Can the spontaneous people’s massive demonstrations, especially in Delhi in front of the President’s Residence after the rape of the 23 year old Delhi girl, who is in critical condition in a New Delhi hospital ignite a peoples revolt in India? There is little doubt that barring exceptions the ruling political elite, as many activists like Anna Hazare and Arvind Kejriwal have said, is very corrupt, brazen and full of men charged with serious cases of murders, rapine and corruption sitting in legislatures, ministries and other centres of power.
 
Since half a century they have dillydallied without enacting an Ombudsman in spite of Parliament’s solemn promise to Activist Anna Hazare in 2011. The politicians have sat through fasts and agitations by Anna Hazare, Kejriwal and Baba Ramdeo, who have run out of steam, as the politicians thought they would.
 
But the demonstrations mostly by young people of capital Delhi which have assumed massive proportions since Saturday morning are quite different.
 
By Sunday, 23rd December, the demonstrators had been joined by Baba Ramdeo, Kejriwal supporters and Gen VK Singh.
 
On 22 December, the assurances given by Home Minister Shinde at a media conference and meetings by some students with Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi have not singed the anger and the frustrations of the suffering public.

Political Leaders Attitude to women

Cong MP and Reality TV participant Sanjay Nirupam’s disgraceful attack on Smriti Irani. If Smriti is a thumkewali, what does this make him? He joins illustrious Parliamentarians in the misogynists’ hall of shame. So, dear neta, as you outrage over crimes against women, reflect on how you treat them:

'Some women wearing lipstick and powder have taken to the streets in Mumbai and are abusing politicians and spreading dissatisfaction. - Muqtar Abbas Naqvi, BJP, over the outrage after 26/11.

'Wah kya girlfriend hai! Have you ever seen a Rs 50-crore girlfriend? - Narendra Modi, BJP, on Shashi Tharoor’S wife

'Listen carefully sister, this is a serious matter, not a filmy subject - Sushil Kumar Shinde, Congress, to Jaya Bachchan who was debating on Assam

'Only women from affluent classes can get ahead, but remember you rural women will never get a chance because you are not that attractive. - Mulayam Singh Yadav, SP, at a public rally opposing women’s reservation

Hindu outlook and Rule of law
& Removal of Corruption in India

Just passing a strong Lokpal Act will not solve the problem of corruption or inequality in India. The problems are deep rooted, religious and civilizational. Poet AK Ramanujam said that Indians don't seem to have a sense of absolute. They place everything in some context or the other. And, depending on the context, what the rest of the world would regard as being wrong in the absolute sense becomes quite all right in India.

All this is supported even by our epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata. Like the trickery by the great  noble and transparent warrior of Ramayana, Lord Rama in killing his opponent Bali while hiding behind a tree or in the Mahabharata war, the apostle of truth Pandava Yudhister proclaiming the death of Aswathama (elephant) for military gains are all lauded, accepted and readily employed in daily life, specially by the new political leadership which has emerged from the grass roots from the villages and small towns and are not versed in western concept of  the rule of law.
 
Thus Indians in general have little sense or respect for rule of law. Their concept is very flexible. Show me the man and I will show you the law depending on the situation. There is almost total unanimity in applying rules and laws contextually for personal gains and advantage.
 
Thus India/Hindustan is not a nation in the European sense and even in many other ways. Identity is still caste based not only in India but to quite some extent even in Pakistan and Bangladesh too. Among the followers of Islam, supposedly an egalitarian religion, the caste has been replaced by Ashraffs (migrants from Arabia, central Asia, Iran and Afghanistan) and high caste converts, mostly Rajputs and Jats, who are considered superior to converts from lower castes and untouchables. The caste malady exists among Sikhs too as manifested by recurrent resistance by low caste Sikhs against Jat Sikh domination in religious and political institutions. Christians in Kerala have separate caste based churches. Even in the most highly educated state in India, politics remains caste and religion based. Thus education is no panacea.

Upward movement in India’s caste system?
 
Eminent Indian sociologist M.N. Srinivas, propounded the theory of Sanskritisation as the process by which castes placed lower in the caste hierarchy seek upward mobility, based on an ethnographical study of the Coorg Community of south Karnataka, India.
 
Srinivas defined Sanskritisation as a process by which "a 'low' Hindu caste, or tribal or other group, changes its customs, ritual ideology, and way of life in the direction of a high and frequently 'twice-born' caste. Generally such changes are followed by a claim to a higher position in the caste hierarchy than that traditionally conceded to the claimant class by the local community..."

One clear example of Sanskritisation is the acceptance, imitating the practice of twice-born castes, of vegetarianism by people belonging to the so-called low castes, who are traditionally not averse to non-vegetarian food.
 
Looked from another angle, Sanskritisation is but (cultural) ‘colonization’ of society that entails the imposition of a set of beliefs, social structures and practices (Brahmanism) upon the Hindu society, allowing it to take root progressively and in a top-down (NOT bottom-up) manner by first inducting the upper / ruling classes of the native population.

The British colonialism could be called Anglicization, defining it as a process by which the natives of India sought upward mobility by emulating the ways and manners of the British lords who chose to spend some time in India as part of their global mission to ‘spread civilization’ (and, incidentally, economic restructuring aka looting their subjects)
 
We will not discuss Hindu beliefs and relevance or importance of the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Puranas and all that goes by the name of Hindu scriptures, and therefore in avatars and rebirth, the varnashram dharma or varna-vyavastha either in the sense in which it is explained in Hindu dharma shastras like Manusmriti or in the so-called Vedic sense and the Hindu taboo of not eating beef or the idol-worship and other such controversial matters.
 
High caste Imperialism
 
Thus we can also say that while imperialists divided the subject races to rule over them, Brahmins, since time immemorial have divided the Hindu society, to rule over them as the highest rule making caste. They gave religious sanction and fear of hell and uncounted births as non-humans and other untold tortures and miseries, if the non-Brahmins wavered from the caste based Dharma and obligations, mostly for the benefit of the higher castes at the cost of those lower down.
 
In this Brahmin ordained apartheid like systemic cancer since millennia there has not been much weakening since 1947 or even in the equality of the sexes guaranteed by the Constitution. The women in real life remain relegated to the bottom by the religiously enforced grading led by Brahmin fraternity, warriors and nominally ruling caste of Kshatriyas, the trading and agriculture community of Vaishyas and even the Dalits (who in the countryside still remain untouchables).

While for political reasons the reservations in Assemblies and for jobs have distributed benefits unevenly to Dalits and Tribes the Muslims have now ended as the new untouchables as brought out in the prevailing discriminations against them by various studies and reports. Even rich and respectable Muslims are refused flats by Hindu dominated building societies.
 
Female is the last on the rung of ladder in Indian society.
 
But the situation of women in India remains unenviable. A girl child is still given food the last in the family, so it is with her education, with female feticide, bride burning for dowry or maltreatment of widows and rapes galore with little or too late punishment. A few years ago, Shankaracharya of Puri declared that women have no right to learn Sanskrit the language of Hindu Shashtras or read Vedas. A Shankaracharya , mostly a Brahmin, tries to be like an Ayatollah Khomeini, a jurist–consult in Shia Iran, to maintain Brahminical control over Hindu society and has been used to deny education to non-Brahmins and women. Brahmins, about five percent of India’s population including obscurantist cranks and charlatans continue to rule the spiritual life and flourish all over India, with many of them named Ananda (bliss) spreading swamis, preachers and priests on religious TV channels. Some have been charged with, molestation, rapes and other crimes somewhat like Catholic priests all over the world.