This is going to be another long post. Sorry for taking up the bandwidth.
Post 114 again:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Dogs, Frogs and Dalits: The Indian Model Minority Has A Dark Side</b>
By Brenda Walker<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The odd and objectionable cultural practices of Indians may not seem important when millions of Mexicans are turning the Southwest into a colony of their homeland. But the 2005 Census count of India-born immigrants was 2,319,222âa not insubstantial number.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Ummm. Heard that Los Angeles, Las Vegas, San Diego and many more, were all stolen from Latin America in a very recent century (recent even by American standards). The Central Americans are just migrating back to where they came from. Western-European Protestant Americans stole it from native S Americans and the SW-European settlers. There's certainly no need for B Walker to be all openly racist about it, doesn't she know the Confederates lost and with it she lost the social rights to express her icky racist thoughts in public?
That reminds me. How does the entire world, <i>except</i> for N America, perceive S Americans of European-origin as? As Caucasian, 'white'.
But watch any American movie with Mexicans in it - or even Spanish women playing Mexican - and you will know the racist Casta system of the WASPY Americans. For example, watch 'Fools Rush In' with Salma Hayek and the dude who played Chandler in Friends. They talk of the 'white' Americans and the 'brown' Latin Americans even in those cases where the latter are of European origin (okay, Salma Hayek is part European origin, and part Syrian or something).
A far more ridiculous example is from the US movie 'Spanglish', which has an authentic Spanish actress - the lovely Paz Vega - playing a Mexican mother. At one point, she speaks in Spanish (with a Mexican acccent she had to study for the film) to Adam Sandler's character, something about his "white" people and her "brown" people - the bit is subtitled in English. Never mind Paz Vega is wholly European - she is from Spain; and looking at her, she is very white. But not to the American world, where even Spanish actors are only accepted if they play the S American who knows their place: the housekeeper, the nanny, the unemployed, the 'latin' cop, whatever. S Americans know that in America there's a ceiling and it's not made of glass but of concrete. If you are number one in your S American country, it doesn't matter. You're down in the hierarchy in America. You're not 'white' even when you are European and white; in America you are 'brown', because only the W-Europeans are allowed belong in the 'white' clique. Guess Cameron Diaz is a pain (not to mention Heather Locklear because she is part native N American).
I'm surprised though that Paz Vega went through with the farce: the US discovered she was so lovely after her famous Spanish films, so they had to have her in a US film. Somewhere. But not as a Spanish woman: there's no room for that in America, of course. No, the closest thing allowed is to play a S American, and know her place.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->(B Walker writes
The caste system extends back into India's history and has a racial basis. The Brahmin class of hereditary privilege is light-skinned while the Untouchable dalits are darker. It has been reported that newly affluent Indian women are spending millions of dollars on beauty products to lighten up unwanted dark skin, noting "It's believed that caste occupations were originally decided by skin color, with dark-skinned people assigned to the latrines and light-skinned people assigned to the Hindu clergy" [Modern India's complex connection with complexion, By Mike McPhate, Toronto Globe and Mail June 6, 2005].<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->What, no mention of that perennial favourite of christian missionaries and christian colonials alike? No reference to that 'glorious' fantasy which is always invariably brought up: The AIT, the Grand Tale of the Oryans and the Dravidoids? What a domper. Here I was expecting a direct allusion, and all we get is a sneaky indirect one. Shows America is 'changing': they still hang on to their beloved AIT, but have perhaps learnt to be embarrassed about the entirely christian-racist origins of the Oryan-Dravidioid story.
Yes, perhaps even B Walker has found out the very christian, very biblical origins of this: that the architects of the AIT fantasy originally called the Oryans Japhetites and referred to the Dravidoids as Hamites. To her sorrow, Walker would then have realised that it was not the Indians who ever called their own people as such, but that it was the christian missionaries and christian colonizers who invented these terms based on their christian-racist system and the consequent value judgments they made about the Indian skin-colours they saw.
