Watching a political debate on the movie Arakshan being banned in three states of the country spurned an uncomfortable anxiety in my heart and liver. The panellists included a movie maker, a film critic and two Dalit activists. The caste of the former two was not declared so I presume they did not belong to the political jackpot class of the ‘down-trodden’. As expected there was a lot of hue and cry on the issue and a lot of absurd things were said that make you laugh in disgust when you hear them but leave you worried at the state of mindsets that are only becoming more and more popular, after the funny moment is over.
One panellist even said that the Bollywood filmmakers should take a cue from their Hollywood counterparts who foraged their ghettos to bring forth black actors, directors and other crewmen for the sake of equal opportunity and representation, and do something like that for Dalits in India. I have no idea about who those ghetto-raised actors and directors are, and on what research he based his statement on, but I was really aggravated to hear such a stupid thing coming out from a representative of a class that is supposed to be suppressed and needs to be brought up at the same pedestal as the rest of us in the country. If the leader who guides them believes in such alienating gimmicks then they sure have a bleak future and there is no way they are going to be a part of an Indian population that does not need to wear a caste badge on the sleeve.
The present state of the matter is so bizarre and so heavily ionized with political radicals that a casteless society in India is an impossible task. The caste system is being made more and more prominent by raising reservation ratios in colleges and institutions of merit. Every election campaign is considered incomplete without fondling the mammaries of caste. This practice is slowly but ruthlessly dividing the country into two portions of the reserved and the unreserved. Each of which has grudges against the other. The British were supposed to have devised and very efficiently brought into practice the system of divide and rule in India, and logically enough their successors have now become aware of the evil legacy.
I want to ask the ones who demand equal rights for the Dalits whether they will be able to remove words like ‘caste’ and ‘reservations’ from their electoral speeches! This is the only way to bring them at par with the rest of the country, by treating them exactly as the rest. And I promise, in less than a decade people will forget what ages have failed to wipe off from the Indian panorama.
One can endlessly debate reservations but the real problem shall remain unaddressed. A meritorious candidate who is worthy and competent should get an opportunity irrespective of his caste and class. Neither should his chances be diluted by reserving seats. Reserving seats at the university level will only lead to a decline the quality of education. Instead one needs a system that ensures that each and every child gets free, compulsory and quality education while he is still in school. Until then, Reservation shall only be a political gimmick, a masquerade that does no good to the indian system of education but only a vote bank politics to woo the majority represented by some communities to cast their votes in their favour.
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