On May 23, 2020, a mob of 50-60 so-called higher caste villagers lynched half-a-dozen Dalit males. Not long after, the story mostly disappeared from mainstream media in Nepal. But that's NOT surprising in a society of people whose minds have been corrupted by the Caste System.
Nepal needs a revolution...a revolution of the mind.
The caste system is highly corrupting. It has corrupted the minds of so many Nepalis for so long that, even while taking pride in the country as the birth place of Buddha who introduced compassion to the world and denounced the system, we are very short on compassion.
And this blog post documents just one example of that: responses to a tweet by a Dalit woman desiring "to live as a human being today."
Studying, living, working abroad, unconstrained by closed and inward-looking Nepali culture, society, and people, I questioned a lot of what I had been taught in Nepal.
One was the Hindu-mythology-based beliefs, practices, and values.
One lesson was taught through the story of Eklavya and Dronarcharya. We were taught that the story was about model discipleship. But after deeper questioning I have come to the conclusion that its more of caste supremacy than model discipleship.
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.