Re: Untouchables [Andreas J., please read]

Robert Jung wrote:

  On 1 Dec 2003, Roger Mills <romilly@...> wrote:

  >> I somehow ended up on the home page of the site, before
  > finding the anti-S
  > screed.  There is much mention of Sudra this-and-
  > that, and even more anti-brahminism, so I assume the
  > thing is the product of some Sudra politicking.  (Sudra, as
  > we will recall, is the Caste Formerly Known as
  > Untouchable.)

 >My response was to say that anti-Untouchability [anti-sudraism] (and
anti-castism) are good things; cast systems are another form of discrimination.
That was my point.
  --------------------------------------------------
 I suspected my comment might have been the cause of your response, and I
herewith express my regrets. It was not meant to disparage the Sudra caste, nor
its aspirations for greater equality within the Indian system. I am under the
impression that the caste system is _legally_ abolished; if that is so, still,
obviously, it persists in the hearts and minds of some, perhaps too many,
Indians. One might equate it with racial discrimination here in the US, even
though it has much deeper and more ancient roots within Indian culture.

 I must say, I read only the home page, so I don't know how representative of
current feeling this "Dalitstan" group is, whether it speaks for the great mass
of Sudras, or is merely the hobby-horse of some small faction. I then jumped to
the anti-Sanskrit article, and like many I found it silly in the extreme,
chockful of irrelevant and pointless arguments, with so much that is simply
wrong, and/or wrong-headed, that rebutting it is not worth the effort, and one
can only view it as ridiculous. Surely they could find something of greater
import to attack. One might legitimately wonder if their other arguments are
equally ill-founded.

 Mutatis mutandis, suppose one encountered a webpage sponsored by "Aframerica"
(a totally fictitious name, I hope), which ranted against the Roman Catholic
clergy for (1) using a "dead" "complicated" and "primitive" language and (2)
for being the promoters and cause of all the suffering that Black Americans
have undergone for the past several centuries, and (3) claimed that the Pope
and the Kennedys were responsible for Dr. M.L.King's death. It would make as
unfortunate an impression on the intelligent reader, as the anti-Sanskrit
business does. It would be, as we say, laughed out of court.

 There are, in fact, Black groups in the US that ascribe all their sufferings
to the Jews, though they tend not to bring the "dead" Hebrew language into the
picture. I have always found this viewpoint very odd, when one considers that
the principal objects of Old-Style Average American Racists' hatred were, in
order, Blacks, Jews and Catholics equally, and Others (i.e. non-Anglo-Saxons).
Those attitudes were and are, unfortunately, still found in the US and are not
peculiar to Klan members nor, indeed, to Southerners only.

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