Bangalore: The Aryan anti-Mandal maniacs use any and every stick to beat the Mandal Commission report – the Bible of the Backward Castes. They have the press to write their bullshit but the oppressed people of India have none except DV to defend justice and truth.
The Nov. 15 India Today editorial, “Mandal’s Big Lie”, is one. In this the editor uses the Anthropological Survey of India’s People of India Project’s (POI) just released Vol. I to berate Mandal. This latest POI report lists 1,046 “communities” under Backward Castes while the Mandal had identified 3,743 groups. This is his complaint.
The editorial criticises the Mandal for “bloating” the population of the BCs and recommending a 27% reservation to BCs. And this is described as a “major discrepancy” and “arbitrary categorisation” and the editorial demands the total rejection of Mandal.
Only objection: Yes. Mandal harms the upper castes and they have the India Today, India Tomorrow, India Day-after-Tomorrow, the Sunday, Monday, Tuesday to write their nonsense.
All Aryans/upper caste/racist are opposed to Mandal. And the India Today cannot be an exception. So, we are not surprised by its opposition. If the India Today has to be sold it has to write only such anti-Mandal stuff.
The India Today’s only point of accusation is the POI has listed 1,046 castes as against 3,743 of Mandal.
Village republic: These urban-born, urban-bred upper caste editors do not know what is a village and yet they lavishly comment on a thing which they have never known, never loved.
India is a country of villages. And every village has certain fixed service jatis: barber, potter, weaver, fisherman, toddy-tapper, washerman (dhobi), goldsmith and ironsmith, bangle-maker, shepherd, oil crusher, cow-rearing people and such other jatis who live “serving” the Aryan upper castes. These BC jati sexist in every village. Hindus call this their ” ideal village republic.”
From Kanyakumari to Kashmir and from Saurashtra coast to Nagaland, all the BC jatis do the same work, do the same service.
They may be doing the same service but they are known by different names.
Same work different names: One example: today- tappers in the four southern states are known by different names: Ezhavas in South Kerala but Thiyyas in North Kerala, Billava in Karnataka’s coastal district of South Kanara, Namadharis in N. Kanara, Idiga in old Mysore, Nadars in TN, Gowd in AP. That means in South India alone one particular service jati of BC Nadars is known by over ten names. Mandal might have listed these as ten different BC jatis and POI might have clubbed all of them in one because all these jatis do the same work and hence they are one.
The difference between Mandal listing of the BCs and the POI is exactly this.
Dhangars and Kurubas: We can cite several more examples. In Karnataka, the shepherds are known by the name Kurubas but in Maharastra they are called Dhangars.
The difference is in the name but the service is the same. This is the cause of “discrepancy”. Are you listening Mr. Arun Purie?
For writing this editorial, the India Today, India Tomorrow and India Day After-Tomorrow may get kudos galore. Its circulation may go. The editor may get awards and rewards. But that is not journalism.
What is journalism?: Journalism is called tomorrow’s history today. But Arun Purie is not contributing to history with his half-baked knowledge of the country.
B.P. Mandal, the author of the Mandal Commission, was a great Lobiaite with a firm grounding on the soil of Bihar of which he was once a Chief Minister. Parliament had two debates on the Mandal report and hailed it wholesale. No political party has so far rejected the report. To comment on such a historic document, the Bible of the Backward Classes, it needs lot of study, experience and vast contact.
Just because Arun Purie has dubbed such a historic document as “a Big Lie”, it doesn’t become one. That is why we say what we have in India is gutter journalism, confined to less than 15% of the country’s elite.
