Beware, Brahminism is brimming to the brink

A warning: Please do not read this further if you are one who sees merit in the ideas of Brahmin domination and Brahmin one-upmanship. Of course, we know that people who are not technically born a Brahmin, too, believe in the inherent superiority of the Brahmins and they too are advised not to read this. To put it otherwise, this is only for those who are normal human beings who believe in honesty, fair play and democracy.

And the warning to all those who should read this is: Of late, there has been a perceptible upward surge of Brahminism the world over, in various forms. But let me start with what is happening in Tamil Nadu seemingly in a mild form, impelling many people to erroneously dismiss the trend as innocuous. Brahminism, as such, cannot be innocuous. For ingesting poison even in small quantities is not good for the human body. Similarly watching a Maridhas video can lead to slow poisoning of the mind.

The latest – I am not sure if he came up with anything after that – one to hold the candle to a Brahmin campaign was sugar-coated with NEET. He anchors his video on a long-winding Twitter thread by an universally acclaimed journalist called Sandhya Ravisankar, who herself says in the thread, ‘They said I was Brahmin..’ She was expressing her anger over Tamil news channels not giving ‘due coverage’ to a latest suicide by a student who was about to appear for NEET.

Let me tell you what happened in 2017 when I was briefly employed with a Tamil news channel. #thread#Anitha took her life. Obviously the newsroom went crazy. Channel boss wanted full live, hammer, tongs, the works. #neet (1/n)

— Sandhya Ravishankar (@sandhyaravishan) September 14, 2021

Sandhya’s point was that when Anita died she did not want to carry the story in the news channel that she worked for ‘briefly’ in 2017. The whole thread is to attack the editor and other colleagues for not listening to her. She feared a ‘copycat’ suicide trend to follow that and so she vehemently fought against the live coverage for the event then. Now that the latest suicide has happened many years after that she wants to know why the news channels are not giving the same kind of coverage.

The point is she does not want to distinguish between the suicide of Anita in 2017, when NEET was freshly introduced and the issue was more than a mere suicide with varied emotional contours, and the present day suicides due to children’s inability to withstand stress. But then what brings her Brahminism to the fore is her attempt to paint journalists and editors who are not Brahmins as irresponsible persons through her flashback. Yeah, she comes up with such things once in a while.

Senior Journalist Sandhya Ravishankar, with the late Kalaignar

But what added a dash of hilarity to her flashback thread was a tweet from K Balakumar, saying ‘This is the reality of journalism in TN for long.’ Apart from Sumanth Raman, who waits for an opportunity to suck up to anyone professing Brahminism, and many others like him, this Balakumar too has found sense in Sandhya’s wail. But this Balakumar was an editor of a local English newspaper for many years till he was thrown out on charges of plagiarism some time in 2018. He has been a journalist since at least the mid-1990s.

Now suddenly he has discovered the ‘reality of journalism’ because the Tweet he was responding to was from a Maami. Oh, no, Balakumar might object to the term. He was on Twitter remonstrating to someone using the term Mylapore Maama on television, which Sumanth Raman, too, had taken exception to. What I am trying to say is all these Maamas and Maamis think alike and bounce from nowhere to support each other when one of them comes up with something on social media.

Yes, at the moment Brahminism is brimming more on social media though the fear is that it is only a matter of time that it spills out into society, directly affecting human lives. Take for example what Sumanth Raman put out on Twitter through another unwinding thread on Periyar’s anniversary. ‘Periyar got people to identify themselves as non-brahmin, not as who they were, but who they were not,’ he said. In the nine part thread he says, ‘a handful of powerful caste groups replaced Brahmins & have become the neo brahmins cloaking themselves in ‘social justice’ mantra.

Hope you understood where Sumath Raman was heading to. The day he wrote that, the State was observing ‘Social Justice Day’ as per the declaration of the Chief Minister. So Maama concludes: ‘As long as other castes, especially the weaker sections, continue to get sold down the river by their “leaders” or unable to see how they are being used, real social justice will remain elusive.’ So, we now know that Sumanth Raman’s main concern is that social justice remains elusive in the State not because of the Brahmins but because of the ‘neo brahmins.’

