India (as smart NYers are wont to say) is known as the land of wimps. IMO the wimpiness comes from the fragmentation of the population. When the major tribes (UCs, OBCs, Dalits) are at loggerheads with each other there will be always Jaichands who will sell out the Prithvirajs.
“Outraged by the suicide of a man who felt humiliated after his daughter married a dalit boy in secret, a mob of non-dalits went on the rampage in three villages of Dharmapuri district, looting and burning houses of dalits late on Wednesday, police said.”
The non-dalit is a nice touch. Further downstream the article explains that it was the handiwork of the Vanniyar tribe. They are off course OBC. These are the same “progressive” dravidas who kicked out the so-called north indian Brahmins and now are engaging in some discrimination of their own.
However as observed during the Bodo-Muslim “mass riots” the creeping Talibanization of the (sunni) muslims has the potential to bring all the warring communities together (sankritization for Praful Bidwai types).
The various avatars of Talibanization currently are as follows (as usual the first and most afflicted are the minorities within islam, women, shias etc).
1) The movement to declare Ahmadis and Shias as kafirs has gone into overdrive.
2) Blasphemy rules are being enforced by “irregular” forces. While hindus gained a trophy in MF Hussain (and lost the Ramayana battle), the muslims have a far more impressive collection (Taslima, Rushdie, TJ Joseph the teacher whose hand got cut off by the PFI thugs who then promptly decamped to Dubai).
3) Sufis are banning muslim women from entering Dargahs. The fear is that non-muslims will be next.
4) Fatwas stating that muslim women cannot work outside the home and should travel with a mahram (mixing with non-muslims forbidden).
As an example, the latest missive from Deoband about the “unislamic” character of the Saifeena marriage is an exercise in pure stupidity (they were living together in sin, how islamic is that?). All marriages must be registered, separately from any confessional exercise. It may have been OK during Iqbal’s days to propose indoctrination (and subordination) of women as the way forward, but abuses like triple talaq (via sms, email, voicemail etc) are simply barbaric and must stop.
Now this: “In a fresh vigilante group attack, a Muslim woman was assaulted at Karmar in Bajpe (near Mangalore)….. The mob waylaid our car, pushed us out and assaulted us. They asked me why I was traveling with a Hindu…Deeba Algani, 23, was attacked because she was travelling in a car with a person from another community. Her mother, Zubeida, is an independent member of the Padubidri gram panchayat.
The reason for the grievance is clear: Zubeida was elected to the gram panchayat with BJP’s support. In other words a class traitor (and an independent woman).
The fear of the muslim OTHER may eventually force the hindus from “burning and looting” each other (and vote wholesale for the BJP and its allies like Jayalalitha in TN). But in the long term such intense polarization will affect the health of the nation (and SA in general). Ambedkar was a big believer in the power of inter-caste marriages to break the caste system from within. Similarly more “unislamic” marriages might help SA to move forward in harmony. Otherwise the hard backlash from the soft state will devour muslims (and hindus in a smaller proportion) over time.
regards
I read somewhere on the internet (so it must e true) that in TN the majority o anti Dalit violence has been perpetrated by intermediate castes (BC/OBC/MBC)
Well the middle castes are the dravidas, the Dalits are the adi-dravidas. The gold medal goes to the people who can say that they were the original inhabitants of the land. Thankfully now that the revolution has helped dethrone the evil Brahmins, the natives have all agreed to be governed by the one and only Puratchi Thalaivi (revolutionary leader). It does not seem to be a problem that the said leader is from Karnataka (the outsiders that Tamils love to hate at present) or the fact that she is a super Brahmin (Iyengar). It will require a PhD in Psychology to deconstruct the thinking going on in the revolutionary brain.
regards
Actually from what I have been told by IH of TN that AIADMK is DINO (Dravida In Name Only) and highly despised by Kalaignar, When Jayalalita debuted DMK members misbehaved with her in assembly. Politics in TN gets highly personal it seems.
“I read somewhere on the internet (so it must e true) that in TN the majority o anti Dalit violence has been perpetrated by intermediate castes (BC/OBC/MBC)”
A valid observation all over the Indian Hindu society. That is the organizational structure of a heirarchial caste system. Each caste is kept under “control” by the one above it. Do you suppose Brahmins will stoop down to suppress the dalits directly?
Tangential comment: my boss in UCLA (an Israeli Jew married to a Chinese lady) said that to really move beyond race you have to biologically mix the races, everything else is just preparation for that decisive step. And CA is advancing well in that direction …at least in LA/SF, everybody is marrying everybody. In 3 generations it will be pointless to say what race you are in CA. Much like its pointless to say what White ethnic group you are in many parts of America…Germans, Dutch, English, Swedish, whatever, they are so mixed up, you are just White.
I live in Wisconsin, with a lot of German and Scandinavian origin people, but when i ask people their ethnic background I am finding that a lot of my patients will just smile and say “German, Swedish, English, Quebecois, etc…all mixed up”. Even where the law of large numbers means old categories can still be discerned easily enough in different parts of the country and state, socially the barriers are completely gone. What Anglo-American family worries about their daughter marrying a German-American?
India is far far away from any such thing of course, but far far away is not the same as infinitely far away.
its gonna happen. But after a lot of bullshit.
+1
Being quantitative here is crucial. I’m not too sure but I think inter-racial marriages aren’t very common at all.
Interracial marriage rates are at an all-time high in the United States, with the percentage of couples exchanging vows across the color line more than doubling over the last 30 years. But Asian-Americans are bucking that trend, increasingly choosing their soul mates from among their own expanding community.
Dr. Le found that in 2010 Japanese-American men and women had the highest rates of intermarriage to whites while Vietnamese-American men and Indian women had the lowest rates.
From 2008 to 2010, the percentage of Asian-American newlyweds who were born in the United States and who married someone of a different race dipped by nearly 10 percent, according to a recent analysis of census data conducted by the Pew Research Center. Meanwhile, Asians are increasingly marrying other Asians, a separate study shows, with matches between the American-born and foreign-born jumping to 21 percent in 2008, up from 7 percent in 1980.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/fashion/more-asian-americans-marrying-within-their-race.html
Man is a heirarchical creature. All the mixing in the world will not get rid of elites and underclass.
Man is a heirarchical creature. All the mixing in the world will not get rid of elites and underclasses.