Terribly embarrassed as B Walker must have been, it is only natural for her to still desperately cling to the same tale but not make any direct mention of the biblical Japhetites (Oryans) and Hamites (Dravidoids). How else could she blame India then without incriminating that most sacred faith of racists - christianity - in it? So instead, B Walker avoids the fundamental AIT myth altogether and is careful to use only terms like 'racism' and 'skin-colours'; Walker is obviously as adept in half-truths and untruths as any missionary. And to cement it as fact, she refers to one Mike McPhate's article from a Canadian paper. 'That proves it' apparently.
Most are familiar with the circular reasoning that western christian racists and their hired mercenaries, the psecular stooges in India (like Amartya Sen), always engage in - they are all working for one and the same anyway and find it most convenient to refer to each other's work to provide back-up for their own. (Hence, this makes it circular reasoning.)
"It's believed that caste occupations were originally decided by skin color, with dark-skinned people assigned to the latrines and light-skinned people assigned to the Hindu clergy" says B Walker's source McPhate.
<i>"It is believed"</i> he says - yet who believes it, but the christian missionaries and the organisations/scholars/journalists they fund, as well as the christian colonial-minded people of today, as also the Indians they spend their money to brainwash in India's christian schools? As per McPhate himself, it is an article of faith and no more. Blind faith and belief against incontrovertible evidence are things only christians are adepts at, they have certainly pioneered it. They also spend vast amounts of money making sure their charges in Indian christian schools buy it too.
Yet Walker and her friend are incapable of showing any evidence from the Vedas or any other ancient Indian religious texts that brahmins were people 'chosen for their light-skin'. Or that 'dalits' ('dalit' is incorrectly applied - it's the name christians and muslims take when they've been converted from a Hindu Harijan community) were 'assigned to the latrines' for their 'dark skin'. There is no evidence for any of this at all. Such bigoted behaviour <i>is</i> however consonant with what WASPY people of Protestant N America do: they get the 'brown' Mexicans to clean their house and toilets. But 'tis rather foolish to project christian American values on ancient Hindu India, most especially when there's no factual support for it...
The Vedas, and other Hindu scriptures like the Gita and epics like the Mahabharata, do explain how Brahmanas were chosen, but skin-colour was never a matter of any consideration. It has clearly been explained in Hindu scriptures that it is the sincere love for and pursuit of Truth, and a love for all creatures as equals, that defines a Brahmana.
B Walker and McPhate show only the christian means of 'pursuing' truth: that is, to paint all others as liars.
To give the lie to their face, then, here is the highly-learned and knowledgeable Yudhisthira from the Mahabharata explaining what makes a Brahmana:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->"Yuddhistira (the son of the God of Justice) is asked what is the cause of being a Brahmana. He declares that neither birth nor learning makes a Brahmana, that only proper conduct does. Even a Brahmana learned in four Vedas cannot be considered as a Brahmana if his conduct is evil. [However it must be noted that performing proper rituals is also included in the passage as the mark of a Brahmana (Vanaparva, 312).] In another place he is asked by a serpent who a true Brahmana is. He answers, "The person in whom resides truth, charity, forgiveness, courtesy, rejection of cruelty, austerity, is a Brahmana". The serpent argues that the Vedas have given every varna their dharma or law. "Therefore truth, charity, forgiveness, non-violence, rejection of cruelty, and compassion based on Vedas is noticed even in Shudras. If even in Shudras these symptoms of Brahamandharma appear, then Shudras too can be Brahmanas". Yuddhistira's answer is, "In many Shudras symptoms of Brahmana appear, and among many of the twice-born, symptoms of Shudras appear. Therefore it is not that to be born in a Shudra family makes one a Shudra or that to be born in a Brahmana family makes one a Brahmana. The persons in whom such behaviour [the qualities mentioned above] ordained by Vedas appear are Brahmanas and those in whom they do not appear are Shudras" (Vanaparva, 180)."<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->There goes B Walker's and McPhate's carefully constructed falsehood. Their lies melt away in the all-purifying Wind. But one need not worry - their false step won't hold them back. I am certain B Walker has many more lies in store, as there are even many more in the rest of her article.
