The Great Indian Caste system

  A terrific topic to rouse controversy and I choose it for the same reasons. We talk about being true Indians, united forever and everything else that sounds so good in words. Have we made steps towards it? I doubt it largely. The roots of discrimination have spread wide and deep that we can just hope for it for the next 20 years or so. Where does discrimination start? Of course right from birth. Birth forms certify that the child is born a Hindu or Christian or whatever. rather we can have it as "born to hindu parents". And at admission to schools, the religious history is perfectly documented with religion, caste and subcaste . Maybe they forgot the gothra and we can suggest adding those when they revise the form structures. Maybe they are planning to start matrimony sites in the future when the business of running schools might weaken! Thankfully children are not identified with their religious background in schools. Yet the need to belong to a particular sect of the society is thrust onto them. And then the great Indian reservation systems. They remind us of the discrimination again after the 14 years at school. "You are not permitted to join this course or this particular college because your forefathers adopted specific lifestyles which came to be known later on as religions."          (Though the lifestyles have become extinct, we would still like to retain the name of the religion. Afterall we are supposed to guard tradition! ) Application form costs. You can get it at a subsidised cost if you belong to one section of the society. All you have to do is to belong to. Your affordability doesn't matter. It is ok. You can laugh later (If at all you found it absurd enough to). Leave alone that. What about employment? The same story staged here too. All gossips among co-workers never go on without a caste stamp. And any higher authority demanding an employee to work, for the worker, there is always an easy accusation- "He abused my caste." I am not taking sides and there are no sides to be taken here. Intellectual capabilities do not arise out of inheritance. The extent to which the child interacts with nature, the exposures it is offered and nutrition seem to play leading roles. Going back to history, a man was branded with the name of the occupation he practised. Sons of those were allowed to choose what they wanted to be. Not to incite a superiority for the name, but to make it clear, I would like to use an example. Who is called a brahmin? The one who has known Brahmam. What does one mean by brahmam? The supreme truth. The supreme truth is not a thing or a one time realisation or visualisation. It should be some realisation which gravitates each and every action of your life towards the realisation of this realisation. And anybody who practises it is called a brahmin. It is not a sect or cult. It is a definition. According to the Atreya Smriti, one is born a shudra, becomes a dvija by practising austerity and learning vedas and then a brahman by attaining the supreme consciousness. So it is definite that it is not by birth one becomes a brahmin. And anybody who is not a brahmin by birth becomes one if he attains the realisation. And remember again, it is not a race. It is a definition. And by stating this, I do not mean to offend my or my parents' origins. Superficially it might seem an offence. The intentions of this detachment from the origins is to seek an attachment to the real values that the ancestors might have dreamt while framing these systems. And given an opportunity, i would be glad to ask them "Was there not a foolproof system to inculcate the goodness other than the caste systems?" The intentions of these systems might have been to transfer the best of the qualities possible with the human nature  through eras. But it pains to realise that it has miserably failed. Miserable enough to refrain from mentioning. But my misery when not expressing it exceeds the misery in expressing this. Still lot more to express, but time and space is a constraint within the earth and I would like to express my respect for the constraints it offers, though I would like to be free of it too. And above all this, I am ready to instill a change (if it can change) in this age old caste systems in India. Within my reach is the non mentioning of the caste and religion in any application form that I can come across. After all, change begins with one. And I have already. Waiting to see the ripples hit the walls of the ocean......