[nukkad] Roots - continued

["HOMI KAIKOBAD" <>]

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Excerpted from `When 2 + 2 makes None', by Dr. Homi Kaikobad.
Copyright 2000. All rights reserved

ROOT OF THINGS - continued

The root of social cruelty is religious discrimination. Some details:

Religious discrimination arises when a faith is seen as purer than others,
and others less pure compared to one's own faith. While this is common when
comparing disparate faiths, it is also seen within a faith system in it's
factions, when many a times it is more virulent.

MUSLIM FAITH
Muslims who are of Sunni faith consider Shias as a breakaway faction, while
Shias consider Sunnis as adversarial, non sympathetic to their beliefs.
History is replete with clashes which have killed literally thousands on
either side. This is seen mainly in countries which are predisposed to one
or the other faith system. In Saudia you don't talk of Shiaism. In every Haj
there is major prevention to see there is no conflagration from the Shia
contingent, which mainly comes from Iran, who incidentally is the second
largest producer of crude oil short of Saudia. Iran is a Shia country and if
you are a Sunni better keep a low profile. Both are Muslims, both are
personally wonderful people, when it comes to faith, things go awry.

Within Muslims there are factions such as Ahmedi, Bohri, Khoja in turn
divided into Aga Khani and Ishna Ashari, Wahabi, and so on. Each thinks of
the other implicitly and at times explicitly as different, and there is
limited interaction, restricted intermarriage, different laws on
inheritance, marriage, divorce, adoption, property rights and rights at
adjudication.

Again, Muslims of Sunni faith, and some others, see an insurmountable
difference with other faiths, and have categorized these as Ahle Kitab,
Those of the Holy Book, and Non-Ahle Kitab, those Not of the Book. Those of
the Book are Christians, Jews and some subsects. Those Not are Hindus
Budhists, Parsis, some Christian sects which are borderline such as Mormon
and Amish.

In real terms of property, witness, inheritance, intermarriage, litigation,
equal opportunity, being a non-Ahle Kitab in a Muslim country can very
severely cramp your rights. In many cases your witness is worthless, and in
some places your are actually worth less dead as compared to a Muslim. This
kicks in if someone kills you and there are reparations paid to your next of
kin. Or when you run over someone who is a Watani, of the land, many times
taken to mean Momin, of the faith. In the 70s in Middle East if you ran over
an Arab you had to pay some 3000 rials Omani. If you ran over an Indian,
Buddhists, Parsi, you had to pay 2500 rials Omani. If you ran over a camel,
you were short by 150 rials. If you ran over a dog, they paid you rials 5.
Honest. The figures might be off by a few rials but that was how it stood.

If a non-Muslim, say a Hindu working in Pakistan suffers rape on his
daughter or wife, and you see the rapist, as well as some Muslim women who
were present, in a court of law what you  they say will have zero value,
your witness will be considered void and inadmissible. Alternately if a
Muslim man accuses you of rape and has no one other than himself to back
this up, his testimony will convict you, and yours will be considered
useless. Simply because you are not Muslim. Moslem women have no right and
their witness is also void.

Again, Muslims are wonderful, warm hearted folks and may in majority not
even subscribe to the law, but if there is a cruch, you come out second
best, because of what faith you follow.

PARSI FAITH
Parsis are very few, 7500 in India, 2500 in Pakistan. Their priest class
stems of the Ancient Nine, Noh ul Kadeem, when 9 houses originated the
dastur, literally the Law, who then tended the holy fire, and the ceremonies
of marriage, death and divorce, in dead tongues. There are the Athornan,
Priests, rest are Beh Din, who cannot become priests. Inside the Dasturs
there is a strict quota system where families are divided in to and attached
to Panthaks, a Hindi word based on panth, Way. So the Nine have a ninth of
the total population in their charge, and this cannot be transgressed. If a
maverick priest does so, he runs the risk of becoming externalized, a polite
term for black balled.

Marriages take place along sectarian lines and when some lovers cross the
line superstition kicks in. They will say if a Beh Din marries an Andhiaru,
a priest, or in his family, this will bring andhera, darkness. I imagine the
priests came up with this for sure keeps their business safe. there is no
provision for a non-priest Parsi to become one. Never. Even if all dasturs
took to cholera and died overnight.

Till recently, maybe till the 50s, Parsi women when menstruating were
externalized from the family and made to sit on an iron bed maybe under a
stairwell till the flurry was over. Food was brought to the mother, sister,
aunt in a tin plate much as one would to a leper, and the plate and glass
were stored in a corner for the next estrogen-progesterone flush.

