Sometime in Indian history an immoral practice called caste discrimination took birth. Starting with the kings who remained biased to a particular religion of their liking, to the top political leaders of today who subscribe to it secretly, deliberate isolation of a section of the population is not uncommon to find in our nation.

Dalits have remained ‘the dustbin‘ of this country, which boasts of having one of the greatest cultures in the world. One has to remember that phrases like ‘Incredible India’ or ‘High-Tech India’ or even the miserably failed political brand-makers like ‘India Shining’ and ‘Aam Aadmi’ conceal a great deal of truth, again deliberately.

Just when one thought that the evil would end with this generation of Indians, the naughty gene seems to have made some really dangerous inroads into the future. Children in a primary school at Bibipur in the state of Uttar Pradesh have boycotted their lunch because it was made by an untouchable and hence, unclean. Mrs. Phool Kumari Rawat, cooked food for around 300 children in this school. Last week the pupils in this school began the boycotts for the caste reason. One of them Shivani Singh Chauhan even said,’I will not eat anything cooked by that lady. I have heard my family members say that she is from some low caste. So I bring my own lunch box’. Clearly, the parental caste venom seems to have dissolved deep in innocent bloods. Even the local officials who initially stood by Mrs. Rawat are now all set to sack her, under the false reason that the quality of food prepared is poor.

Mrs. Rawat, a widow of three children, was a daily wage laborer before taking up this cooking job. Today, destiny is being very cruel to her and she would again end up in the streets, like a waste thrown into the bin. One would assume this is extremely unfortunate considering that the irony has unfolded in a state gifted with a charismatic Dalit Chief Minister. However, volunteers for the betterment of dalit rights have a different story to tell.

Ram Kumar, of the National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights, said, “There are no equal rights in UP. We have a Dalit chief minister but more than 80 per cent of the bureaucracy consists of members from the upper caste. There are many villages in UP that are totally dominated by caste and there is not any chance of social equality.” Source

Hoping for a life without discrimination.

Dalits in our country have been fighting for a humane treatment for many centuries now. People would remember great souls like Bhimrao Ambedkar, Mahatma Gandhi, Jyotibha Phule and Pandit Nehru for their commending work for the dalit cause. Governments in India continue to make hundreds of laws for these so-called ‘low caste‘ people by providing reservation and political representation. However, the important point is that mere legal space will not empower these souls. An attitudinal change is the need of the hour. Those people who take pride in calling themselves ‘upper class‘ will need to remember that the time has come for them to start behaving like humans and to treat humans as humans. This has to be the last generation, I repeat, the last generation to remember caste discrimination. The moral deletion has to begin now.

Now is the mother who cooked food in this story worth being on the streets?

News Source: The Independent