Battle of the classes!

"Class" is a word with a universal meaning, or rather many universal meanings. The "classification" in any context qualifies with a class qualifier. The upper class, middle class, the lower class, the upper and lower within each of these classes, then the working class; all are classes. And they are classifications based on some factors.

So, when the castes were introduced in India, it happened to be the worst thing that happened to the majority of the people, who belonged to the lower castes, which stays even now. The upper two castes, who were real minorities enjoyed every resource and service, even at the expense of screwing up a whole lot of the lower class people. It continued to remain in our blood and flesh that even reserving some official positions for them became an eyesore for the higher castes. But now it's an irony that there are sections who are fighting for even reservations. That's a different story. Anyhow, the caste based classes still live on.

When movies became our main source of entrtainment, the movies which had Hindi as the medium ensured a pan India presence and they looked upon the South Indians as funny creatures.  Whatever they speak, whatever they wear, whatever they eat, whatever they do were made fun of by many narrow minded filmmakers. Even a famous movie song in Hindi is being termed legendary in name of the style of singing by a legendary singer, which is simply make fun of a south Indian's accent. People now call it a classic. How pathetic can it be. When Mani Ratnam and A R Rahman made their presence felt in the Hindi movie belt, many felt uncomfortable. Whatever is the case, they do their work and the work speak for themselves. Now everyone knows, whos is the best.

So, are south Indians different? I have seen that Bangalore itself is a glaring example where the higher caste people, even after 2-3 generations here, consider it  fashionable to say that they are Mysore Brahms or Mangalore Brahms and also TamBrahms. Even though the "Brahms" usage makes it sound cool, they are just enjoying the secret pleasure. But, as the whites made the blacks conscious of their skins 'color' in US, here and in other places too, these 'high caste' people are quite ready to remind others of their castes which happen to be the subservient ones. And, there is still information asymmetry maintained by the higher castes and the well off lower castes, which forces the majority of lower castes to remain the underbelly of our social fabric.

An amusing example. As a "Latin Catholic other than Anglo Indian" (designated by Govt. of Kerala), I have seen many Syrian Catholics claiming themsleves or their ancestors to be converts from Brahmins, which implies the obvious. So, even when there is a religion which supposedly have no caste differences, the ones who follow the religion want to classify themselves. So, do they think that the God or the Holy Trinity considers them special or for what? I dreally don't know. And even after being highly educated, they think that the white skinned ancestors' blood flow through their arteries and veins. Again, the classes based on castes. How more ridiculous can it sound? 

The fighting classes based on economice conditions is a long journey and it will continue and I don't have to talk about. The struggle in this case always ensure results as there is a balancing happening along with the struggle or as final results. But the skin colour based, religion based, caste based  classes are all so dangerous and it shocks me when I see even highly educated people falling to these class based analysis of people and  their uninhibited urge to be in some higher class, which means nothing in the scheme of usual things. but in name of some false prestige in the society.