I think police profession is not any different from many others that Brahmins have been driven out. Yes, when I mean driven out, the institution of government has been used to reject opportunities for Brahmins. Brahmins can't get easily promotions in State or Central Government. When they see a less qualified person being promoted ahead of them, they don't want to continue that profession. That is one way how they are being driven out of each profession by government institutions. .
Thanks drb. First of all my thread was about the appreciation of police work, particularly in tamil nadu. at one point or the other, many of us may have gone to the police.
In our case, when I was around 8, some jewellery was stolen, and the police found it within a day. undoubtedly some rough tactics were used, I heard, but I was young, and was impressed by the quick response. My uncle was in IPS Gujarat and faced no discrimination. It is just that he got better offers in the private sectors with his skills and jumped ship.
Which comes to the crux of your argument that Brahmins have been driven out of govt professions. I will only consider tambrams as this is the only community I know and belong (I am a pattar from kerala).
I think once upon a time tambrams formed majority of the erstwhile madras govt jobs. We are only 3% or so of the population, and we cannot hog the public service, which is service to all. The situation today, is even if we are reserved 3% government jobs, I doubt whether there will be enough takers from our community to fill the quota. That is my take.
We have always been adventurous. Since 1920s, we moved to Malaya, burma, Singapore, Ceylon in search of greener pastures. After 1947, we moved north to delhi and Bombay and Calcutta in large numbers. Jobs were plenty there, and salaries far more handsome, than what was paid in madras or Coimbatore. Later, starting with the 60s, we discovered that land of milk and honey, the usa. Since then we as a community have looked outwards for quick upward mobility.
I agree that govt jobs are closed to us, but I think, it has been more a blessing, for it opened up our eyes to opportunities for us, that we would otherwise have ignored. Complacent govt jobs generation after generation..is that what you want? You yourself has USA experience, and that itself is a testimony to our community’s willingness to eschew rigidity imposed on our caste by our scriptures if it is to our benefit (I think we are not supposed to cross the kala pani. Right?)
The government has used its job creation and educational institutions as instruments of social progress. No where else in the world, has 25% of the population deemed not even human to be fit into the community. Nowehere has population fragmented to so many units, thanks to manu. Nowhere else in the world, has a priestly minority wielded moral authority like the Brahmins. Tambrams, in my opinion, were perhaps the worst abusers of the caste system with their ‘othippO’ attitudes. Mercifully most of us have discarded such beastly mindsets, but it still prevails, within a few, and if they suffer because of this, it is for them and them alone to rectify their situation. No amount of community help is going to set right warped minds.
This forum is meant for Tamil Brahmins. It is built around a belief system that most people here share. Hence, it is not required to be politically correct. We unite both based on issues and based on our caste (aka belief system). Uniting as caste has already brought many common understandings under one umbrella. So, why reject that? .
Please read the constitution of the forum. As in my earlier note to you, this is not a breast beating group lamenting the loss of premiership of tambrams within the tamil society. I think there are others there,with uniformity of views, and where each members vies with the other, as to who can narrate great harms to done the tambrams, brams, Hinduism, mother india et al, starting from the Islamic invasion to the current corrupt influence of the west and internet.
If you deem Brahminism as narrow communalism, I am afraid I must disagree. It is communalism if we interfere with other belief systems and destroy their faith and opportunities. Fighting for our own fair treatment is not narrow communalism.
Brahminism is a loaded word. The term today implies insularity, a sense of lost entitlement, and social presitige and such. It could also mean, exclusiveness and reservation to priesthood, and such like. So I am not sure what your definition is. There is a thread here as to what is a current day Brahmin.
My definition of communalism, is the tendency to look at everything from the narrow viewpoint of the ‘tambram community’, which again, as you have said, has disunity as its trademark. So, I do not understand why, when we are so prosperous, like we never have been, have a large say in many many industrial and technical organizations, and influence far above what our numbers warrant, that we have to be ‘
Fighting for our own fair treatment’.
If it is to abolish reservations in educational institutions, forget it. It is a social tool for getting representation in the professions across communities. As long as we are a democracy those things will stay. Atleast for another 50 yeas. It is time for us to move on beyond the mindset of hating reservations.
