During this long, warm two-month holiday, I was lucky enough to chat with my old friends in India. During the conversation, the gossip was essential, but as well as the events around the town going on. During the conversation, my friend mentions this, the rape case of a nine-year-old in broad daylight. Usually when I hear such cases, I swirl into a conversation about... child abuse or women's safety in India.
But this time something caught me off guard. It was when my friends mentioned that the rapist was from an upper caste. Caste?
Caste system? What was it? I had no idea.
And I had to research about how it could be related to rape cases. So, I found out that caste system is a system that divides Hindus into rigid hierarchical groups. based on their karma and dharma. Pretty simple, isn't it? Well, not so much.
You see, you might see India as a country that is known for its festivals, culture, diversity and food. Especially the food. I love the food there.
But lately it has evolved into a country that faces fear. It is brought up or heard in media related to the crime happening there. India changed, but not most Indians, and nor did their way of thinking.
Indians are divided into four main ways. States, by language, religion, and castes. India is a vast country with a humongous population, as you all must know. Ideas don't tend to convey well amongst a large group of people. A game played amongst kids is called Chinese Whisper.
where a large group of kids pass along a sentence to each other. At the end of the game, this sentence usually turns into a mumble-jumble. For example, if the sentence started off like, I ate an apple, it turns into, an apple ate me.
I use this example here to present how the idea of caste system was passed around in India. It was passed with enthusiasm, but over time the concept changed. It was now something you were born into and not something you could improve.
It was like the Hogwarts houses you choose, a Gryffindor stuck in Hufflepuff. India was a poor country and people tended to live in small communities all together. Ideas didn't convey well amongst people, but the news traveled fast.
People loved to gossip and as a way to get close to each other, it gives them a feeling of sharing secrets. And in these small cities, ideas traveled faster than the Wi-Fi connection. And so did the news of everyone's cast. You simply couldn't escape it, even if you moved cities. You know, because it was most likely that your neighbor auntie's youngest son's fourth cousin's best friend also lived in the new city you moved to.
And would make sure everyone knew. you about which caste you belonged in. Now caste systems come under the Hindu religion and when the word religion is mentioned everyone's ears prick up.
It's quite a sensitive topic but also a topic that catches people's attention the most. When you hear the word religion, everyone knows how the conflicts that carry on due to how, due to it's related to God and the supernatural powers. Now in... In India, the caste system was formed exactly based on these two aspects, the sensitivity and how it catches people's attention. India is known for its diversity, but complicity follows along with it.
You see, the land is divided into different states. In different states, people have different cultures and speak different languages. But another layer of division appears to be in the country. It's the castes.
Casteism is a word that is used to define the discrimination that happens between castes. In India, there are five main castes. Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, Shudra and Dalits.
Brahmin is the highest caste where Dalits are the lowest. As you can see in this image, Dalits are not even included in the population. the pyramid. And that's the sad reality.
The lowest caste always ends up hiding in the of the upper caste. If you look carefully at the image, there are job description under each title. So what does that mean?
Well, this caste system was originally made to classify people by their jobs but as well as allow poor people to make economic advancements in life. But the concept did change, as I said before. Before there was a proper government or an education system in India, the man of the family learned how to clean streets, for example, and did it for the rest of his lifetime. When he had a kid, he taught his kid to do the same thing. And so the skill was passed down generations.
Now, in MYP Maths, we have an investigation assessment. During this investigation assessment, we... use our knowledge from our previous units and apply it to a completely new scenario. In India, the education system is a little different. Here you're given the formula and you apply it to a harder situation.
Similar, but harder. So, as the government was developed and there was an education system in India, the government noticed that the majority of the Indian population was from lower caste and uneducated. So they decided to give reservations to kids at school, to lower to forecast kids at school. As kids were open to more knowledge, they aspired to be more than just a cleaner.
