A Discrimination Free Society

Perhaps it gives an identity to man, perhaps it's inevitable to know where he belongs to for once but is that all that we live for? To preserve the name of our religion, caste and color? Does nothing go beyond it?

It's a sensitive issue.

I saw a debate between two people fighting against sentiments related to caste. It's Dr. Ambedkar's birth anniversary today and the topic of debate was to give him a fair share of respect for being the chief architect of constitution of India. While one of the two refused to give him any sort of credit the other showed a tolerance towards the title what he deserved.

I dont know if the latter man had any political motives behind what he spoke about but yes one thing is for sure that it made me feel nice. Nice because by sentiments I belong to the so called 'backward class'. I revere Dr. Ambedkar as a god and wouldn't really like someone poking things on his virtues. (of course at the same time just because he's being nice I'll not blindly follow whatever he talks to me in the name of my religion.)

And my feelings are not unusual. They are equally reflected by all castes and societies in the world about their religious sentiments. If I respect how a Hindu or a subcaste of it, a Muslim or a Christian feels for his religion, if I'm tolerant towards them then I deserve to be looked up by them with equal amount of reverence. A society that fails to do this causes itself to highly imbalance upon it's own strengths and crumbles.

As a kid I never knew what caste or religion is. It came as a horror to me when I came to know that some people were once treated untouchables and the next horror was to know that I belong to their pedigree. Not that I chose to be one. But I was and I have to live with it. I'm in a better position than most of the others that are still behind and I know there is a long way to go and I don't want to be setting any wrong examples for people.

Today if I look back, I know that yes, probably I would have never made it to school if my dad never had the reservation facility and I wouldn't have been an engineer without it. Though I feel sad for the guys who equally deserved being in the engineering stream but couldn't make it just because they were not backward classed or not monetarily sufficient even though they belonged to the backward class, but I know that a person who wants to make good in today's scenario will do good by any means. And he or she can do that without having hard feeling for someone.

World has changed a lot. But counter to what I thought that with time the barrier between people regards their religion and caste would change, the chasm seems to have widened. There is only a fraction of people who believe and stand for that it's incorrect to distinguish. It's incorrect to compare yourself with someone who's one entire generation has never been to school. It's incorrect to not stand by the woman you love just because she belongs to so called backward class. It's incorrect to dump your friend just because he doesn't have the same religion as you.

And even if it's incorrect we do discriminate. Because we care about the society, the people from our community, the people with whom we mingle. What will they call us? - An outcaste perhaps. Just to keep the heart of some it's easier to break the other than to learn to convince. It's easier to break the country to pieces, it's easier to live in fragments than whole. And most of them love to take the easy way out.

As for me, I dream of a discrimination free society. Perhaps it sounds like a hypothetical one. But I dream of it. I know some people work to make it one. My hand contributes to those. For those who aren't a part of my dream, I hope atleast they shouldn't try to take my this dream away.