Indian Samurai इंडियन सामुराई

In India, hair is really important.

I tried to look for proper article on the same but could not find anything really so I will gather a few things I can remember about it! 

• There are temples where people shave off and give their hair as an offering to god – which hair is then sent to Italy, treated and recycled in very expensive wigs).
• There are the Jaïn nuns who have to pluck every hair from their head when they become nuns.
• There are the Sikhs who don’t cut their hair and hide it in a turban to “show God that their “human” beauty has no value”.
• There are the Hindu widows who are supposed to shave their head – it is less done today but when you visit the countryside and see a woman with very short hair, you can’t help wondering whether her husband has recently passed away.
• There are the Muslim women who hide their hair.

And the best example is still this one: 

 

A majority of Indian men never go out without their comb and they frequently use it!! No better way to become rich than starting a comb factory!!

I will finish my story on the “Backwards” (cfhttp://www.indiandacoit.com/archive/2011/04/14/and-you-what-s-your-little-name.html )

I have been told that my note was full of contempt and condescension.

But this system is really contemptible!

I will quote here an expert, Marc Boulet who wrote this book “In the skin of an Intouchable” – he basically learned Hindi perfectly, took drugs to get a tan and lived on the street as an Intouchable beggar for months…

 

“Westerners completely fall for it. They rightly fight racism and anti-Semitism but they see the caste system with a lot of indulgence and consider that it is part of the Indian cultural heritage, like the Tâj Mahal. They don’t get shocked, outraged, by the caste system; it is far away. And I also think that their benevolence comes from the fact they admire the brahman civilisation and they get disgusted by sweepers and other untouchables, altogether with beggars and lepers for whom they only think of a contemptuous charity. […] I am not scared of words anymore. The caste system is a segregationist system, just as Apartheid in South Africa. As revolting, as condemnable.”

 

Then I had a word about it with Indian friends. This world “backward” was found by the Government after independence. The idea was to create quotas (for education, for public-sector jobs (22.5%), for seats in the parliament (17.5%)) for underprivileged and women. These quotas had been created for 10 years.

When the Government revised it, in the late 80’s, they estimated that the deadline should be extended, created the “Other Backward” class and increased the quotas.

Since mostly “Backwards” vote and they represent more than 50% of the population, the quotas stopped being a temporary solution…

And that upset other people because quotas target only the cast and not the revenue. But you now have rich Untouchables (who get the quotas) and poor Brahmans (who don’t)…

Not easy…

 

Source : My friends and http://reason.com/archives/2010/05/04/indias-government-by-quota

Today we celebrate in India Ambedkar’s birthday (you can google it ; to sum-up he was an untouchable who fought to suppress the cast system and finally converted to Buddhism when he understood it would not happen within Hinduism ; he later on participated to wirtting the Indian Constitution).

 

Talking about him to a colleague, I heard for the first time that “Ambedkar was a backward”. A what?? Translating in my language, it is just SO insulting!!

Nice to imagine the father seeing his baby for the first time: “you will be a backward my son”…

 

But that’s not all, the backwards have other nice pet names!

 

Actually, in India, there are the casts and the other (also called Lower castes).

The Lower castes are divided in 3 :

 

·         The « Scheduled Castes » (15% of the population) – the dictionary translates « Scheduled Castes » by «privileged classes » (maybe it’s some kind of humour ??). They used to be the untouchables – who call themselves « Dalit » (depressed) and were called by gandhians « Harijan » (children of God – and other people, there are children of whom, mind you?).

 

·         The « Scheduled Tribes » or « Adivasi » (which means aboriginals): people living in the jungle.

 

·         The « Backward Classes » (50% of the population) : « This category includes in it castes who belong to Sudra Varna and also former untouchables who converted from Hinduism to other religions. This category also includes in it nomads and tribes who made a living from criminal acts. »

 

Sometimes these three categories are defined together as Backward Classes.

 

Today,” untouchability or discriminating a person based on his caste is legally forbidden.”

No comment…

 

Source : http://adaniel.tripod.com/modernindia.htm