Disturbed...

I just read that some (in)human beings had attacked a set of 'Dalits' near Madurai as one of the boys had touched the parasol ( Kudai) of a Diety. Among the injured was a pregnant women who has now been hospitalized. The people who attacked consider themselves 'Caste Hindus'.

You may ask - why did this Dalit boy go and touch the parasol ?
I wonder if there is a high caste God and a Dalit God... but , in this case atleast , he did not go after the parasol. He was asked to hold it. What had happened is that one of the persons who was carrying the parasol had to tie his Dothi and had passed on the parasol to a boy standing nearby till he got ready to handle it and that boy happened to be a Dalit.

What kind of living creatures are we ? What superiority can we attribute to ourselves when we dont behave like human beings ? Who ever gave the authority that only some persons can even touch the parasol ?

And in yet another instance , I read that Dalits are not being employed for labour, because they entered a temple. In what inhuman civilization do we live ? Cant we be more magnanimous ? When ants, spiders, elephants , piglets, fishes , cranes - all these creatures can worship the Lord and attain salvation - why not these human beings ? What right do we have to stop them ? Who are we ? In what way are we superior to them ?

Let us get to the basic question : Does birth in a particular caste alone entail one for worship and salvation ?

This whole thing of attributing superiority to birth is a fabrication of Sankara' . In his Vivekachoodamani , second song , he states

'' For all beings a human birth is difficult to obtain, more so is a male body; rarer than
that is Brahmanahood; rarer still is the attachment to the path of Vedic religion; higher
than this is erudition in the scriptures; discrimination between the Self and not-Self,
Realisation, and continuing in a state of identity with Brahman – these come next in
order. Mukthi (Liberation) is not to be attained except through the well earned
merits of a hundred crore of births''

Sankara' did not have the benefit of knowing about or reading The Thiruvilaiyaadalpuranam or the Thiruthondarpuraman which speak volumes of the Grace of the Lord - whose criteria for salvation is certainly not birth -not the body- nor the gender - nor the caste.

And we seem to have been so strongly influenced by his very very very flawed thinking. In the first place, I am surprised that he has managed to get away with this , when this single song itself contradicts his ekanmavada theory ( more on that later)....

In any case, I dont see a reason why we stoop to such low and inhuman levels and attribute superiority and inferiority to birth.

As a poet said ...inside my bones , my marrow stirred.