A Page from the Diary of an Unreserved Citizen

I was born in independent India. I hated political science and loved economics,but the preamble of the constitution always appealed to me.

"WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC and to secure to all its citizens:
JUSTICE, social, economic and political;
LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship;
EQUALITY of status and of opportunity;
and to promote among them all
FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation];
IN OUR CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY this twenty-sixth day of November, 1949, do HEREBY ADOPT, ENACT AND GIVE TO OURSELVES THIS CONSTITUTION."


It took me ten years to realise that equality in India was a myth. Equality of status and opportunity,as it said. These words kept ringing in my head after the Supreme Court of India passed the OBC bill. "EQUALITY of status and of opportunity"? This was however,not the first bill that raped the preamble. There were many more. I couldn't not sleep that night; what used to be a fact for me was slowly but surely turning in to a myth. I never saw Rajiv Goswami and in 1990, I knew nothing more then He-Man and Mahabharat. They were the world for me,and little did I knew, that somewhere far away in the capital of India, one Goswami self-immolated while a student at Delhi University, in protest againt the Mandal Comission Report on job reservations for Backward Castes in India. When I read about his in 2001, I wondered how someone could go to this extent?! One of his friends remarks, "When I saw flames leaping out some 15 metres ahead of me, my first thought was that the burning effigy should not lead to violence. Several screams later, it hit me. It wasn't an effigy. It was a flesh and blood human being. It was Rajiv Goswami." I can however, visualise him. Every morning I wake up in fear of yet another 'reservation', the death of another generation in other words.

Several years have passed,and India, acting according to its nature, had forgot everything. A new society was created on the death-bed of several futures. This society was the modern India, rather, the ultra-modern India with a GDP of US $1.50 trillion, an India which takes pride to host the world's costliest cricket league,and India where graduates go on to study in the United States of America just like a fish entering the waters. OBCs (Other Backward Castes) constitute of a large number of people. Sadly, even after 60 years of independence, someone is still backward in India. No, India has not changed, its still the same.....backward, undeveloped.

94 amendments in the constitution......will you call it dynamism? Or will you call it a result of the myopic vision of the intellectuals who wrote it? Whatever the answer was, India is still burning.

The 'system' guarantees equality in the society. But this pillar of equality is erected with the bones of the society itself. Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) are Indian communities that are explicitly recognized by the Constitution of India as requiring special support to overcome centuries of discrimination by mainstream Hindu society. Years of suppression for these people, the upliftment efforts could be understood. This time it is the turn of the 'general' castes to face the music.The only difference is that, the former society was the crude Indian society with no governance, while the society we live in today, is called the independent India. A tooth for a tooth,and eye for an eye......we Indian's love revenge,so be it.

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action--- Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

---- Rabindranath Tagore.