------------------------------------------------------------------------ **** WWW.GOANET.ORG *** A N N O U N C E M E N T **** ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Launching Goanet-sports - Dedicated to Sports in Goa and Goans in Sports
Get your free subscription at: http://lists.goanet.org/listinfo.cgi/goanet-sports-goanet.org ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Dear Gilbert: My 'tirade' was not directed against any of Cornel's posts or against Goan catholics in general.They were more against those self styled champions of secularism who use the caste system, devdasi and other ills of the hindu society to justify things like colonialism and religious persecution by missionaries of bygone colonial era In general my views regarding caste are as follows: 1. caste system is one of the earliest known forms of race based discrimination. Some argue that it started as a merit based hierarchical system and later degenerated into a discriminatory system based on birth alone. Whatever the origins might be I regard it as an anomaly and it's practice needs to be discouraged 2 I also believe caste is a Indian phenomenon ,not a Hindu phenomenon Ergo all religions in india including the so called egalatarian ones like Christianity Islam and Sikhism have as much caste discriminaton as Hindusim. I think in an society human beings find it convenient to form groups and try to dominate others In western socities the monoatheistic religions could do so easily based on religion In india everyone being hindu at that time, people invented this form of discrimination In fact in countries like pakistan iraq where the population is overwhelmingly Muslim there are schisms between shias and sunnis or if population is overwhelmingly sunni the fight is between mmoderates and wahhabis as in saudi Point being groups of people will always find it convenent to discriminate against others 3. Though brahmins have been at the forefront of caste discrimination in the past, it is the dominant landed OBC castes like Thevars in TN, or reddys in AP or yadavs and kurmis in UP or Jats in punjabs etc who are the real culprits today , even though brahmins remain the favorite targets. In fact as seen in UP the brahmins had no qualms in forging a electorally potent alliance with Mayawati whose core constituency is the Dalits. 4. Finally thanks to economic progress as well as education caste discimination is getting lesser day by day at least in Goa (my opinion) We still have a long way to go esp in north india but at least the tide is turning for the better 5. Personally i do not believe in any sort of superiority bestowed by birth In fact i would go as far as saying that any sense of feeling superior over others is not good. Be it feeling superior because one is "rational" or "scientific minded" or because one is "western educated" "secular" or "IITian" or being "atheist" or "believer" and so on. We all have a lot to learn. regards, Bhandare ____________________________________________________________________________________ Need a vacation? Get great deals to amazing places on Yahoo! Travel. http://travel.yahoo.com/