There was an interesting story today in The Times of India about how the slavic countries insisted that India accept casteism as the same as sexism. Well the slavs got it quite wrong this time anyway. Here’s why. If I call the slavs blonde-haired blue eyed tall dumb people that’s racism. If I refuse to touch a person because he is of a certain ancestry(irrrespective of color, physical features and IQ level), that’s casteism. While both are discriminatory and abhorrent they are simply not the same. Why? For one thing physical features have little to do with it. India is country of mostly brown people. And the brown skin dominates the so called high and low castes alike. In my own personal observation, light skinned ones (the ones we refer to as fair-skinned) generally do belong to a “higher” caste. But on the flip side there are tons of dark or extremely dark “higher” caste people too. Generally it’s the brown skin everywhere. So color bears no meaning here. Other physical features like hieght, fit or fat ness, etc matter even less. Nobody can discriminate on those issues because they present the same level of diversity in all castes. The issue is simply the one of inheritance. So did ya daddy make chairs and tables for a living? then you must a carpenter too? did ya daddy make slippers? u must make them too? See now that is what is casteism. A way of “keeping people in thier places” based on thier ancestral jobs. It aint hard, slavik people, to understand the differences you see. Just dont thrust your views as “the right view” on to others. On the final note, just incase I havent made it clear both racism and casteism are deplorable, abhorrent, subhuman practices that needs to see as quick an end as possible…but just note they are essentially different forms of discrimination.