Women were never allowed to become priests nor allowed inside the Fire
Temple when bleeding, although if they did choose to come anyway how would
anyone know is a matter up for grabs.

Within the priests only the head guy was allowed to enter the sanctorum
where the Fire was kept. If anyone wandered in there would be hell to pay,
and only a new ceremony at great cost would cure the offense. Who would
pray? You got it.

The most terrifying discrimination is against a little known sub-sect called
Khandhias, givers of khand, shoulder at funeral. They live in seclusion,
never intermingle with the rest of the Parsis, no one marries their
daughters or sons, never allows them inside homes, effectively segregating
them from the mainstream as though they lived in a lost hovel, which many
times they do. they are the ones who take over the body once the final
prayer is done. they take it inside to set it up for vultures, and there are
horror tales what they do with it inside the well with 16 foot walls.

When a Khandia dies, only a Khandia will mourn, wash, clean, keep, take and
inter. No Beh din ever will. No Dastur ever will. Those who grew old
carrying the loved ones to final rest go to their own alone, unsung,
uncounted.

HINDU FAITH
Hindus, a master and root race, are cursed with the curse of Manu, who
divided them irrevocably into 4 sects, with eternal walls between them. Even
when great strides have been made to overcome this, the ill is intrinsic in
the bones, and there is almost an unthinking discrimination between the
Four, amongst the each, between the men and women. If half of the 3 quarters
of a billion no longer discriminate, half do, which is a third of a billion
people.

The Vedic charter reads horrendous, with different color, work, rest, God,
hell and heaven for each. Many in the educated class have jettisoned this
and live a free life where all are equal, but in the illiterate
undernourished mass of rural humanity this very much prevails.

Go to the granite hills off mighty Abu, turn east and south, get off the
tarmac road into the kaccha, sort of let go civilization and wander. In a
day or two as you pass from village to village you will recede backwards in
time. Soon you will hit real Bhil country where men scold wild tigers who
wander into people's homes and walk then out by the ear.

Ask about, though this is unhealthy, if there has ever been an outsider
groom, dulha for the belles, or the other way around. If you get an answer,
it is for certain a negative. So a Bhil marries a Bhil, makes Bhil children,
who grow to have gonads which work and make more Bhils. If there is external
blood line, this may come from Chamars, which are tanners, and this if crops
have failed, small pox has killed, and floods have drowned.

So you sort of walk out, wise and sobered, and a little less structured as
an urbanite. Repeat this with other classes considered traditionally low so
they don't count and you see the same pattern. Lohars, smithies, Suthar,
carpenters, Mochi, cobblers, Kadiya, masons, Kumhar, potters, Kannabi, road
makers, Thuggis, traditionally Garroteers now turned tame, Mehtar or Bhangi,
sweepers or scavengers, Khedutiya, farmers, rangori, color masters, Dhobi,
washers people, and a hundred others, segregated, reverse segregated,
entombed in invisible communal graves since 2200 BC, which still hold even
when there is emancipation in the land.

OTHER FAITHS
Space prohibits discussion, and gives the above an unfair exposure. But the
fact is look deep in any faith and you will find discrimination, overt,
covert, implied, explicit, original, improvised.

Even when races had no formal religion such as the Hopis and Apaches and
Anasazis and Navahos in the great American Southwest, there still were
factions, which equally hated, discriminated, externalized and punished on
basis of some imagined trait. To this day the Hopis, perhaps the most soft,
talented and friendly people amongst Native Americans, had till recently
lost their land to the more warlike Navahos.

SUMMARY
The root of religion based discrimination is when sects are seen as
different, arbitrarily, opportunistically, illogically. In many instances
the implied reason is economics. The main ones hold power, controlling all
others even when inept, self serving, bigoted and servile.

SO WHAT TO DO TO IMPROVE THIS?
Improve yourself. Check out if you discriminate. If you do this well, you
may
find a dozen instances where you unthinkingly did take someone to be lower
than you, less than you.

If you do find something out of place, set it right. Don't discuss. The flaw
is inside. Set it right and move on. The watch word is Courage.

Once this is done, traditionally it takes 90 days, you can move one to set
it right abroad wherever you see it with the best means you can find.

Here the key is the Open Forum.

Arya.

to be continued















































































>The root of religious discrimination is personal fear
>The root of personal fear is moral weakness
>The root of moral weakness is spiritual corruption
>The root of spiritual corruption is stealing someone's will
>The root of stealing someone's will is interpersonal inaptitude
>The root of interpersonal inaptitude is lack of courage
>The root of lack of courage is lack of human kindness
>The lack of human kindness has no root, it is the evil seed.
>
>to be continued
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>Arya
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