Caste System In India

There are three features that are unique to the Indian society- The village system, the joint family system and the caste system. None of the other two is as problematic as the caste system. Caste system is deep rooted into our Indian society and traces its origin back to the Varna system followed in Hinduism. Though there have been many changes in contemporary India with regard to caste based discrimination, we are far from establishing a society that doesn't judge a person based on his birth into a caste.

If you belong to the section of people who believes that nobody goes around asking anybody their castes and discriminating against them based on it, you couldn't be more wrong. Every ruthless murder or suicide of a person belonging to the less dominant caste adds to the bloody trail that caste brings with it, in India. Despite the laws that are in place to protect the rights of the members belonging to the less dominant caste, more than 40,000 crimes were reported against them in 2016 alone. If you're born as a Dalit and have a poor economic background, you should be prepared to face the worst form of discrimination that will haunt you in your everyday life. You will be made to sit in the end rows in school and asked to do menial work while the students from other castes will go through their daily lessons. You will be denied access to temples and important places, just because you were born into a caste that is made to look lower than the rest. You could get into top government institutes with your hard work, but you'll never receive the same respect that the other people belonging to a different caste would receive.

It is extremely maddening to see students protesting against reservations saying it is denying them access to good educational institutions just because they belong to the dominant castes. Here's what most of us don't understand, a person from a dominant caste does not encounter the same problems that a person from a less dominant caste has to go through to gain those marks that lets them clear their exams. They would've had to make do with extremely less educational opportunities while being stepped upon by the society continuously. They would've had to encounter everyday problems that a person from a dominant caste wouldn't have thought of going through, their entire life.

The claim for making reservations class based and not caste based would seem fair. But in India, class and caste are not different terms. You wouldn't find a dominant caste man sweeping the streets as a worker nor will you find a less dominant caste woman sitting as the head priest in a temple. Caste and class have been the same to Indians for centuries together and now, even though we're viewing these two as separate terms, it is only the exceptions rather than the majority that belong to the less dominant caste while occupying a high social class.. Sagar Shejwal, Manik Udage, Nitin Aage, Sanjay Danane, Rohith Vemula, Rajashree Kamble, and many more names stand as testimonies for the brutal fate that awaits you, if you're born into the less dominant caste in India and if you happen to love or marry a woman/man from the dominant caste, then there's a whole different horrifying future that awaits you. I wouldn't know how long it will take before caste is finally ousted from India, but I know that I will never tolerate an injustice that is happening to a person based on their birth, and I believe you wouldn't tolerate it too.