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<< January29, 2004 - [India Thinkers Net]People??™s Media Initiative |
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From: "Jas Cheema" <jascheema@barkel.com> To: "Jai Birdi" <jpbirdi@hotmail.com> Wed, 28 Jan 2004 --------------------------------------------------- Dear friends, I am sending you an article that was published in the Surrey's News Leader paper on January 25. It is written by a great person, Jas Cheema, who is committed sincerely for the social justice issues. Her columns are published bi-weekly in this and other papers in the Vancouver area. You can send your comments to Jas at: jcheema@surreyleader.com and a copy to chetnasociety@ambedkar.org. Jai Birdi ***************************** Although our Sikh Guru ji??™s preached equality for all, I am sorry to say that even today many are bent on discriminating based on castes. This is an excellent example of how the Sikh religion teaches us one thing but the culture accepts another. Castes? What you may ask is a caste? Traditionally in India, families were classed based on what caste they belonged to. Most of the time castes were based on occupations. Basically if you were born into a Carpenters home, you automatically became a carpenter even though you may choose a different occupation. This caste system also lead into a hierarchy with certain castes being seen as better than others. Today here in Canada, farmers are now janitors, janitors are carpenters and carpenters farmers. So how can anyone be better just because they happen to luck out and be ???born??? into a higher caste?? I was listening to a group of Jatt ???farmer??? teenage girls speaking about how liberal their parents were and that they were allowed to choose there own spouses. They were even permitted to date as long as the guy was a Jatt. When I questioned the mother, she explained to me how the caste system worked back home. The lower level jobs such as cleaning were only done by the lower castes. These people were known as the ???untouchables??? or a newer term Dalits or the oppressed. People of higher castes would not dare to eat in their homes let alone marry them. She described how people of the lower castes wanted to rise to the higher level caste of Jatts. She even felt that the lower castes were conspiring to marry their children into higher caste families thereby eliminating the caste system. She was insistent that it was up to us to educate our children not to fall victim!! I was totally appalled how this woman could live in such a diverse community with so many other cultures around her, and still be so intolerant of someone based on their ancestor??™s caste. Then she reminded me of the young girl who was killed in Maple Ridge because she chose to marry someone from a lower caste. Even though these things have happened in the past, does it mean we don??™t question them? Isn??™t it up to us to stop the wrongs of yesterday? As we advocate acceptance of other cultures, religions, races and inter-racial marriages, etc, should we really be teaching our next generation about castes? Shouldn??™t our culture more closely resemble what our religion preaches, equality for all. We are very lucky that we have such a mosaic of cultures around us. Accepting others values and keeping an open mind will assist us in adapting to the changing times. We should always be looking at ways we can improve our society, letting go of values that no longer work and accepting things that do. This in turn will help build a cohesive community of citizens that are accepting of each other. --------------------------------------------------- MEMBERS PLEASE NOTE: DELETE ANY MAIL WITH ATTACHMENT. India Thinkers Net does not send any attachment with mails. Please do not open any mails with attachments even if it apparently emanates from India Thinkers Net.Such mails may be virus laden and coming from alternate sources. the.moderator india thinkers net |
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