Shabari146;s lament

Something happened at a friend8217;s workplace last week that would break your heart. There8217;s this NGO that helps women of the old scavenger caste get a better life through learning new skills like embroidery, making papads and pickles and beauty parlour techniques. The office team picked up a few packets of papad from them. When the papads were offered around at work, some people refused to take them. They didn8217;t dare say why, just made feeble excuses and by the way, they were not Brahmins. It was one of those dreadful interface moments between India and Bharat.

Like so many of us, I too was raised in 8220;India8221;. I was slapped hard at the age of four one of my first memories by my father8217;s sister because she heard me ignorantly repeat the word 8220;Shudrachi8221; about the jamadarni, which I8217;d picked up from the cook. He was fired thereafter for corrupting my mind, because in India you were raised as an Upanishadic Hindu: 8220;If I see myself in others and all others in me, how can I hate anybody?8221; If you spoke uncivilly to those who served you, assuming you were above them, you were speedily un-deceived by your elders. The National Pledge perfectly echoed the Upanishads: 8220;All Indians are my brothers and sisters.8221; It was one more device by which our founding fathers wanted to engineer social change, to muck out the dirt of centuries from our minds and write the navyug on the tabula rasa or unwritten page of independent India. Today we8217;re panned as Baba Log, but I think we breathed some real fresh air in 8220;India8221;. And yet, so many stereotypes are put forth today in Bharat about 8220;modern8221; 8220;urban8221; Indians, usually by prissy regional magazines with the most obscene drawings, however, of women.

Of those whom we cannot fire because they have not openly convicted themselves, we8217;d want to ask: where do you think those 8220;Valmiki8221; women made their papads? Aren8217;t you aware that these cottage industries are usually run to norms? When you eat chaat or tikki by the road or food on the train or plane, do you ask who cooked it? Technically don8217;t you 8220;lose8221; a million times more caste drinking foreign liquor and eating foreign chocolate and cheese, made by that most unclean of beings, the mlecha 8220;barbarian8221; in Sanskrit who does not wash? Think about it, dear citoyens, when you reach next for that single malt or pizza.

The law is usually ahead of people but don8217;t you think fifty-seven years is a long time in which to understand and transmit the A-B-C of 8220;India8221;. So how come even 8220;educated8221; people remain such demon seed? If Lord Rama8217;s presence in our land be true, Shabari8217;s tears will scald us.