My take on the 'casteism issue'

Well, down to serious stuff now. Just a while back, I stumbled upon this blog : http://endcampuscasteism.blogspot.com/2007/06/dalits-not-welcome-in-iit-
madras-there.html

I was enraged at the whole thing. My first reaction was to flare at the guy and post a host of flaming comments. But then I thought that would be of no use. What if, theoretically, the guy responsible for this article had the emotional quotient of a chair? He wouldn't really be any better than me, would he?

First up, I'd really like to clarify certain issues regarding the whole thing. I seriously believe it wouldn't do any justice to anyone if the guy/girl placed his faith in a biased, unverified article he managed to fall upon while watching videos on YouTube. Now that wouldn't really be worth reading. As an individual who has been part of the system for over two years now, I have reasons to doubt his credibility. I mean, sure, if you do belong to the so-called 'backward castes', and you come across an article stating that so-and-so institute is busy discriminating against *your* caste, you tend to do something rather rash, like post about it on a personal blogsite, and declare war on all living beings, and so forth. But that would be meaningless, wouldn't it? Acting on reason is one thing, but succumbing to emotions is quite another.

Well, apart from that, the author (could we call him/her that for now- I don't really like backslashes) clearly makes statements that the Institute has 11.9% reserved candidates, the higher education programmes have even fewer numbers, and of course the one which says:

"IIT director MS Ananth is an Iyengar Brahmin. So are four of the six deans in the institute."

In case you didn't notice, the font was in bold. I mean, what is he trying to indicate? Does he mean to say that IIT is run by Brahmin Iyengars? Well, looking from an Iyer's point of view, I could see some light in that, and refute it on the basis of caste- IIT Madras is a pro-iyengar institute!! How about that argument??

Before making comments, we should seek out what is valid, and what is not.

“almost all M.Tech and ms Students in IIT were Brahmins.”

I don't remember there being any reservations for brahmins in any of the entrance tests. The fact that brahmins do form a bulk of the population inside the institute is rather coincidental. Why then, even after acquiring a 23.5% quota, is the percentage so low (nearly 12 as I mentioned before) Does he know of the number of people who quit college before completion? Does he know how many people end up doing unwanted things in life? If the author of that blog is reading this, mate, I have some news for you, you have no idea. Describing a cave standing 3 km away isn't going to yield anything. You have to go inside- to the deepest caverns, to really get an idea of how much better (or worse) it really is.

And if the author of that article is indeed reading this, and if I have hurt him in any way, I'd really like to apologize, for that was not my intention. If I wanted to exchange a few unspeakable words with you, I would have gladly done so earlier. In fact, I wouldn't have had to write all of this stuff, and I'd have gotten an hour more of sleep. I want people to realize that in the name of reservation, we don't look for loop-holes when none exist. If we end up doing that, we'd go nowhere. What then, is the difference between us and chairs?

P.S: And please, please, I beg of you... please do NOT quote W.B.Vasanta in the future. Talk about anything- from elephants to castes to pink rhinos to drunken baboons, but please, do me this one favour. It's like getting a Martian to, well, play counter strike (though that wouldn't be very difficult to be honest)