Caste ruins not only our family but the entire generation
‘Hey sister! We died in the war. This unity and power came in this way?
Kamalavati (name changed) said, handling the quarrel of the two factions of the girls. It is often said that casteism is over. People in the village also say that now everyone is going out to earn, so now there is no caste. But the reality is that even though people are moving towards cities with the greed to earn money, they may not even ask any caste in their place of work, but after coming back home, they are with the same caste color They are given whose knee is given to them from childhood.
In a village recently I saw a terrible form of caste discrimination. When the girls going to school and college started commenting on each other about caste. In our society, even though the cloak of modernity has been washed away, but caste discrimination and violence is still prevalent. Since childhood, children are taught in our homes that they do not go to their homes, they belong to another caste, do not play with them, do not talk to them, do not take anything touched by them. We also have separate utensils for the so-called lower caste people in our homes. All these are taught to us from childhood that we get used to it and after a time we see nothing wrong in it. All this happens with the ideology of patriarchy . Even today our constitution rejects any form of discrimination on the basis of caste. But it remains the same in our society even today.
The first victim of this caste change becomes ‘women.’ As we know, patriarchy chooses women to retain their power. Sometimes mother-in-law and sometimes between different relationships like sister-in-law, it sparks the power battle in such a way that women start becoming enemies of each other. Similarly, the complexity of caste is also seen in women.
Kamala (name changed), a mother of five, tells that the first women’s group was run in her village. By joining this group, women would save money and work like their bank. Not only this, with their interest money, women also bought sewing machines so that they could make employment. But this initiative started on behalf of the institution did not last long and due to caste discrimination, the group broke down so much that now women do not like to see each other. Kamala says that after joining the group she felt confident in herself. Many times the women of the group rescued her from her husband and accompanied her to the police station. But now all is over.
This is not just with Kamala. There are many villages where even today, due to caste, women have to lose their opportunities. When we see the effect of caste, then we can only double its hit on women. Being a woman is not less than a challenge in our society and even then when a woman is accused of a particular caste, her burden has to be borne by women. In the village, often the so-called upper caste women are unable to do any work despite all the financial constraints and poverty, because it is not allowed in their caste. At the same time , if a woman from the so-called lower caste starts studying, then she starts knocking the upper caste.
Caste discrimination is not limited to untouchability only. Rather it also promotes female violence. Roli (name changed) of the Mushar caste says that when she goes to work in the field, any man makes any lewd comments on her and tries to sexually assault her several times. This is simply because she comes from the so-called lower caste. On the other hand, Sharda (name changed) tells that the children do not let him sit near the school, because he belongs to the Mushar caste. In school, he is seated separately and given food. Due to these discrimination, Sharda stopped going to school and now he works on brick kilns.
Such is the effect of caste discrimination which affects not only women but also children. The poison of caste ruins not only our family but also our breeds, the coming generations. Therefore, it is important that we understand this caste problem and get away from it. Because it is so bad that the women of the village never allow one. Does not even allow them to participate in any occasion. Due to this women are going back centuries.