But before I stop picking on her caste statement, I want to go over that much-heralded 'beacon of compassion' and 'social upliftment' - christianity (being sarcastic here). That it was a most foully racist ideology in the past (and still is elsewhere) is not under any doubt. But here is its undisputed <i>recent</i> record in India:
http://www.dailypioneer.com/displayit1.asp...jain/jain55.txt
<b>Baptised, but boundary remains by Sandhya Jain</b>
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Until 1991, out of approximately 134 Catholic Bishops in the country (14 in Tamil Nadu alone), there was no Dalit or tribal until the ordaining of Bishop Ezra Sargunam, a Dalit. Barring the States of Goa and Kerala, Dalits and tribals comprise a major percentage of Christians, yet they are hardly visible at the level of Bishops, Vicars-General, priests, Directors, Professors in seminaries, and surgeons and heads of departments in Christian hospitals and medical colleges.
Even Archbishop George Zus, a high ranking member of the Vatican Hierarchy, commented adversely on this situation while addressing the Catholic Bishops' Council in Pune, in December 1991. Dalit Christians, he said, "make 65 per cent" of the ten million Christians in the South, but less than four per cent of the parishes are entrusted to Dalit priests. There are no Dalits among the 13 Catholic Bishops' Council of Tamil Nadu or among the Vicars-General and the Rectors of seminaries and Directors of social assistance centres.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->We need not be as hasty as B Walker and her equally unreliable McPhate in concluding that the discrimination ingrained in christianity is the cause for this. But then, we need not be slow like a tortoise to come to this most correct conclusion either. It is there for all to see, and we must finally admit it. Discrimination controls who is ordained a priest in Christianity, as it has ever done. 'Social upliftment, equality, compassion' - yeah right.
(All of that Sandhya Jain Article is worth a complete read. It also covers cases where missionary NGOs are mistreating their 'dalit' converts. No surprise there.)
In western Europe, it had long been thus that only those of blue blood (=aristocratic ancestry) were allowed to become high-ranking priests: bishops, cardinals, Pope. None of a 'modest' casta/class was allowed to presume to such a 'holy' station. Hence second sons of aristocrats were given to the Church to get training for the higher Priesthood.
Post 114 again:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Dogs, Frogs and Dalits: The Indian Model Minority Has A Dark Side</b>
By Brenda Walker<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The odd and objectionable cultural practices of Indians may not seem important when millions of Mexicans are turning the Southwest into a colony of their homeland. But the 2005 Census count of India-born immigrants was 2,319,222âa not insubstantial number.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Ummm. Heard that Los Angeles, Las Vegas, San Diego and many more, were all stolen from Latin America in a very recent century (recent even by American standards). The Central Americans are just migrating back to where they came from. Western-European Protestant Americans stole it from native S Americans and the SW-European settlers. There's certainly no need for B Walker to be all openly racist about it, doesn't she know the Confederates lost and with it she lost the social rights to express her icky racist thoughts in public?
That reminds me. How does the entire world, <i>except</i> for N America, perceive S Americans of European-origin as? As Caucasian, 'white'.
But watch any American movie with Mexicans in it - or even Spanish women playing Mexican - and you will know the racist Casta system of the WASPY Americans. For example, watch 'Fools Rush In' with Salma Hayek and the dude who played Chandler in Friends. They talk of the 'white' Americans and the 'brown' Latin Americans even in those cases where the latter are of European origin (okay, Salma Hayek is part European origin, and part Syrian or something).
A far more ridiculous example is from the US movie 'Spanglish', which has an authentic Spanish actress - the lovely Paz Vega - playing a Mexican mother. At one point, she speaks in Spanish (with a Mexican acccent she had to study for the film) to Adam Sandler's character, something about his "white" people and her "brown" people - the bit is subtitled in English. Never mind Paz Vega is wholly European - she is from Spain; and looking at her, she is very white. But not to the American world, where even Spanish actors are only accepted if they play the S American who knows their place: the housekeeper, the nanny, the unemployed, the 'latin' cop, whatever. S Americans know that in America there's a ceiling and it's not made of glass but of concrete. If you are number one in your S American country, it doesn't matter. You're down in the hierarchy in America. You're not 'white' even when you are European and white; in America you are 'brown', because only the W-Europeans are allowed belong in the 'white' clique. Guess Cameron Diaz is a pain (not to mention Heather Locklear because she is part native N American).
