Sunday, May 01, 2005

Capitalist Casteism

How would someone in the west describe India? Usual things like Taj Mahal, beggars in Bombay, slums in Calcutta, magic carpets/snake charmers, nowadays cheap labor and finally always mentioned caste system we have. Nothing to be proud of and everything true if u look at it in part but there comes times like these when I feel like defending us as a nation and put things in perspective. Actually speaking, casteism in India is on the decline at least in urban population where the only caste types nowadays are rich and poor. As most of us know or may not know casteism started off loosely based on kind of job u did... so if u were a priest then u were priest class, laborer... u were labor class etc.. Somewhere during last 4 millennia which nobody can pin point at, casteism became based on birth just as other civilizations during that time... like father like children... So if u happen to notice and trace back the jobs all the lower class people held, they were the ones that wasn't really well paid... sounds to me like they didn't have enough money to defend themselves. Now why am I saying all this? Has anyone noticed in US, the different classes that exist... for example take GAP Inc... they sell same clothes at 3 diff levels ... old navy for lower classes, gap for middle classes and banana republic for upper classes, u can call rich people morons who pay thru nose to buy something so expensive but thats elitism anyways. Other day I was in NY with my friends and we wanted to check out a lounge but were refused entry cos we were not properly dressed... 50$ Jeans and 25$ T-shirt was too cheap for it. I wouldn't even venture into racism cos its casteism super-sized anyways... One author put casteism in a nice way, he said "casteism is something that the 'upper castes' believe in, not the so-called lower ones." So anyways my point is lower castes suffered cos they didn't have enough capital to fend themselves, who would want to take on THE RICH! In this darn age of capitalism where rich are getting richer and poor are getting poorer and India vigorously following west, it will be interesting to see if West follows the east or east follows the west... Atleast India has 4000 yrs head start !