Dividedly united !!!!

For the last few days India has been witnessing a nationwide furor over the reservation issue in all central (and consequently state) aided or governed educational institutions. Other than serious difference in whether to promote merit or social equity the larger issue has been the division that it has created within the society. Our political fraternity has been of the opinion that caste system has created a social divide in India for the past numerous years and hence social upliftment of these sections through reservation is a necessary process. As expected, the supporters of merit are opposing it.

Up to now whatever I have written is not a precursor to my subject. I am not going to debate on this issue as I am neither competent nor neutral enough for that job. There could be an element of biasness in case I dwell upon this and hence natural justice doesn't allow me to do that. But my main concern is to look at how much as a society we are divided and what conflict of interest could do. I would try to paint a picture which many of us might not agree with as I am not the best person to write about these. Yet, I am penning them down as they came to my mind.

If we look back through indian history (of which, I am a follower but not an expert), then it is quite clear that almost from the time of starting of history, the division within the society was present in India. Even during the gupta periods or at the time of mughals this division was clear and visible. Precisely because of this reason the anti Hindu movements and propagation of Buddhism or Jainism has come into our history. The idea of "exclusively inclusive" society made the habitat segregated based on cast, if not religion. Later during the Muslim era this phenomena gathered more strength even under tremendous religious pressure. These were possible because there were no conflict of interests as Lord Buddha or mahavir or Tansen was never judged on the basis of percentage of population they represented. Neither were they given concessions.

IF we flip through the 18th-20th century period under British raj the division was quite clear. The British made a concerted effort to fuel this and more so, on the basis of religion than probably caste. Even today, at the beginning of 21st century we are yet to conceptualize the concept of inclusive society. This might sound bad but then truth has always been bitter. Let’s face it squarely.

Now that I have hopefully succeeded in implanting some ideas about existence of division within society from long past let's face the other side of the coin. I would divert the attention in judging how much this has hampered the progress of the backward caste or society as a whole.

I will start with the presumption that we believe indian civilization or history is better than most of the others. I will dwell upon some of my views and thoughts (which I think are similar situations, "not same") to arrive at a more confused state so that people who read this have something to think.

I believe the division between north and south, between dravids and aryans, between foreign attackers and son of the soils has contributed to our richness. Both these cultures, as they were totally opposed to each other, developed on their own indigenous ways and flourished to our advantage. We should keep in mind that even though they lived in the same country and aryans initially had a superior social status or power, neither of them ever encroached upon each others (though political invasion was always there) social territory. Precisely because of this we are fortunate enough to have great gupta or magadh dynasty sharing the limelight with the cholas, chalukays or Vijaynagar kingdoms. Same is the case with anti hindu reformist movements. These religions as well as hindus have lived and prospered enough to come to today's state in india. History has showered equal praise on these vastly opposing and different cultures and has not measured their impact on how much percent of a society they represented.

If we look at the British period, which in my view, showed tremendous bonding across religious lines because of national sentiments had its share of divisions within society. Hindus and muslims became nearest and dearest even though social difference and tension was there. Dalits and other backward people contributed as much as the upper castes in freedom movement and never was caste an issue in independence struggle. In fact, reservations for different caste and religions were the reason behind the split up of the social fabric and weakening of the freedom struggle. People respected merits and excellence and never measured contribution in percentage terms. Probably this was the reason why we had fewer riots during those days than we have today even though now on paper we have a better system in place.

There is bound to be a division when people of different socio economic background exist in the same horizon. Even within a family people having different earnings do not live the same way. But these things never contribute to the lesser person being handicap or in his/her progress.

What my contention is that we cannot erase division neither should we try to put everyone on the same path, because that is not for us to direct or decide. What we need to do is to form an inclusive society where hatred is excluded. Variations and divisions have contributed to richness in terms of language, literature and history. We have different dialects and habits because we are different.

Government representing India should not propagate hatred by favouring some caste over the others in the name of social justice as history has proved this to be counter productive. What we need is a broad based society where people are not judged by the mass of the population he/she is representing. If we believe that our divided past has not produced any results in terms of social upliftment then we are dangerously disrespecting a huge contribution of rural India. We are presuming that economic upliftment would erase social tension, which I am sorry to say is a proven wrong, because otherwise more than half of India by this time would have been living in a social heaven. Our history and society is all about contradictions, divisions and confrontations. These have added to our richness and aptly represented all sections irrespective of caste and religion. We need to remove the hatred not the caste.

We have seen that having a common vision makes the strongest division irrelevant. But at the same time partition of India has shown what conflict of interest could do to us, and I fear, that is the path we are treading ahead.

That would probably not be the India where even the backward classes would like to stay.