I Love My (Discrimi) Nation

India is world's largest democracy, world's fastest growing free market economy, and a country where discrimination is still observed, a country where one voice raised leads to one voiceless. A few days back, I saw a small kid selling 'channa masala' near my college premises. Though the fact that a child was doing it bothered me, but what bothered me more was a young lady buyer, a student from our esteemed college, calling him 'chamaar'. A lot of us are unaware of the fact that calling anyone by that name is non permissible under the law and is also a non bailable offense. A few months back a Delhi University teacher was jailed for calling a fellow colleague by that name.

These are only two of the millions of incidents. Today I will be writing on various such discriminatory incidents. From the beginning of time, India has been witnessing caste system practices. In this practice many castes have been facing discrimination. Dalits or out castes have been treated as a sub-human class of untouchables. 'Dalits' literally means "broken or crushes". On 29th September, 08, when I was conducting a research for this article I came across an article, reading which my heart were filled with grief, sorrow and shame.

On 26th December, 04 India witnessed one of the biggest disasters, the Tsunami. The Government of India had ordered relief operations in states of the South. Little did it know that these operations were being carried out with caste as a determining factor. Villages like Kadapakuppam and Pattipulam of Kachipuram in Tamil Nadu, which are homes to the so called 'untouchables', received no immediate relief whatsoever. 175 families in Kadapakuppam and 280 in Pattipulam have suffered. Despite complaints no Government official had gone to their aid. This is just a story of the South, in a Government school in Uttar Pradesh, Dalit students were given the worst treatment by teachers who were later handed over to the police when a local Government official made a surprise visit to the school.

These incidents are indicative of the persistent caste discrimination throughout the country. It is a sad reality that even in times of extreme necessity, caste prejudices dominate social exchanges. In India the caste system is a powerful tool for social segregation and has implications in our everyday life. It weakens the human urge to excel and liberate

Though the Constitution provides certain safeguards against such discrimination but the constitutional remedies are often inaccessible to the lower castes. On June 20th, 2008, another shameful incident by a well know private school in Delhi gave us a reality check of where our humanitarian behavior actually stands. Salwan Public School on Pusa Road, refused to admit seven waste pickers out of fear that they might carry disease.

This is not it, Indians from North Eastern states face high level of discrimination, abuse; be it of a mental or a physical nature, which makes them feel alienated in their own motherland. When a foreign tourist is raped, it takes our judiciary to solve that case in a month, or even weeks, but there are millions of rape cases of Indian women which are still pending. We are not saying don't solve the foreign cases, we are saying that if the foreign cases can be solved so fast, why can't the Indian cases be?

Here a small boy who is HIV positive is treated like an untouchable. I feel irritated to see such incidents. Muslims find it hard to be trusted by others, why? Not only this, the politicians take advantage of this and play their vote bank politics.

When will we realize that we are all the same? We all deserve the same. Please open up your eyes and treat everyone, if not like your brother/sister, at least like a HUMAN BEING. All this won't stop until we take the charge. These incidents will always be made a part of the filthy politics and will be played with. I plead to you genuinely to open up your eyes and feel the brunt that others feel when they are discriminated in their own motherland.