A Brahmin wonders why Brahmins are hated most

The Brahmins were and are hated because they are descendants of the Aryans (poor fellows, the local category has little in common with the Vedic Aryans); the upper caste non-Brahmins are hated too, because they were marked as ‘exploiters. Strangely enough, by ‘Dravidians’ in the new political mythology is meant not the hisiorically-recognised ethnic group covering the whole of South India, but only the members of certain non-Brahmin communities in Tamil Nadu, who were ready fall in line with the hate chorus and vilification campaign. All this was the manifestation of pathological xenophobia, rather than a well-considered social philosophy or a scientific political dialectic. During the two decades and more, Indians seem to have reached a topsy-turvy state in their social and political thinking, that everyone who seeks to play to the gallery, must say, like Milton’s Satan again, “Evil, to be thou my good”! Everything connected with the Centre, which still holds us together as of today, is presented as a form of unmitigated evil. But even here there is no semblance of an attempt at consistency. The President, Mr.R. Venkataraman, who was hailed only a few years ago by these parochial leaders as the first true Dravidian’ for occupy the Rashirapati Bhavan, was more recently threatened with impeachment, by the same worthy gentleman. Was it a theatre of the absurd or a street play of the grotesque? The saddest part of the whole story is that ‘national integration’, so dear to the heart of farseeing nation-builder, Jawaharlal Nehru, has become a dirty word in the dictionary of those who flourished on the: philosophy of hatred and the politics of separatism and vivisection in the name of ‘autonomy’ and ‘regional identity’. But it may not be that easy for them to fool all the people every time. But Indians need sanity in their social life, and breadth of vision and perspective in political life. Mahatma Gandhis and Jawaharlal Nehru’s are not born in every generation — nor Ram Mohan Rosy and Vivekananda’s. But India can do with at least a Sardar Patel and an Indira Gandhi to stem the rot of today, and strengthen the forces of national integration (Hindu May 7).