I'm surprised though that Paz Vega went through with the farce: the US discovered she was so lovely after her famous Spanish films, so they had to have her in a US film. Somewhere. But not as a Spanish woman: there's no room for that in America, of course. No, the closest thing allowed is to play a S American, and know her place.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->(B Walker writes
The caste system extends back into India's history and has a racial basis. The Brahmin class of hereditary privilege is light-skinned while the Untouchable dalits are darker. It has been reported that newly affluent Indian women are spending millions of dollars on beauty products to lighten up unwanted dark skin, noting "It's believed that caste occupations were originally decided by skin color, with dark-skinned people assigned to the latrines and light-skinned people assigned to the Hindu clergy" [Modern India's complex connection with complexion, By Mike McPhate, Toronto Globe and Mail June 6, 2005].<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->What, no mention of that perennial favourite of christian missionaries and christian colonials alike? No reference to that 'glorious' fantasy which is always invariably brought up: The AIT, the Grand Tale of the Oryans and the Dravidoids? What a domper. Here I was expecting a direct allusion, and all we get is a sneaky indirect one. Shows America is 'changing': they still hang on to their beloved AIT, but have perhaps learnt to be embarrassed about the entirely christian-racist origins of the Oryan-Dravidioid story. Yes, perhaps even B Walker has found out the very christian, very biblical origins of this: that the architects of the AIT fantasy originally called the Oryans Japhetites and referred to the Dravidoids as Hamites. To her sorrow, Walker would then have realised that it was not the Indians who ever called their own people as such, but that it was the christian missionaries and christian colonizers who invented these terms based on their christian-racist system and the consequent value judgments they made about the Indian skin-colours they saw.
Terribly embarrassed as B Walker must have been, it is only natural for her to still desperately cling to the same tale but not make any direct mention of the biblical Japhetites (Oryans) and Hamites (Dravidoids). How else could she blame India then without incriminating that most sacred faith of racists - christianity - in it? So instead, B Walker avoids the fundamental AIT myth altogether and is careful to use only terms like 'racism' and 'skin-colours'; Walker is obviously as adept in half-truths and untruths as any missionary. And to cement it as fact, she refers to one Mike McPhate's article from a Canadian paper. 'That proves it' apparently.
Most are familiar with the circular reasoning that western christian racists and their hired mercenaries, the psecular stooges in India (like Amartya Sen), always engage in - they are all working for one and the same anyway and find it most convenient to refer to each other's work to provide back-up for their own. (Hence, this makes it circular reasoning.)
"It's believed that caste occupations were originally decided by skin color, with dark-skinned people assigned to the latrines and light-skinned people assigned to the Hindu clergy" says B Walker's source McPhate.
<i>"It is believed"</i> he says - yet who believes it, but the christian missionaries and the organisations/scholars/journalists they fund, as well as the christian colonial-minded people of today, as also the Indians they spend their money to brainwash in India's christian schools? As per McPhate himself, it is an article of faith and no more. Blind faith and belief against incontrovertible evidence are things only christians are adepts at, they have certainly pioneered it. They also spend vast amounts of money making sure their charges in Indian christian schools buy it too.
Yet Walker and her friend are incapable of showing any evidence from the Vedas or any other ancient Indian religious texts that brahmins were people 'chosen for their light-skin'. Or that 'dalits' ('dalit' is incorrectly applied - it's the name christians and muslims take when they've been converted from a Hindu Harijan community) were 'assigned to the latrines' for their 'dark skin'. There is no evidence for any of this at all. Such bigoted behaviour <i>is</i> however consonant with what WASPY people of Protestant N America do: they get the 'brown' Mexicans to clean their house and toilets. But 'tis rather foolish to project christian American values on ancient Hindu India, most especially when there's no factual support for it...