Now Indians were in trouble. Because as long as they were given the formulas, they could solve the problem. But in this new scenario, they had no idea what to do. And so they decided that whatever caste you had goes down to your kids and maybe branches out to a lower sub-caste. So now in India, a country known for its diversity festival cultures, there was a lot of diversity.
discriminates between 3,000 castes and 25,000 sub castes. We knew there were the big five castes but now there are 3,000 more? Who can even remember these many? I can't even remember my fifth cousin's name.
But yet these casts are used as a reason to get away from crime. Let me tell you a story. A story that kept me up all night thinking.
Once upon a time, in a small village of Uttar Pradesh, was born a girl named Phulam Devi. As she grew and prospered, she was different than the rest in her town. She was fearless, bold, and outspoken. Girls in India were usually looked down on, and so was their fate to be married off and perform their one job of giving birth. But this girl was unique.
She wouldn't just sit on assigned chairs. She would sit on the chair of her choice. Because that's rebellious. But what I mean is she was carefree.
And she didn't play by the rules. Yet was married off to a man twice her age, at the age of 11. Luckily, this bold girl ran away from her husband and back home. In India, divorce is also considered humiliation.
But don't worry, it's only embarrassing for the girl's side of the family, no matter what the situation was. Now, runs away from her husband, and in town she's known as a savage. So she joins a gang of thugs.
She fits with them well until one day, the leader of the group, Rajput, an upper caste man, tries to rape her. Her boyfriend saves her, but the rest of the thugs rage on against them to seek revenge. They kill the savior and torture her for days until one failed twill day, some people from her village come and rescue her. She recovers from that incident as the bandit queen.
Now this bandit queen forms her own gang and goes around cities and towns and is feared by people. But after a long time living like that, she finally decides to surrender herself and receive punishment. After a long time in jail, she's released. And her fame in India hits the roof. So she decides to go to India.
to join a political party and serve the country back. Until one tragic day she was shot by three Rajput men, none related to her, but wanted to claim their superiority over the lower caste. This life story of Phoolan Devi reflects on all the lower caste suffering, especially girls.
A phrase used in Hindi, which I heard a lot as growing up was, It means, what will people say? This phrase is one of the main contributors. to the discrimination happening between castes, especially girls.
Now when you hear about such system, you might say, when you hear about such bizarre system, you might say, why don't we just remove it or ban it? Well, when something has started from the roots, it's extremely hard to demolish it. You can cut parts of it off, but it's going to grow back. India did create laws against discrimination, but People in villages still kill youngsters who are romantically involved with each other.
Students still write their casts before their names in college applications. It's like filling out a college application form, but the profession's already ticked for you. Now, what we didn't understand was, what were the roots to this system?
Sure, it could be our extended imagination. But there was something more basic than that. It was education. The Borgen project is a project that helps countries cope with poverty.
And this project suggested India two ways to improve their education system. The first way was to have quality education. To have a quality education, you have to have qualified teachers. In 2011, teachers were given an assessment to judge their knowledge, and 99% of those teachers failed.
If educators themselves don't know what they're teaching the students, how are the students supposed to look at different views and be more open-minded, creative? The second was to remove politics from education. Now this is an aspect for, this is a place of improvement for every country. They need to remove the political side from the education system.
the political bias from education. Because the kid grows up looking at that one direction and ignoring the rest because that's what he's told. And when he grows up to being an adult, he can't...
open himself to these other point of views. And that's when we call him ignorant. It's like the countries protect shielding the kids from the right information. I mean this is clearly the opposite of IB system. It's like an education system telling you, oh please don't think and please don't research resources.
We're giving you the information. Use that. But after all this, Indians are very smart.
But as Albert Einstein said, the measure of intelligence is the ability to change. The one ability that most of us lack, and yet the most important one. If a country doesn't change, they can't improve the places they are lacking in. Caste system is only surviving in India due to lack of change, and any country will suffer from such problem.
So, what is caste system? Is it a life lesson or a life sentence? Well, I'll be annoying and leave that for you to decide. But what we need to understand is that caste system is just a speck of dust waiting to grow all about. If we don't change, if we don't grow, and if we don't develop, it's up to us to decide if it's day one or one day for change.
Thank you.