Sociology: Prejudice and Discrimination in India Essay (Article)

Introduction

Traveling the traffic-laden and very populated cities of India has brought insights to face to face with the injustice of the Indian Caste System. The Indian economic society is permeated with glaring and open inequality. It could easily be surmised that the economic and social scientist could create a scientific model out of the somewhat imbalanced Indian society. In terms of sociology, it is evident many of the ‘lower’ ranked groups in Indian society may never escape the quagmires of poverty(Deshpande, 2000).

Further, poverty is a traveler can easily feel in the air that one of the effects of being economically deprived is an Indian person’s race or stratification. The Indian race or society is characterized by the religion–inspired caste system. The ancient Indian religion of Hindu prescribes that the caste system where one group or tribe is racially superior to another group or tribe (Deshpande, 2000).

Main body

The Adivasis were forcefully uprooted by the government from their jobs in the Shahada and the Taloda districts. This is the center of the 1975 movement in the Dhulia district. The Adivasis are landless laborers (Mies, 1975). The Adivasis is one of the original tribal or indigenous groups of people in India. They have inherited their own ancient government system (Corpuz, 2005). The basic Indian society has linked the economic exploitation of the Dalits, Adivasis peasants to the caste system.

This predicament was the offshoot of deficit financing and inflation that had doubled in a year and the corresponding product and uneven distribution fall in the prices of agricultural products. The Dalits and the Adivasis and other classes of Indian Society are pursuing the erasure of the age–old caste system with the new Indian socialist revolution (Omvedt, 1993).

The India Caste Inequality system speaks of the Varna and the Jati. The Varna system segregated the Hindu society into castes that are five mutually exclusive, hereditary, endogamous and occupation-specific. The Jati segregates Hindu society into between two to three thousand Jatis or Castes. Each caste is characterized or ‘boxed in’ by identities. The Dalit are characterized as the proud untouchables whereas the Harijan was described by India’s Gandhi as patronizing. The observation shows that many members of many castes are the prime movers to permeate the discrimination of the Dalits and the Adivasis.

An untouchable may have hereditary relationships with many members of the upper castes. This shows a nonexclusive, nondyadic clientelist relationship.

One advantage of the Caste system is that competition is reduced to a bare minimum because there is a stable relationship between one group and another. There is a complete elimination of the development of fair competition and the firm establishment of an organizational chart type of society where hierarchical relationships where one group must serve another group without question and implementation of forced labor. The land is generally given to the untouchable groups to ensure their compliance and docility(Rajshekar, 1987).

The Jajmani Hindu Caste System shows that the Dalits were compulsorily predestined to work descriptions that were fully detached from the land. This includes working with dead animals (removal and leather making), lifting human feces, cremating the dead, sweeping, and others. The Dalits are denied their wish for a separate electorate. They were offered better social opportunities if they converted to Hinduism. Discrimination is characterized by unequal access to education, jobs, equal pay, benefits, government service, and other social and economic benefits. The Caste system has spawned an unwilling spirit to education because of the ban on their caste to enter a proper school education. Thus, illiteracy in India is very prevalent(Rajshekar, 1987).

Poverty is the precipitation of the caste society of India. This travel to India gives prima facie evidence that Indian society is evidently defined as an environment where inequality and prejudice is an accepted norm in that far –away society’s interpersonal relationships, in job applications, in job salary scale, in accessing many public and private spots and other racially –igniting discriminatory social and economic activities. The current Hindu society has made great advances in the elimination of racial discrimination against the Dalits, the Adivasis, and other castes.

The current Indian Hindu system has improved on its race discrimination tag by allocating an economic quota system where a certain percentage of government jobs are reserved for the untouchables like the Dalits and Adivasis. This was inspired by the United States’ own race issue that resulted in the implementation of the Affirmative Action program where African Americans are given a certain percentage of the total enrollees when an application for acceptance in any of the United States schools(Omvedt, 1993).

The government of India has installed the Mandal Commission to eradicate the race discrimination issue that affected the Dalits and the Adivasis. This commission recommended that quotas be enforced to ensure that the government service is allocated to the socially and economically backward classes. The backward classes comprise more than half of the Indian Population. However, the Dalits and the Adivasis could only be allowed a small share of the government jobs and other benefits. Thus, the government’s overtures to the underprivileged of the Indian Society have only made a small dent in the destruction of racial discrimination in India (Omvedt, 1993).

Summarily, race discrimination is a prevalent eyesore that the Indian society glaringly is noticed by the tourists entering into this Asian state. The people have been used to the castes system so that many are reclined to their fate. They accept their destiny that they belong to the lower rung of India’s social ladder. The government has already implemented many policies and guidelines to make life a little easier in the current and future

Conclusion

Conclusively, Indian society is better today, especially Dalits and Adivasis, as compared to the life of their ancestors many years ago. Many of the Dalits and the Adivasis have also climbed some many stories high on their struggle to improve their status in the Indian Society. Some are still fighting to fulfill ‘their dream’ for a society that treats each Indian as an Equal in society. Still, other members of the Dalit and the Adivasis society have accepted their fate that they have to fulfill their destiny as members of the untouchables of society where many doors in the workplace, public and private places, salary scale equality arenas are padlocked to their ‘low’ kind.

References

Corpuz, V. T. (2005). Visions and Movements of Indigenous Peoples for a New Community. The Ecumenical Review, 57(2), 185+.

Deshpande, A. (2000). Recasting Economic Inequality. Review of Social Economy, 58(3), 381.

Mies, M. (1975). Indian Women and Leadership. Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, 7(1), 56-66.

Omvedt, G. (1993). Reinventing Revolution: New Social Movements and the Socialist Tradition in India. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.

Rajshekar, V. T. (1987). Dalit: The Black Untouchables of India (2nd ed.). Atlanta: Clarity Press.