HINDU RENAISSANCE - UNTOUCHABILITY(Contd…II) -SOLUTIONS TO THE PROBLEMS

HINDU RENAISSANCE

UNTOUCHABILITY(Contd…II)

As I said earlier, every Individual is unique and different –whether within a family, or within a caste or within the entire society. All people must be encouraged and allowed to flower to their level of human achievement and happiness. 

Of course, some will be faster than others and some will be slower. Some have certain capabilities and some are born with certain disabilities. Some are born with certain genetic illnesses. Some have acquired illnesses later. Some are extremely courageous. Some are timid. Some are black and some are white. People living on earth come with all skin colours ranging between pure white to pure dark. All possible colours and colour combinations exist in the externally visible skins of people across the globe. What is inside the skin – doesn’t create the social differences and taboos, to the extent the external, visible skin colour does.

Individual preferences based on skin colour are a fact of life. For mating preferences, skin colours seem to matter at least to some extent. Eye types, hair types etc may also matter. These are individual preferences for mating and similar other purposes. 

But, intelligence, achievement etc – definitely do not depend on skin, eye or hair types. These are wide spread across all societies and all families in each society. Greatest achievers in all walks of life come from all societies.

If we teach the same things to all people, all People will learn the same things. All people will believe the same things. All people will imbibe similar emotional characteristics within a certain range. It has always been happening like that in entire human history. It is teaching and training that can make all the difference.

Certain things have to be taught necessarily. Love has to be taught. Compassion has to be taught. Courage has to be taught. Honesty has to be taught. Friendship has to be taught. Unity has to be taught. Equality at birth has to be taught. Ambition has to be taught. Pursuit of great goals has to be taught.

Everything that promotes human welfare, happiness and Unity has to be taught from childhood.

Sciences, Maths, economics, and such other subjects are being taught and in them, certain uniform thinking comes to exist, for all people, but they are of secondary importance. If the first said inner qualities do not flower in all human beings in a society, there is no of ensuring the progress of those individuals or of the society. 

Whatever else people learn, if their positivity and unity do not blossom, they will tend to lead miserable lives. The richest man in a country may be the most miserable man too – if his inner, positive, affirmative qualities have not flowered. We can see this across all countries in the world.

The person occupying the most powerful political seat will also be similarly a miserable wreck if his inner qualities have not flowered. All of our other accomplishments in any field mean nothing to our life, if our inner qualities have not flowered.

Therefore, Education must aim at growing these essential inner qualities at each stage of education. LKG to PHD – if we are not grooming our inner positive and affirmative qualities, PHD will only result in PERMANENT HEAD DAMAGE. All glorified inner wrecks will be trotting amongst us, as most educated, most rich and most powerful people.

Is UNTOUCHABILITY an unsolvable social problem? Nonsense. Put equality and all other inner qualities in the syllabus from LKG to PHD and teach every child and every youth, in any and every way we can, even if it is in an imperfect way initially, we will see the inevitable result that India will grow into an extraordinarily glorious and beautifully unified country within a single generation.

But, we have not even started this journey. We have not even initiated the process.

Our education is devoid of the most essential ingredients of education. So, 70 years after independence, we suffer too many social ills like untouchability even today. We wrongly feel that these ills will remain with us for all time to come and we want to be fighting each other for these silly reasons.

The name of our illness is clear – disunity and untouchability. The right medicine is  - right teaching and training from LKG to PHD. For any such social illness, the one and only right medicine is – right teaching and training throughout our Education. Without administering this right medicine, whatever else we may do, be they agitations, violence, protests, internecine quarrels, Dharnas, mutual recriminations etc etc, these social illnesses will never end. 

Majority of all people of all castes will agree on this. Of course, right now, India has a certain number of Politicians, religious leaders etc, who want DISUNITY to thrive. They adopt all tactics to divide people’s minds. We are seeing all this every day. Every caste and every religion has its own Political party, its own closed societies, clubs, temples, even Banks and so on – on the basis of its own dividing factors. 

But, nobody knows how and when our divisions will go. Everybody is waiting for some Avatar, some Saviour, Some great social reformer to come and throw these illnesses out of India. But, Nobody alive wants to bell the cat. In the mean time, social tensions are building up. Avoidable violence is occurring. A society which is already fragmented is fragmenting more rapidly than ever.

The existing laws are faulty and negatively oriented and they merely serve to scare away other people from the Dalits, in the fear of being implicated in false cases. Every such instance of a false case bolsters the scare.

There are too many Politicians and aspiring Politicians in India who work assiduously to divide people on caste basis and destroy all existing social harmony.  There are bound to be gullible and not so gullible people who fall for such dividing tactics easily and indulge in division and violence.

But, majority of people in all castes are for unity and peaceful co-existence. We only don’t know how to bring that Unity amongst us. That is the problem with all of us. We all want unity but we don’t know how it comes.

Will CASTE go completely, LOCK,STOCK and BARREL? Tomorrow, when we get up, how wonderful it will be if we have all forgotten our caste and just remember that we are just HINDUS, who are extremely humane, compassionate, courageous and united.

What if, we forget our religion as well? Yes. That is the ultimate idea. What I am suggesting here is an intermediary solution, just for the present. Reason is – the Christian is not forgetting that he is a Christian and he wants that - you should convert as Christian for going to the heaven which nobody on earth has seen. The Muslim wants you to convert as Muslim, for the same reason. 

