Anti-Brahminism

I'm a non practicing Brahmin; meaning I'm a brahmin just by birth and not by actions. Only in my late teens did I take my caste seriously when I was undergoing my engineering admission counseling since caste was an important parameter there. Till then there was no such topic or context at home or friends or relatives, where I had to know my caste, thanks to the kind of upbringing I had.

But later once my social conscience started developing and I started observing news and society, I came across many incidents where the oppressed class were treated in-humanly by the people belonging to my social community. I read more about the social stigma, caste-politics and felt it was awful. I read about anti-brahminic movements and tried to understand the root causes for this kind of retaliation and I had to admit that Brahmins were (and are at many instances) highly dominating and discriminating against other social communities.

Then I met some fundamentalists from my own caste who deplored me for not feeling proud of my caste, for not avoiding other so called oppressed classes and who blamed me for committing blasphemy by not following basic tenets of Brahminism, as I was not a huge theist.

I then tried to skim through some holy scriptures and some books like Manusmriti which advocated brahmin supremacy. Out of many other points, what I learnt was that a Brahmin should

• Perform, practice and teach Yoga
• Should read and be knowledgeable of Vedas, Upanishads
• Should survive on alms (charity, donations)
• Should perform priestly activities and should never work for a business or other jobs.
• Should never travel across a sea
• Should perform all religious rituals including sandhya vandanam, surya namaskaram.
• Should live a life of austerity
• Should avoid non vegetarian, onion, garlic, alcohol, tobacco. (but this is the only tenet which is used for accusing or ridiculing. None of the above mentioned duties are taken seriously by brahmins and non-brahmins alike :D)

Now, for my surprise, I never came across anybody who follow all these duties and prove themselves to be good Brahmins, but these jokers have enough guts to charge me of blasphemy. But I never minded being accused by hypocrites anyways.

Just when I thought I was being rational and human, I came across another set of fanatics, who were thoroughly anti-brahminic and they started blaming me for discrimination and started ridiculing me for being a brahmin. I was blamed by them as being a fake-brahmin just because I don't follow the duties mentioned in manusmriti (which is ironically hated by many non-brahmins). For these half-baked minds, here is the list of rights the very manusmriti advocates.
A Brahmin

• Should be treated like a God
• Is the supreme human and be respected before anything or anybody else
• belongs to the privileged class and everybody else should submit themselves to brahmins etc.

Now, how many who ridicule brahmins of not following basic duties follow these above mentioned privileges given by the same books. Another irony is that the same set of people never cared or possessed knowledge of any duties, rules or rights of their own castes or social communities.

The whole point I'm trying to drive home is that these books which advocate supremacy of any particular community are impractical in current generation of secularism and democracy. The rights and duties mentioned in such scriptures are not necessarily right as they were written by people earlier to reflect the society in their generations. Times change, people should too.

There is a history of discrimination by brahmins which I admit and hence the anti-brahminic sentiment among non-brahmins is evident and logical. Brahmins and other such classes should shed their shell of supremacy and  understand the ground reality that they are as equal as their fellow countrymen.

Also anti-brahmins need to understand that brahmins are not a privileged class anymore, thanks to constitution, reservations, social awareness. Today's brahmins are economically backward sections with no support in community with regard to reservations, special treatment, social stigma, point of ridicule.

Social equality is inevitable and necessary. But social equality can be attained by abolition of social supremacy of forward and aggressive classes and abolition of reservations and appeasement of oppressed classes - two way, it is. 

Now how many are ready for it is a million dollar question.