriages.How could you do that.It seems like a business.
Me : Its simple as well as complicated.ha ha. The life partner is being foundout with the help of parents. A few decades back, the age at which people used to marry was well below 18. They weren't mature enough to find their partners their own.That may be one of the reasons .Apart from that, people never allowed intercaste marriages to happen. But I too really don't know why people still hold these concepts.
I am quite confused.
:-)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
on the three qn i felt only one can be a valid one.. i.e. is the shitting on road case rest aplicablle to them also
ReplyDelete1 hinduism case: ask him whether he can enter an penthacost or a jacobite or some other church they will not 175 christain varities.we have 3300000 caste and subcaste but we can go to a same temple(this i got a mail not from my hand) so he must have think twice about him before asking
2 arranged marriage: why there is a system abroad where divorce rate is more than marriage rate??.. like changing an underwear they are changing the partner why this exist??
why its less in india thats the reason for arrange marriage.easy for person to adjust within a caste or religion because living style is same and most of indians are known for patience and tolerance. not like the next moment change the partner.
its not btw Hinduism and Christianity.. U know even some of the Xtians and Muslims in Kerala take pride in the Caste of their ancestors...
ReplyDeleteAbout temple entry, still in some parts of our country, the so called 'lower castes' are not allowed to worship inside temples.. recently read in newspaper about a district collector leading downtrodden people to a temple in Tamilnadu.
and do u know why guruvayoor satyaghaha and vaikam satyagraha happened??
The caste system is just like apartheid....
About divorce and all: he was talking about the divorce rate in the west. Rather its a cultural aspect. According to Mr.H,nowadays the divorce rate is decreasing drastically, and the reason is that people stopped getting married. :-P. Without getting married, how can they divorce.. ha ha.. but the population never decreases ;-)
I dont agree that the fewer no of divorce cases in India is due to the effect of arranged marriage..
Its part of our culture, our concept is 'a life long partner'..
Mr.H and I talked about his society too and he did accept that it isn't perfect....
I just took those which were relevant to India from our conversation...
:-)
I liked his observations and frankly I am not surprised at his observations. Even now people are of the belief that the Indian caste system, the lower standard of living and people not having basic amenities is the norm in India, in spite of the large number of Indians who are shining the Indian name over the world.
ReplyDeleteI believe that the life long partner thing is not the reason for the low divorce rates is due to the problem of the divorcees being looked down upon by the society. A widow has a better life in the present society than a divorcee. In the Indian cities where people don't care about others I bet that the divorce rates are comparable to any of the so called developed countries.
I do know that the caste system is a evil that our country needs to get rid of. The good thing is that the cities of our country are going ahead with the slow elimination of the caste system and I am sure when we become parents we will not be having our children named after the caste names we might be having or not having. But the rural part of our country is still in the age-old beliefs of the caste system.
Good post da, nice to know that you can make a good stand in front of firang's for our country's honour :)
Caste Systems
ReplyDeleteAll these systems had come from an era when feudalism dominated. The mightiest persons in the society exploited the situations very well and changed the social conditions according to their wish and comfort.
It’s a basic nature of all the humans to enjoy our life without struggling much. Imagine, a society where inequality is extreme, the wealthiest can utilize the other side for making money effortlessly and, ultimately for their gratification and comfort. But these landlords need to convince their slaves that they all are born for this and, eventually they had turned up with a solution which is nothing but to divide the society. There comes the caste system.
As the days gone by, the plight of the slaves became appalling. Later on, several social reformers, writers, and of course some parties stood against this and urged for the renaissance. Hence some changes had come, but it was too late for some communities to realize their folly, as they sunk already.
Our father of constitution realized those facts and implemented the idea of ‘reservation’ which was quite indeed at that time. This privilege along with some other social factors uplifted those communities to the main stream. Now we are into twenty first century and had achieved comprehensive development in almost all walks of life. However we are incapable of forcing our governments to take out reservation because of the fact that the caste system, in its worst form, is still prevailing in various parts of India (that’s the reason why India had seen the emergence of lot of regional parties and, leaders like Mayawati). The interesting thing is that the caste and sub caste systems which exist in other major parts, so called ‘advanced and cultured’ societies, are in some other forms and for some other purposes. There, communities are under the feet of some people who all are always in a closed group and will make noise pollution frequently to keep their community alive and will pour weird ideas to pull more people into the congress. They will smile all the time hiding fake community love under the lips for their personal benefits.
It is the right time for young generation to realize the crux of the matter and to isolate those people who all are trying to break up the society.
Thanks men, 4 adding a few points about the social evil...
ReplyDelete:-)