Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
October 17 - October 23, 2019
Art never seems to rise above caste.
mother would be asked to wash their vessels. They would take the washed vessels inside the house. There was no discrimination where the vessels were concerned.
When educational institutions that are supposed to build knowledge have such an attitude, of what use will it be to blame others?
Many lopsided traditional values are still being followed. Many values regarding caste are part of them. To move away from them one has to realise oneself and only then there would be clarity of mind.
The caste prejudices among the educated are much more dangerous than the caste prejudices among the uneducated.
Even if I deny my caste identity or hide it, the way things are, those around me constantly identify me with my caste in the way they speak and act. At every stage of my life, caste seems to flourish and it stands before me and follows me around with its ugly grin.
The poet Inquilab once wrote: If someone asks you your caste, tell them the name of your caste like a slap on the face.
Where caste cultural habits are concerned, upward mobility means freedom being snatched away. Downward mobility is what is needed. That is life with freedom. *****
A song of Sivavaakkiyar, a Siddhar or a Saivaite saint, says: Are carnal pleasures derived from a Paraya woman different from the pleasures derived from a rich or Brahmin women? And critic P. Velsamy has said that to be dressed in a suit like a gentleman and still observe caste customs, is like eating excrement. I
caste is an intoxicating alcohol that fills the cup of inability or not being capable.
Anyone can talk, write or opine about caste. However, it does not lose its character and keeps appearing at some level or the other in our life. It is deeply rooted, changing according to the time and environment and spreading its malevolence in many different forms. We survive. So does caste, surviving along with us, doing its work with much greater force.
Periyar’s words that the human brain was chained by caste.
When we talk of love for our native place and love for our soil and so on, it is, in fact, the traditional way of defending the caste system.
‘When you slept with the person on the field bund, wasn’t caste important then?’