Jack of all trades Hon’ble Sumanth C Raman

By neo brahmin, Maama refers to those who have usurped a few places that were once the exclusive prerogative of Brahmins, for whom occupying those positions were an entitlement. So, it is the same thing that has peeved Sandhya Ravisankar, too. Moving to the State, to which Sandhya Ravishankar originally belongs to, neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, a Veda Vyasa Scheme for Vedic Education has been launched there, but only for Brahmins, that too by openly advertising it through a website of the State government.

BEST is expanded as Brahmin Entrepreneurship Scheme of Telangana, which interestingly is also a State government initiative that provides help only, yes only, for people from the Brahmin community to start business and that happens to be the sole objective of the project. In Karnataka, the government gives financial incentive to Brahmin brides who are unable to get married.

Curiously, the Andhra Pradesh government scheme refers to a Brahmin as: Broad and brilliant in thinking, righteous and religious in livelihood, adroit and adventurous in personality, honesty and humility in quality, modesty and morality in character, innovative and industrious in performance and nobility and novelty in approach. Well, for such people there are a plethora of help waiting to be despatched in the form of scholarships, support, advice, guidance and seed money and they unabashedly proclaim it.  Curiously, the AP government has started a PSU with state funds named “Andhra Pradesh Brahmin Welfare Corporation” (A Government of AP undertaking) in December 2014. It’s profile reads “AP Brahmin Welfare Corporation or ABC in short, is a State Government-owned vibrant organization committed to the development and welfare of the weaker and marginalized sections of the Brahmin community. ABC serves the needy members of the community in AP in a selfless and inspirational manner by providing financial, intellectual and physical resources for their overall development which includes education, skill building, entrepreneurship, welfare and value-based cultural life, on a sustainable basis. The Corporation also strives to inculcate a sense of belonging to the community for improving cohesiveness, morale and pride. The resources are provided through distinct schemes and initiatives in various categories.”

But what happened very recently at the global level is more interesting. A three-day online conference was held from September 10 under the title ‘Dismantling Global Hindutva.’ As soon as it was announced, there was a spate of opposition to the meet from various academics, activists and journalists who called it a Hindu phobic gathering. Millions of mails were shot off to the 53 top notch US universities that were supporting the venture to back off. Speakers were warned personally and threatened with dire consequences.

Hindu Janajagruti Samiti, an organization that is accused of having a hand in the assassination of journalist Gauri Lankesh at Bengaluru in 2017, even wrote to Union Home Minister Amit Shah seeking his intervention in stopping the conference. But the meet was held as per schedule and it was then it dawned on many who were supporting the initiative to bring scholars and academics from the US and India to speak against Hindutva that it was another sham, engineered by Brahminism. At the end of all that hullabaloo, it was revealed in the conference that Hindu nationalism accepts LGBTQI+ community, has provided more mobility to women, has managed to overcome caste barriers and works on a scientific mind-set.Well, those who opposed it initially were perhaps not aware that there were people like T M Krishna in the list of Speakers.

While it is not worthwhile to go into what each one of the speakers said about Hindutva and Hinduism, it is clear that no one exactly speaks out against Brahminism. And if at all you do, there they will all descend on you like a wall of bricks. Did not we see a Seeman coming out openly to defend a K T Raghavan? Is not Maridhas doing it regularly? Beware. Even as Brahminism surges in ways that you may not be able to figure out, remember there are too many out there to defend Brahminism. I am frightened not just by the solidarity of the Maamas and Maamis, who do not want us to address them like that, but by those who perhaps would like to be called Maamas and Maamis.

(The writer suffers from delusions of grandeur, which explains the quirky nom de plume, but has his feet firmly on the ground with eyes focused on truths and facts when keying in drivel like this)