The Lottery of Birth Quotes

“Finally, it is also worth noting that nearly every institution of post-independence India has been spearheaded by Brahminical elites. Their dismal performance in delivering even basic social services to the majority of Indians—of education, health, water, sanitation, and electricity—says volumes about their ‘merit’ and argues against leaving them in control of these institutions.”
― Namit Arora, The Lottery of Birth: On Inherited Social Inequalities

“Throughout history, he adds, the dominant castes that were ‘most successful in their attempt at conquering power managed to be recognized as Kshatriyas by Brahmins who invented genealogies for them.’ For recent examples, he points to Marathas (Maharashtra), Lingayats and Vokkaligas (Karnataka), and Kammas and Reddys (Andhra Pradesh). Citing Srinivas, he writes that ‘the Kshatriya category was the most open of the caste system.’ To”
― Namit Arora, The Lottery of Birth: On Inherited Social Inequalities

“Lower caste males whose sexuality is a threat to upper-caste purity of blood has to be institutionally prevented from having sexual access to women of the higher castes, so such women have to be carefully guarded.’48”
― Namit Arora, The Lottery of Birth: On Inherited Social Inequalities

“In patriarchy, the female is not only seen as property—first her father’s, then husband’s—her sexual sanctity and propriety become central to these men’s izzat, or dignity and honor. Men think of settling feuds by ‘sullying’ each other’s women. Marital rape too seems incoherent when the wife is seen as the husband’s property.”
― Namit Arora, The Lottery of Birth: On Inherited Social Inequalities

“The Jats of north India, for instance, have opportunistically claimed to be both Kshatriya and OBC in different contexts, first under the aegis of Arya Samaj’s missionary drive to Sanskritize lower castes and then in response to positive discrimination programs initiated by the Mandal commission. Notably,”
― Namit Arora, The Lottery of Birth: On Inherited Social Inequalities

“A caste-based moral community made it easier for its members to diminish the travails and humanity of those ‘beneath them’ and to see nothing immoral about perpetuating their misfortune or enabling their oppression (using rationalizations like, ‘these people are used to it’, or ‘they are like that only’).”
― Namit Arora, The Lottery of Birth: On Inherited Social Inequalities

“more an instance of what the philosopher Hannah Arendt called the ‘banality of evil’, which refers to the tendency of ordinary people, who, as cogs in an oppressive system, unthinkingly inflict great violence on others and normalize and perpetuate the system, all while believing that they’re leading a good and moral life.”
― Namit Arora, The Lottery of Birth: On Inherited Social Inequalities