bansy wrote:What's the news coverage of this like in India ?
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Could we have Buddists to the right and Christians to the left ... form an orderly queue please ... crosses can be purchased at the exit to the West, miniture Stupas to the East ... Thank you very much ladies and gentlemen!" ???
The Varna and Jati caste systems are horrendously injust and much more complex than we are taught as BK Brahmins. Any escape route is to be celebrated. Indeed, the BKWSU is, arguably, also involved in such liberation
ALTHOUGH I would like to see the figures and hear the experiences of low caste BKs before I was convinced that the BKWSU was free of it. The division between high caste white BKs and low caste Brown and Black BKs is clear. The Dadis and Dadis seem to see themselves above both. Individuals of different classes approaching the BKWSU are treated differently, e.g. Whites and rich Indians being treated with preference, some working class white BKs voice sentiments of division but I am sure this is merely for "practical reasons" when it comes to service.
I understand the real concept behind the caste system was that individuals found their happy role in society by tendancy and not birth status, e.g. if a Brahmin child was rudimentary intellectual or spiritually, it would become a Shudra NOT inherit the family priesthood business. Likewise, is a child of a Shudra was trully spiritual, then they could become a Brahmin. This could not happen in Orthodox Hindu societies.
Such work is not new and the highest respects must be paid to
B.R. Ambedkar, a Buddhist, who not only did such work for many years but also helped write the caste system out of the Indian legal system. An Untouchable, he went on to found the "
Indian Buddhist Movement" and became the architect of India's constitution writing out the legally protected caste system. He tried to do the same for women's rights later but was stalled by the Government.
This mode of conversion to escape social or political constraints or find new advantages is not new. About 95% of the Jews in the West, the Ashkenazis, are the descendants of an involuntary political conversion to Judiasm in the Khazak region. I suppose the BKWSU opinion is, "tough karma" ... but I would really appreciate an India-India BK's opinion. Those BKs that have come to the West via East Africa and have been assimilated into the West are just as foreign and have a different experience.
14 Oct 2006