Casteism Quotes

“Caste is a very important element of Indian society. As soon as a person is born, caste determines his or her destiny. Being born is not in the control of a person. If it were in one’s control, then why would I have been born in a Bhangi household? Those who call themselves the standard-bearers of this country’s great cultural heritage, did they decide which homes they would be born into? Of course, they turn to scriptures to justify their position, the scriptures that establish feudal values instead of promoting equality
and freedom.”
― Omprakash Valmiki, Joothan: An Untouchable's Life

“बर्दाश्त कर लेने का इतना हौसला था कि आज मैं सोचता हूँ तो हैरान रह जाता हूँ। कितना कुछ छीन लिया है मुझसे इस बर्दाश्त कर लेने की आदत ने!”
― Omprakash Valmiki, जूठन: पहला खंड [Joothan]

“A doctor, a teacher and a politician have no caste.”
― Amit Kalantri

“The cruel social arbiters of Indian society were denying individual merit. In their eyes, Ambedkar was simply a Mahar, and they could
not care less if his scholarship was as vast as the sky.”
― Omprakash Valmiki, Joothan: An Untouchable's Life

“People in the West need to know that most of the spiritual, intellectual, and cultural products of South Asia are tainted by Brahmanism. What may have offered you liberation and healing also causes caste-oppressed people to suffer. You don't have to give up those practices or concepts, but the call is to be intentional and acknowledge the caste harm. Your faith is bound to the violence it sanctions. For practitioners of Brahminical traditions, this reckoning may be painful. It's hard to admit the gulf between your values and the history of your spiritual practice, but if you do not wish to be complicit in the suffering of others, then you must confront these truths. When we exalt some aspects of spiritual practices, we cannot be fully aware and present. People enter spiritual practices and surrender everything without critical judgment and informed consent. Any faith is a practice of teachings that come from an ego, and those can then be interpreted by bad actors. To my mind, part of being a seeker is to interrogate all teachings and practices, to stay soft and flexible as opposed to rigid and dogmatic, to move slowly enough to be able to see when we're being blinded to the truth.”
― Thenmozhi Soundararajan, The Trauma of Caste: A Dalit Feminist Meditation on Survivorship, Healing, and Abolition

“You know, When does a girl asks you for a selfie ?

When she got the solution to the biggest mathematical equation of this Society.”
― Balakoteswara Panchakshari

“सदियों से चली आ रही इस प्रथा के पार्श्व में जातीय अहम की पराकाष्ठा है। समाज में जो गहरी खाई है उसे प्रथा और गहरा बनाती है। एक साजिश है हीनता के भँवर में फँसा देने की।

Caste pride is behind this centuries-old custom.
The deep chasm that divides the society is made even deeper by
this custom, a conspiracy to trap us in the whirlpool of inferiority.”
― Om Prakash Valimiki

“सदियों से चली आ रही इस प्रथा के पार्श्व में जातीय अहम की पराकाष्ठा है। समाज में जो गहरी खाई है उसे प्रथा और गहरा बनाती है। एक साजिश है हीनता के भँवर में फँसा देने की।”
― Omprakash Valmiki, जूठन: पहला खंड [Joothan]

“Caste pride is behind this centuries-old custom. The deep chasm that divides the society is made even deeper by this custom, a conspiracy to trap us in the whirlpool of inferiority.”
― Omprakash Valmiki, Joothan: An Untouchable's Life

“The savarnas constructed all sorts of mythologies: of chivalry, of ideals. What was the outcome? A defeated social order in the clutches of hopelessness, poverty, illiteracy, narrow-mindedness, religious inertia, and priestocracy, a social order embroiled in ritualism, which, fragmented, was repeatedly defeated by the Greeks, Shakas, Huns, Afghans, Moghuls, French, and English. Yet in the name of their valor and their greatness, savarnas kept hitting the weak and the helpless. Kept burning homes. Kept insulting women and raping them. To drown in self-praise and turn away from the truth, to not learn from history—what sort of a nation-building are they dreaming of?”
― Omprakash Valmiki, Joothan: An Untouchable's Life

“Why didn’t an epic poet ever write a word about our lives?”
― Omprakash Valmiki, Joothan: An Untouchable's Life

“Pray for a cause not for a caste”
― Dr.P.S. Jagadeesh Kumar

“The vogue of my ancestry is my family, above all religion and caste”
― P.S. Jagadeesh Kumar