The Vedas, and other Hindu scriptures like the Gita and epics like the Mahabharata, do explain how Brahmanas were chosen, but skin-colour was never a matter of any consideration. It has clearly been explained in Hindu scriptures that it is the sincere love for and pursuit of Truth, and a love for all creatures as equals, that defines a Brahmana.
B Walker and McPhate show only the christian means of 'pursuing' truth: that is, to paint all others as liars.
To give the lie to their face, then, here is the highly-learned and knowledgeable Yudhisthira from the Mahabharata explaining what makes a Brahmana:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->"Yuddhistira (the son of the God of Justice) is asked what is the cause of being a Brahmana. He declares that neither birth nor learning makes a Brahmana, that only proper conduct does. Even a Brahmana learned in four Vedas cannot be considered as a Brahmana if his conduct is evil. [However it must be noted that performing proper rituals is also included in the passage as the mark of a Brahmana (Vanaparva, 312).] In another place he is asked by a serpent who a true Brahmana is. He answers, "The person in whom resides truth, charity, forgiveness, courtesy, rejection of cruelty, austerity, is a Brahmana". The serpent argues that the Vedas have given every varna their dharma or law. "Therefore truth, charity, forgiveness, non-violence, rejection of cruelty, and compassion based on Vedas is noticed even in Shudras. If even in Shudras these symptoms of Brahamandharma appear, then Shudras too can be Brahmanas". Yuddhistira's answer is, "In many Shudras symptoms of Brahmana appear, and among many of the twice-born, symptoms of Shudras appear. Therefore it is not that to be born in a Shudra family makes one a Shudra or that to be born in a Brahmana family makes one a Brahmana. The persons in whom such behaviour [the qualities mentioned above] ordained by Vedas appear are Brahmanas and those in whom they do not appear are Shudras" (Vanaparva, 180)."<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->There goes B Walker's and McPhate's carefully constructed falsehood. Their lies melt away in the all-purifying Wind. But one need not worry - their false step won't hold them back. I am certain B Walker has many more lies in store, as there are even many more in the rest of her article.
But before I stop picking on her caste statement, I want to go over that much-heralded 'beacon of compassion' and 'social upliftment' - christianity (being sarcastic here). That it was a most foully racist ideology in the past (and still is elsewhere) is not under any doubt. But here is its undisputed <i>recent</i> record in India:
http://www.dailypioneer.com/displayit1.asp...jain/jain55.txt
<b>Baptised, but boundary remains by Sandhya Jain</b>
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Until 1991, out of approximately 134 Catholic Bishops in the country (14 in Tamil Nadu alone), there was no Dalit or tribal until the ordaining of Bishop Ezra Sargunam, a Dalit. Barring the States of Goa and Kerala, Dalits and tribals comprise a major percentage of Christians, yet they are hardly visible at the level of Bishops, Vicars-General, priests, Directors, Professors in seminaries, and surgeons and heads of departments in Christian hospitals and medical colleges.
Even Archbishop George Zus, a high ranking member of the Vatican Hierarchy, commented adversely on this situation while addressing the Catholic Bishops' Council in Pune, in December 1991. Dalit Christians, he said, "make 65 per cent" of the ten million Christians in the South, but less than four per cent of the parishes are entrusted to Dalit priests. There are no Dalits among the 13 Catholic Bishops' Council of Tamil Nadu or among the Vicars-General and the Rectors of seminaries and Directors of social assistance centres.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->We need not be as hasty as B Walker and her equally unreliable McPhate in concluding that the discrimination ingrained in christianity is the cause for this. But then, we need not be slow like a tortoise to come to this most correct conclusion either. It is there for all to see, and we must finally admit it. Discrimination controls who is ordained a priest in Christianity, as it has ever done. 'Social upliftment, equality, compassion' - yeah right.
(All of that Sandhya Jain Article is worth a complete read. It also covers cases where missionary NGOs are mistreating their 'dalit' converts. No surprise there.)
In western Europe, it had long been thus that only those of blue blood (=aristocratic ancestry) were allowed to become high-ranking priests: bishops, cardinals, Pope. None of a 'modest' casta/class was allowed to presume to such a 'holy' station. Hence second sons of aristocrats were given to the Church to get training for the higher Priesthood.