rajeev@sftri.UUCP (S.Rajeev) (05/04/85)
In response to ut-sally!raghu:
*
*Question: Shouldn't the objective of any reservation policy be to help all
*those who need (and deserve) help, rather than just one such group?
Let's get some misapprehensions cleared up here: nobody is saying that a
poor and smart ("meritorious" by whatever criterion) upper-caste person
should be denied any opportunities. Such people make it in the general
quotas without any problem, and this is just as it should be. Likewise
the poor and smart lower-caste person. The argument here is about the
MARGINAL person. If there are two marginal applicants, one upper-caste
and the other lower-caste, (and both poor) who should be chosen? Given
that the vast majority of general-pool openings go to upper-caste
people, I think any fair-minded observer would agree that the
lower-caste person "deserves" the seat or job, as the case may be.
* History should be used as
*a signpost to mistakes that should be avoided, rather than a compendium of
*wrongs to be righted.
*
One of these "lessons" is that unjust oppression of a large population
group leads to a holocaust (recent examples: the Shiites in Lebanon,
what seems to be happening in South Africa). As uscvax!baparao pointed
out, it is in all our interests to avoid violence. In any case, when
it is in our power to right grievous wrongs, why shouldn't we?
* My solutions? Try to identify
*your prejudices, on a personal level. On a social level, ostracize
*anyone who is casteist (is that a word?!). On a national level, design
*a set of laws that disallow casteist distinctions, and ENFORCE them.
Your "solutions", though laudable, are a bit impractical. And time might
already be running out: the oppressed are becoming more aware of their
rights and their grievances, and might not be willing to wait forever for
their piece of the pie. The privileged never give up their
privileges unless forced to. For the upper castes, who certainly run the
country, there is much incentive to maintain the status quo.
*
*I get the impression that my statement has been misinterpreted.
*
I was referring to my original quote about "Harijan doctor ... licence
to kill". Unfortunate choice of words on my part.
*that are beyond their capabilities. When one sees many people of a given
*denomination doing their jobs incompetently (of course, there are
*always exceptions) the usual tendency is to go away with a low opinion
*of those people.
*
Prejudice at work again:
The reaction to an incompetent x (x = Harijan, woman, black, ...)
is: "What do you expect, all x's are incompetent." Whereas if it's a
y (y=upper-caste, white, male, ...) the reaction is "Mr. Y is
incompetent". Try and stop stereotyping; see people as individuals.
Stereotyping and expectations play a large part in social interactions.
A Harijan child growing up never seeing Harijan role models who are
never administrators, doctors, engineers but only sweepers, cobblers,
peasants will not have the vision to aspire to more. Similarly,
expectations from teachers have been shown to have considerable bearing
on performance in school. Studies have shown that blacks in the US have
suffered because of this: self-fulfilling expectations of poor performance.
If you expect a Harijan to do badly, you end up somehow helping cause
that person to do badly. Which doesn't shift the blame for an incompetent
Harijan to you, of course; but it's worth considering things from the
other guy's point of view.
*Let me emphasize something. I think the caste system, in its rigid,
*prevalent form, is evil and nauseating.
... as opposed to the non-rigid, non-prevalent form of the caste system, which,
presumably, is not evil and nauseating? I find your reluctance to come
right out and condemn the caste system rather amusing. Personally, I think
it is an idea whose time came and went millennia ago. In this day and age, it
is an shibboleth we cannot afford.
--
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ihnp4!attunix!rajeev@BERKELEY -- arpanet
Sri Rajeev, SF 1-342, ATT Info. Sys., Summit, NJ 07901. (201)-522-6330.debray@sbcs.UUCP (Saumya Debray) (05/07/85)
Well, the question of whether or not there should be caste-based
reservations seems to have been hacked to death here. One question in my
original article which I don't recall having seen answered in the debate,
however, is that of the extent of such reservations.
Ostensibly, the reason for such reservations/quotas is to give the
deserving underpriveleged/oppressed a helping hand. Presumably, after
enough helping, equality would be achieved (that's the whole idea, isn't
it?). But from what I see, an SC can start out with reserved seats in
school, continue to reserved seats in college (so far so good), get a job
on reservations, get promoted on reservations ... until he retires! My
feeling is that once this guy's graduated from college with a bachelor's,
there's no obvious reason why he should be considered any more handicapped
than the next person with a bachelor's, and that reservations should not
continue after college/university admissions (unless, of course, what we
really want is to create a class of latter-day Brahmins). Comments?
--
Saumya Debray
SUNY at Stony Brook
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