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New Caste System for India

Mansiya


Mohan Bhagwat, RSS Supremo, has decided that there are no more non-Hindus in India. All Indians are Hindus hereafter. They are classified into 4: (1) the proud Hindu, (2) the reluctant Hindu, (3) the unfriendly Hindu, and (4) the ignorant Hindu. In which class does Mansiya fall?

Mansiya is an atheist from Kerala with Muslim parents and a Hindu husband. She was forced to give up her religion, Islam, when her mother was denied a burial in the Muslim cemetery because Mansiya was a Bharatanatyam dancer. Bharatanatyam is not Islamic, you see. Mansiya had to choose between Islam and Bharatanatyam and she chose the latter. Now a Hindu temple in Kerala has banned her from a 10-day National Festival of Dance and Music because she belongs to a class which does not exist in Mohan Bhagwat’s new system; she is an Ahindu, says the temple.

For the Hindutva Pope, Mansiya is not an Ahindu simply because there are no more Ahindus in the country. But the Hindu temple in Kerala insists that Mansiya is an Ahindu. When will these people agree on one thing?

“They have agreed on one thing, man,” my Marxist friend in the village tells me. “They have agreed to bring back the old caste system in a new form.”

The old caste system was created so that one group of people called Brahmins could suppress and dominate all others, my friend explains. Now Bhagwat is giving us a new caste system in which the Proud Hindus will suppress and dominate all others. All Proud Hindus are RSS men. “No, no women, please,” my friend says. “Women have no place even in front of their gods. Remember the Sabarimala controversy?”

So, the RSS men are the new Brahmins? All other Indians are low caste people. Where does Mansiya with Bharatanatyam as her religion and a Hindu husband whose category is not known yet [Proud/Reluctant/Unfriendly/Ignorant] fall? Where do you fall, my dear reader? I suppose they will dump me among Unfriendly Hindus since I keep questioning the Pope of RSS.

Hinduism is an alchemist of a religion. It had transmuted the Buddha into an incarnation of Vishnu though the Buddha was an atheist who questioned the entire Brahminical system. The Buddha’s fundamental conflict was with the Brahminical oppressions and exploitations and manoeuvres. He ended up as another Brahminical god! That is the alchemical power of Bhagwat’s religion.

I am amused by the comedies provided by this religion. Let me present a few scenes from that comedy as a conclusion to this post. No comments from me. 




And a contrast:

Comments

  1. जितेन्द्र माथुरMarch 29, 2022 at 3:18 PM

    The treatment meted out to Mansiya is highly unfortunate and exposes the biases those hitherto remained unexposed.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMarch 29, 2022 at 3:38 PM

      We are not moving ahead. We as a nation have been taken back by centuries to the time of small minds, smaller fiefdoms, and constricted personal spaces.

      Delete
  2. Yamini MacLeanMarch 29, 2022 at 4:44 PM

    Hari OM
    Semantics never changed the world... and here we have semantics of gargantuan proportion. You can get my stance if you care to read this post, where I finally convey what it is that held me back from full committment... I have always been a square peg!!! YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMarch 29, 2022 at 7:45 PM

      Just read your post and I share your suppressed pain at the unpleasant turn of the tide in India. One person is enough to change an entire nation into a chaos. India now has that one person. Please continue to be a square peg. That's better than pretending to be a round one. Many of India's intellectuals have become mere pretenders for the sake of survival.

      Delete
  3. Prasanna RaghavanMarch 29, 2022 at 5:30 PM

    Wow! Kerala, the ruling classes of all stripes claiming to be the word class, everybody certificated, no one there is freed from the stripe of caste. I used to write about those Kerala caste shenanigans times ago, now watch the show for fun and entertainment. The show continues :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMarch 29, 2022 at 7:46 PM

      The show continues. Unfortunately even the leftists have joined the show and have become comics.

      Delete

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