There was a strange question on Quora: “Do Brahmins feel guilty for what they have done and are doing to India?”

I was surprised and wondered why Brahmins should feel guilty. Shouldn’t they feel proud? After all, it is because of Brahmins that India and the world still have access to at least a part of the most precious wisdom that is contained in the Vedas, because they painstakingly memorised them and passed them on over many thousands of years.

I guess the questioner had the caste system in mind. I am aware that the whole world knows about the caste system. I also knew already in primary school about it but knew nothing about what Nazi Germany had done or about the atrocities of slavery and colonialism. But the Indian caste system, and untouchables, were in the syllabus for us children in Germany and surely elsewhere, too. I remember pictures of poor, miserable looking untouchables. The impression was given to us that nothing was worse than that. This impression stuck, and only later I realised that it is not only wrong but has a mischievous agenda.

I tread dangerous ground now, as even some people with Brahmin names may attack me for not knowing anything about the ground realities in India, being a foreigner. The atmosphere is vitiated with ‘anti-Brahmanism’ especially in the Left not only all over the world but in India, too.

Yes, caste system exists, and untouchables, too. And it exists all over the world. I won’t go into it how the Vedas structure society into four varnas (caste is nowhere mentioned in ancient Indian texts) and that these varnas were not hereditary.

Fact is that Brahmins have to stick to many more rules for purity than any other caste. I knew a Brahmin lady who would not enter her kitchen in the morning before having taken bath. Brahmins were the guardians of the purity of the Vedas. So it is understandable that they would not touch those who for example remove dead bodies of animals or clean the sewers, though a society needs people, who do these jobs, too. In the west, too, not everyone shakes hands with them.

But no issue is made out of it. Moreover, there may have been also a hygienic reason behind not touching others. The ancient Indians knew already thousands of years ago that microbes can cause disease, when in Europe even 200 years ago the value of washing one’s hands after doing an autopsy was not known even to doctors.

The point is that unfortunately it is a general human trait to look down on people who are ‘lower’ in the social hierarchy – a trait which incidentally is best overcome by India’s wisdom that the essence (Atman) is the same in all humans, only their roles in this world-play (Lila) are different. These roles will change in future births.

So why is there such hue and cry worldwide over the structure of the society in India, when nobody accuses for example the nobility, the highest caste in Europe that it does not mingle with workers? More so, since independent India has done so much affirmative action in favour of the lower castes, so that today, it is mainly Brahmins who suffer, and who are unfairly treated?

Why nobody is upset that the British had signboards of “Dogs and Indians not allowed” at the club of Madikeri town in Karnataka, as an old Indian gentleman told me, and probably all over the country?

Why is nobody upset that the policy of the British starved some 25 MILLION Indians to death, in a country which was one of the wealthiest before their arrival in spite of having been looted already by Muslim invaders? There are terrible pictures on the net of Indians being skin and bones, barely alive. Each one dying a slow death.

Why is nobody upset that the British, after the slave system was abolished, sent indented labour from India all over the world in cramped vessels, where a big number died during the journey already (and were spared the torture in the sugarcane estates)?

Why nobody talks about what the Muslim invasions did to Hindus and especially to Brahmins? How cruel they were? How many Hindus were killed or made slaves? How many Hindu women were sold in slave markets in Arabia or committed mass suicide by jumping into fire so that they won’t fall into the hands of the Muslim troops?

Today, due to ISIS we can well imagine what happened then, yet the Left ‘activists’ and even ‘respectable’ British Parliamentarians are not concerned with all this, only with the ‘terrible, most inhuman caste system’ of India.

What Brahmins did by segregating from others or even snubbing others is negligible in comparison what Christian colonialists and Muslim invaders did. How many people from lower castes were killed or tortured by Brahmins? And if a Brahmin really did commit such a heinous act, he surely did not have the sanction from the Vedas.

So why are the “terrible atrocities of the caste-system”, which in all likelihood never happened, so much hyped?

My guess is: to divert the attention from those who really should feel guilty what they did and still do to India. It’s not the Brahmins. Their contribution to India and the world is stellar.

But this is not the only reason why Brahmins are attacked. Another important reason is to make Brahmins feel apologetic so that they become reluctant to follow their Dharma of memorising and teaching the Vedas. The goal is to make Vedic knowledge disappear in India, because it poses a danger for Christianity and Islam. It can challenge their so called “revealed truths”. Vedic knowledge makes sense and is therefore the greatest obstacles for Christianity and Islam to expand over the whole world.

It is time to stop this vilification of Brahmin. It is so fake, especially, when terrible brutalities by Islamists got neutral treatment, like a small news item in the newspaper, “ISIL burns 19 Yazidi women to death in iron cages because they refused to have sex with fighters” without any emotional colour or condemnation.

Some time ago, I saw an old Brahmin couple in a temple in south India. They had dignity, but were very thin. When Prasad (sacred food) was distributed, they were in the queue before me. Later I saw them again joining the queue…. It was probably due to poverty.

No, Brahmins don’t need to feel guilty, and the Quora question was manipulative. Others need to feel guilty, but those others are brazen and probably won’t. And the leftists and media won’t remind them…

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