Caste at India.

Caste at India. There are differences in other countries among people . No one is to deny that!! But there exists differences with money, differences due to apartheid. But we must feel ashamed to tell hat only at India a man is differentiated as upper and lower caste by birth.!!

The Issue: -

Eraiyur is a small village in Villupuram District of Tamil Nadu. This village is dominated by the "Vanniyar" (Backward Class) community (around 20,000 people) and some 2000 Harijans (Scheduled Castes) are also living there. The Catholic Church has converted both the communities long time back and it has also established the "Our Lady of the Rosary" Parish, supposedly in the 17^th Century. This parish comes under the Cuddalore-Pondicherry Archdiocese. The Vanniyars are supposed to be slightly superior to Harijans in the social order and hence the former treated the latter as "Untouchables". This caste discrimination has been going on for hundreds of years. Vexed by this discrimination, the Harijans built a new Church on their own by name "Our Lady of Perpetual Help". They demanded the Archbishop to recognize this newly built Church as a separate Parish and asked for a separate Priest. As the Vaniyars are a dominant community, the diocese with an intention of not rubbing them on the wrong side, has been dodging on this issue for quite some time, without making any sincere attempt to abolish the practice of discrimination there by ditching the Harijans. Archbishop Anthony Anantharayar of the Cuddalore-Pondicherry Archdiocese, has been aware of this burning issue, but did not take effective & timely measures to solve the issue.

What went wrong? Caste, the cancer of Hinduism which had taken deep roots in the minds of people for hundreds of years still exists even in religion where caste is not important. Though they were able to change the religion they could not come out of the tentacles of caste which had chained their thinking power and power to reason. caste which was abolished by the tiring work of Dravidian movement is showing its head slightly in these forms now and then. If we would see in general , may be caste had been abolished from theaters, from schools , from hotels but still caste is been protected in two places that is in temple and in law. In temples, only after 80 years of continuous fighting , people from other castes also can be priest. But that too is not accepted by the people who were enjoying that rights before(need to look into the incident of what happened in Chidambaram temple recently) . Well, people could only change the religion but not their minds this the above incident at Eraiyur makes in clear.

The great success of caste is it had made people to think about the people who are under them and not to bother about the people above them who suppress their rights. They are happy that they have someone to suppress. Dr. Ambedkar, remarked the casteism in this society is like a ladder system. Only , when people are able to come out of that imaginary boundaries caste system could be abolished.

To be straight, there is no religion, no caste, no God. Just be a human and love the other human as you do yourself.But if at all people think religion and God make a man civilized then its high time to teach them that these things are man – made mainly out of fear and for some to enjoy full rights suppressing others.