From: udumudi@maxine.wpi.edu (u v babu srinivas)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian.telugu
Subject: Re: Rama(na) & Co.: Castes and Divine Intervention
Date: 1 Oct 1992 23:11:57 GMT
Organization: Worcester Polytechnic Institute
NNTP-Posting-Host: maxine.wpi.edu
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kumarv@blaze.rutgers.edu (kumar vadaparty) writes:

>I agree. But, do we have enough gorbys with the courage and the
>balance to do this? My guess is that just like America waited until
>sixties to discuss about sex, we probably need to wait until another
>twenty years to even openly discuss about caste system. Unfortunate,
>but true.


in response juvvadi@csgrad.cs.vt.edu (Ramana R. Juvvadi) writes:

>Mario Cuomo has a nice way of summarizing Bush's economic policy. He is
>waiting for Gods of economic cycles to pull this country of recession
>and the government need do nothing meanwhile. Whether Mario Cuomo is
>right or not that count, his statement is perfectly valid in our context.
>If you think our society is going to miraculously become more
>mature after some time you are sadly mistaken. Openness in sex in


also in response, rama@cs.rice.edu (Ramarao Kanneganti) writes:

>The almost quote is [from my secondary memory, "The ship is heading
>towards the rocks. The passengers know it, ... know it, but the
>captain doesn't know it. He thinks that the invisible hand of some
>cyclical economic God will save the ship miraculously in the last
>minutes ..."


kumarv@blaze.rutgers.edu (kumar vadaparty) writes:

: To Ramana and RamaRao who used some (obnoxious) quotes to basically
: imply that I am waiting (or, advocating such a wait) for a divine
: intervention for castes and the associated problems to go away:
: 
: 	Dear fellows, I spoke from my perspective: *I* am
: 	not interested in starting this discussion because
: 	it is a big drain on emotions and *I* think nothing 
: 	is going to come out of it. This is due to my past
        ...

: kumar "sick of this urge to insult others" vadaparty.


I don't think they were insulting you. They were just responding to an
article of yours and expressed their interest in starting a discussion
on castes. What makes you conclude at this point that nothing will come
out of it? Your point that it didn't work on SCI is not quite convincing.
Being objective and ignoring articles which you think are posted just to
insult or hurt certain groups, is one way to deal with such discussions.

Also, in your earlier article, you say that we might have to wait 20 more
years to openly discuss castes. How did you get that figure? What makes
you think we might have to wait another 20 years? The present condition
of the society? What does the society lack right now, that makes you 
conclude that it wouldn't be able to deal with such open discussions?
Can you list few of your observations?

Those who think a discussion should be initiated, what do you propose
to discuss exactly? Where are you going to start? Family names? Or do
you want to get into it directly? What are the problems that ail our
society that can be directly related to castes? What are the measures
that can be taken for each of those problems? Can we compile a list
and look at each problem instead of going about in rounds?

What is our goal? To get rid of castes in every way? Or to get rid of 
the superior-inferior associations attached to the castes?

I don't know about the first option, but the second one seems feasible.
More...

-- srinivas