Thursday, April 1, 2010

The Hindu, N. Ram and His Asian college of Brahminism

There is a story of a Brahmin family which I want to narrate here: Once there was Brahmin family in a remote village practising untouchability. After the reform movements the family started representing the untouchable population, without understanding that it was his community that pratctises untouchability in Indian society. They gave a birth to a male child. The child’s parents started encouraging their child to learn about Marxisim, dalitism, etc. but they kept their child under darkness in revealing what is Brahminism and who Brahmins are? This family in due course attained a status in the society that they could represent the untouchables too. Many years passed, the child grew and started preaching against untouchability. In one stage the man said “every one should fight to remove the scare of untouchability in the society”. One of the person belonging from untouchable castes asked a question “how do you remove untouchability?” the man replied that see I have completed Post-Doc in the university of Harward and I am ready to marry a women from an Untouchable family if she has this qualification”. The person replied that if You can think that a women from this untouchable community can do a post-Doc then why are they called as Untouchables; and even if she has done her Post-Doc from the University of Harvard then why she should marry a man who were ‘s a thread on his body and prays thrice a day and eats vegetarian food”. Still the person didn’t realize what untouchability means to him.
Friends, this is a story I want to connect to an Indian national daily newspaper, The “Hindu”. They have started a college for journalism called Asian college of Journalism. Some years back they started to issue full fees reduction for Dalits and Tribal students in the college. It was a welcoming move for most of the so-called progressive students. Some students who studied there said in ACJ they make the students understand what is reservation in India means and who are the marginalized population in India. For your kind information in the past years, since there were no dalits/tribals to use the fellowship it fell under backlog fellowship. Therefore right now there are some 25 backlog fellowships for dalits/tribals. To all our surprise they do not follow reservation in the admission. Therefore before preaching about reservation for the admitted students the ACJ or Ram or Hindu should know what is reservation meant for and what it means for the Dalit population and start providing reservation in the admission. People like “Ram” should be rather preaching scriptures rather than untouchabity.
People who join ACJ should have the guts and nuts to stand against the so called "Merit" based admission and start fighting for reservation in the admmission even the so-called radical Marxist, liberal humanist faculties in the institution's admission procedure and support reservation in it.Hope one day the “Ram” institution will understand what untoucability is and who the Brahmins are?

I would like to clarify my stands on ACJ. Friends, i am not against the ACJ in total. But i think that ACJ should implement reservation in the admission procedure. We should not forget that there are no dalits in the last two batches. But there are Dalits who are taking the entrance exam every year but they are not getting qualified in the entrance exam. There is a lot of things to be discussed about the entrance exam, which i think is not the point of this writing. This writing is to say that the Reservation policy under our constitution is an affirmative action introduced to encourage dalits/tribal to excell in various field. I think that the ACJ should implement reservation in the admission. Dalits and other progressive people should press ACJ to implement reservation in the admission. At the same time i do encourage Dalit/Tribals to apply ACJ. Because at least i feel it is a better place than an IIT/IIM's.

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