You will find all Mullas, Moulvis and Moulanas in the Islamic Jannat and all Priests, pastors, Bishops and Popes in the Christian heaven. That is what they are promising you any way. But, the promised Hindu heaven has attractions like dances, gardens, outings, swimming pools, resorts and beautiful girls for dating and so on. Nobody on earth has seen the Hindu heaven also. It is up to you to choose – but the choice has to be made on earth.I have nothing against any of them - as no one on earth really knows about any of them.

Till we prove that HINDUISM  is the best and the most universally acceptable religion, on earth, we cannot perhaps say – come, let us all unite. 

Right now, there is an exodus, sometimes silent, sometimes open, and sometimes ugly, in the reverse direction, from Hinduism into other religions.

Many Hindu religious leaders are not yet even aware of the enormity of this issue. And, they are doing practically nothing to reform and remove these weaknesses from Hinduism.

I have nothing against them at personal level. They are good people and even great people from some perspectives. I don’t deny that.

But, striving and aspiring by various means, for Swarga or Moksha or any such thing that we want, should happen to us after death, when we not shown enough compassion and love to the lowest rung of people – I think, that is not going to happen. I don’t think any God will allow Swarga or Moksha to anybody who has not shown enough love and compassion to the needy and the suffering.

Some New Age Gurus, much more learned and practical, are of course, trying to unite all people through YOGA, Meditation, service to the suffering etc. I unreservedly salute them all and request the traditional acharyas and Swamijis to revisit the Gita and Upanishads in their context. The New age Gurus are definitely on right track and the traditional Gurus are not on the right track in most cases.

The earliest rebel and reformer was Adi Sankaracharya himself. He said many times, ‘name jaatibheda”. I don’t differentiate castes – says he. The story of his accepting a meat-carrying Chandala as his Guru and bowing down before him is a famous example of his Universality of outlook. In many of his famous slokas, this spirit is extraordinarily evident. But, all his views have not sunk into the minds of all his followers. That is the tragedy.

Ditto with Ramanajacharya. What reforms he brought  in bringing down the caste walls have been forgotten and we only remember that ‘vaishanites are different’ and wthey have become one more caste!

No reformer and no Great Guru could reform our minds to love all people and be compassionate to all needy people. They said. They did. But, they could not reform us. Mahatma Gandhi’s personal example was to love all and be compassionate to all. He showed us Lord Krishna’s path in practice. He showed us the practice of Jesus Christ’s path better than most Christians.   

But, somehow, none of them could convince us that their example was to be followed by us and not just used to praise them and leave it at that. We are their admirers but not followers. We try to divide, divide and divide ourselves on caste basis, religion basis, linguistic basis, state basis  and all other conceivable division factors basis.

CASTE has become a tool for vote bank politics. CASTE has become a tool to befriend or hate other people. CASTE is the tool for differentiating  OUR and OTHER people. CASTE  is the basis for hating other people. But, of course, it doesn’t really make us love our people. HATRED for other people never ever translated into LOVE for our people. We really love nobody.

But, there are GOOD SAMARITANS also everywhere. These good samaritans have no time to differentiate people on the basis of CASTE. They love all and serve all. I know a number of such good people. Problem is – they don’t have vociferous and loyal supporters who will at least save them from problems created by perennial HATERS, who have nothing else to do than create problems for GOOD SAMARITANS ALSO. HATERS don’t want UNITY of others beyond caste barriers.

I have heard of this type of problems created by HATERS to at least 2 great GOOD SAMARITANS. Of course, they came out of these problems with some difficulty. But, it does affect their own Great work to some extent at least for some time.

The tragedy of every society, has always been this.  GOOD PEOPLE fail invariably in one important thing. They don’t unite with other GOOD PEOPLE. They become lone LIONS. BAD PEOPLE always unite – especially to trouble the good people.

We invariably forget what Lord Krishna said and did. He said,

“Parithraanaaya Saadhoonaam, 

Vinaasaayacha dushkruthaam, 

Dharma Samsthapanaarthaaya,

Sambhavaami yuge Yuge”.

God will not come often. He resides in you and me. It is you and I who should take up his work - of protecting the good people, punishing the bad people and holding up the good in the society.

When he says, he is born again and again for this purpose – it means, he is born as you and me to do this work. Guru Govind Singh was a great example of this. His small number of followers fought like lions against large armies of the Mughals, won many times and became Martyrs. But, that gave rise to the valiant Sikhism, which is ever willing to follow righteousness and punish wickedness.

I feel the time has come that every family should nominate one person as kshatriya or as a Sikh (I do not differentiate these two categories) and be willing to protect righteousness and also punish wickedness. We must uplift all poor people out of poverty into righteous, hard work and well earned riches. 

UNITY is the only basis on which a religion must be organized. But, Yes. Work based division of societies will always be there. It was, is and will always be there in all societies. That was what Lord Krishna envisaged in his Gita. Guna and Karma are two characteristics on which people get divided naturally.

But, modern day’s work is changing its face too very fast. The ancient types of work are disappearing almost totally. Therefore, the ancient division of society is no more valid. It must change. Instead of that, we are still clinging to ancient caste based division which is no more valid and we are unwilling to reform the division to suit modern times.

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