Four years into living and working in Kathmandu, a young female adult -- a conclusion based on her Twitter profile -- has decided that working her ass off in the city is not worth it, and that she was better off struggling abroad. The tweet appears to speak to many others -- they tweeted affirmatively in response.
After living and working in Nepal for most of the last 8 years, I also concur.
Our social system, the caste system, is a pernicious, insidious, and a deeply corrupt monstrosity. It corrupts the mind, kills the spirit, and strips one of humanity and, worse, obstructs one from seeing the others' humanity. And as such, it corrupts everything else -- all other systems and structures -- based on or influenced by it as they are.
One of consequences of that we are seeing during these unprecedented times of the coronavirus pandemic.
If the Gods discriminate, why can't -- or even shouldn't -- the humans as well?! If the Hindu Gods themselves discriminate against some humans (at least Dalits) the way at least some Hindus believe they do, what’s wrong with humans discriminating against the same humans?! After all, who better to follow than the Gods?! Right?
The "brilliance" of the caste system is what Ambedkhar characterized as its inherent "graded inequality."
In Nepal, the gradation can be found not just between the five castes, but also between the ethnic groups, between communities that make up an ethnic group, within communities and therefore between individuals.
And because social status is valued so much, the gradation has determined who you could marry and form a familial alliance with, which in turn dictates who you socialize with the most. Were inter-caste marriage the norm, the caste system would break down.
Nepalis generally make a lot of assumptions about and are judgmental of fellow Nepalis based on their appearance and/or their name and/or surname, a consequence of our social system, the monstrous caste system.
In this blog post I relay a typical incident of a fellow Nepali making assumptions about who I am and what I do based entirely on my facial features -- my ethnicity.
In Nepal's brand of groupism, the most important and valuable functional unit is the extended family. That and following the dictates of the caste system means that we live and move within small social bubbles. Who one forms alliances with -- such as marries, works, socializes with etc. -- depends a lot on ones ethnicity and caste. It's as if like we are still tribes living in the hunter-gatherer phase of human evolution!