“भारतीय समाज में ‘जाति’ एक महत्त्वपूर्ण घटक है। ‘जाति’ पैदा होते ही व्यक्ति की नियति तय कर देती है। पैदा होना व्यक्ति के अधिकार में नहीं होता। यदि होता तो मैं भंगी के घर पैदा क्यों होता? जो स्वयं को इस देश की महान सांस्कृतिक धरोहर के तथाकथित अलमबरदार कहते हैं, क्या वे अपनी मर्जी से उन घरों में पैदा हुए हैं? हाँ, इसे जस्टीफाई करने के लिए अनेक धर्मशास्त्रों का सहारा वे जरूर लेते हैं। वे धर्मशास्त्र जो समता, स्वतंत्रता की हिमायत नहीं करते, बल्कि सामन्ती प्रवृत्तियों को स्थापित करते हैं।”
― Omprakash Valmiki, जूठन: पहला खंड [Joothan]

“तरह–तरह के मिथक रचे गए—वीरता के, आदर्शों के। कुल मिलाकर क्या परिणाम निकले? पराजित, निराशा, निर्धनता, अज्ञानता, संकीर्णता, कूपमंडूकता, धार्मिक जड़ता, पुरोहितवाद के चंगुल में फँसा, कर्मकांड में उलझा समाज, जो टुकड़ों में बँटकर कभी यूनानियों से हारा, कभी शकों से। कभी हूणों से, कभी अफगानों से, कभी मुगलों, फ्रांसीसियों और अंग्रेजों से हारा, फिर भी अपनी वीरता और महानता के नाम पर कमजोर और असहायों को पीटते रहे। घर जलाते रहे। औरतों को अपमानित कर उनकी इज्जत से खेलते रहे। आत्मश्लाघा में डूबकर सच्चाई से मुँह मोड़ लेना, इतिहास से सबक न लेना, आखिर किस राष्ट्र के निर्माण की कल्पना है?”
― Omprakash Valmiki, जूठन: पहला खंड [Joothan]

“किसी महाकवि ने हमारे जीवन पर एक भी शब्द क्यों नहीं लिखा?”
― Omprakash Valmiki, जूठन: पहला खंड [Joothan]

“I feel amazed when I look back on those days
and the things that I learned to tolerate. How much my ability to tolerate hurts flung at me has taken out of me!”
― Omprakash Valmiki, Joothan: An Untouchable's Life

“साहित्य में नरक की सिर्फ कल्पना है। हमारे लिए बरसात के दिन किसी नारकीय जीवन से कम न थे। हमने इसे साकार रूप में जीते–जी भोगा है। ग्राम्य जीवन की यह दारुण व्यथा हिन्दी के महाकवियों को छू भी नहीं सकी। कितनी बीभत्स सच्चाई है यह!”
― Omprakash Valmiki, जूठन: पहला खंड [Joothan]

“Literature can only imagine hell. For us, the rainy season was a living hell. The epic poets of Hindi have not even touched upon the terrible sufferings of the villages. What a monstrous truth that is.”
― Omprakash Valmiki, Joothan: An Untouchable's Life

“भारतीय समाज की क्रूर–व्यवस्था व्यक्ति की योग्यता को नकार रही थी। उनकी दृष्टि में डॉ. अम्बेडकर जन्मना महार थे। भले ही उनकी विद्वत्ता आकाश जितनी ऊँचाई पा जाए।”
― Omprakash Valmiki, जूठन: पहला खंड [Joothan]

“STOP FINDING PRIDE FOR YOUR CASTE, BE THE PRIDE OF YOUR CASTE; LET YOU BE A HUMAN TRIBE OR A TRIBE OF THE HUMAN”
― P.S. Jagadeesh Kumar

“As we saw in the last chapter, the dreams have a double meaning: They are the dreams that announce the birth of a universal emperor, but they also announce the birth of a Tirthankar. In other words, a Tirthankar is one who might have been an earthly king but became an ascetic instead. In this connection, it is important to note that a Tirthankar-to-be is always born into a family belonging to the Kshatriya varna, the social class of warriors and kings.”
― Lawrence A. Babb, Absent Lord: Ascetics and Kings in a Jain Ritual Culture (Comparative Studies in Religion and Society)

“[Kerala; Communism, ballots over bullets… Promises, experiments, egalitarianism… Last remaining memory of a shared dream… Beautiful, regretful… Beautiful dreams disappearing on waking up to realities… Realities, regrets that remain… Dialectics eschewed, materialism that remains…

These villages are notorious for infanticide, foeticide, STDs, malaria, TB and the more rampant malnourishment, poverty and casteism. All of it killed its people. Along with snake bites, sorcery and quackery.

These are the little miracles that my kind take for granted, for we believe we are born with certain entitlements. We fail to see the miracles. Maybe it is for this reason there aren’t many rationalists and atheists hailing from the houses of the poor.”
― Rasal, I Killed the Golden Goose : A COLLECTION OF THOUGHTS, THOUGHTLESSNESS, SILENCES, POEMS & SOME ‘SHOT’ STORIES

“Chaturvarna system... is the foundational bureaucracy of Indian humiliation.”
― Anurag Minus Verma, The Great Indian Brain Rot : Love, Lies and Algorithms in Digital India