Hi guys…to the people, who don’t know me, let me introduce myself. My name is Shivaram and I was a classmate of Anand, CK and Raghu back in school.

Let me start. Since Anand brought up the subject, “sense of belonging” and there is a big controversy on caste reservation going back in India right now, I thought this would be a good time to post my first blog. I had a chat with CK a few weeks ago on the issue of casteism and he sounded really pissed off with the so called “stupid” idea. He was questioning me on its purpose but I couldn’t give him a convincing answer. All I know was that something was not right and we were both losing the bigger picture. He was also convinced that a developed India is not possible unless it is eliminated. I am sure that most of the educated Indians here in the US and back in India would agree on that. I agree on it too but are we missing a point here…let me explain my thoughts a little bit…

Anand in your post the point you make is, let me quote your own words.... “One feels happy to see people from same planet in another planet.. people from same country in another country.. people from the same state in another state.. people from the same city in another city.. Now where does this sense of belonging come from? If we think at the level of planet now itself… then in that case will not the problems related to territory/language cease?” The irony Anand, the converse of this idea is the basic root for casteism….it is this SAME narrow-minded sense of belonging that is responsible for segregating groups of people all over the world, including India. So, where does this sense of belonging originate from? It takes its root from an inherent tendency of the human mind. Everything arises from the mind and this idea of segregation or dividing is no exception. The human mind tends to group similar things together to better understand and assimilate it. You name it, we group people in the name of religion or way of life (Christians, Muslims, Hindus,…), colour (black, white, yellow, wheatish brown..), governments based on political regimes (communist, democratic, totalitarianism…), profession (engineers, doctors, teachers…) and a little further…for example, you can subdivide engineers (CSE, ECE, EE, ME, CHE..)….etc, you can keep on subdividing it and group it further and further based on some common qualities all the way to the end. A paleontologist can help us understand this concept a little better. While this human faculty endures on, there are other qualities of the human mind that come into play such as ego, anger, hate, dominance, etc… that tag along and it is here that we begin to discriminate people between these segregated groups. As time grows, the groups begin to overlap and the lines of distinction become blurry making it only worse as we completely lose all laws of rationality ending up pointing fingers at everyone.

So what then, can we eliminate casteism or anything similar in lines to it? Is it a boon or a bane? These questions arise in our minds almost instantaneously. If you ponder about it, you will only end up going around in circles. No wonder it has been a subject of debate for decades. However, in my opinion the answer is simple, you cannot eliminate casteism. Why? As long as the human mind takes up the policy of “divide and rule” or should I say “divide and assimilate” there is no way of getting rid of casteism in India or anywhere in the world (rascism). It is neither a boon nor a bane, it a just a FACT waiting to be accepted and no amount of logic, reasoning and demands of rationality is going to eliminate it. It has been there from time immemorial (refer last chapter in the Bhagavad Gita) and will be there till the end of time or at least I would say till the end of human existence. All we can do on our part is we can strive to attain oneness and practice equality among the existing groups in this world. But I guess that would be an impossible task. Hence, I would say that all the “isms” are here to stay whether you accept it or not. If you are still not convinced and you believe you can eliminate it, then let me give you a small test. Try naming your children with a single name (the idea here is to eliminate discrimination, i.e. treating them as equals ) and if you are successful in calling out the right child every time you shout the name, then you might have a solution. But on the other hand, if you extrapolate this method to higher levels (city, state, country), then you might end up having groups of people segregated based on their different names…hmm….guess then we would all end up with the same problem here too.