Dude, they are as they are because they don’t know better, plus Hinduism has kept them on the fringes of society for over 3000 years. If any thing, blame the religion and its bigoted practitioners. If there were as many schools as are temples, we’d be far better off and the best educated country in the world.

All temples should be taxed 100% and the money used for education.

It is the entrenched mentality of people like you that keep and will keep a large part of the population deprived and all of us perpetually poor.

In the villages I’ve seen a lot of discrimination towards the lower caste land less laborers. It is perpetuated by people like you who take pride in religion and lack empathy, but not in humanism.

Violence of all kinds for what ever reason is bad.. really really bad, there is no justification to it, worst still is religion and people who profess it. More people have died for religion than due to diseases and natural calamities.

So tell me what is with assholes like you? Really I completely fail to understand people like you who can address the poor and the week as “they” and profess understanding of “their” problems and give solutions to “their” problems. You my dear are the problem.

We are soooo blind to the those that hinduism disenfranchises, we and that means me too are too warped up in our daily lives to think about these “invisible” low caste people. Oh! if they just disappeared.. unfortunately that is not going to happen.

Everytime I’ve talked about poverty, it’s always projected as their problem.

In my humble opinion, it is the religion that needs to be banned, it serves no purpose except to keep us poor and divided and gives the bigots reasons to keep continuing with the exploitative caste system.

A few of us have made good, it is these few that show amazing lack of empathy. They claim to be educated, maybe are literate, I always assumed “education” meant more than begin able to do math and crank out a grammatically correct sentence. It has to do with being able to look past our prejudices and per conceived biases, but unfortunately our education system still cranks out literate morons who will sell their neighbors mothers for a fist full of $$.

Religion (and in our case Hinduism) is the root cause of all evil, Ban all religious holidays, separate the state from religion and in a few generations we will be a lot kinder to our fellow humans.

At the bottom of the Wikipedia page are links to songs he did for Telegu movies! If anyone reading this knows Telegu, it would be great to have some translation help on the content of those film songs…

Well, if you want to explain to me how it is, I’m happy to listen.

“

Nice false dichotomy.

” like this wasnt

“

I read this mostly from an American perspective, because I’ve seen what’s happened with the total lack of representation for poor people in the U.S. and outside in terms of resource allocation over the past 25 years. Why is there malaria in the third world or poverty among undocumneted immigrants while wealty and middle class people in wealthy countries are getting tax cuts and conducting wars?”

I went back and read some of the comments that I missed earlier.

You say: “The size of that crowd out in the open tells you something about what the Indian government is dealing with. The Maoists’ recent electoral victories in certain regions of West Bengal is also part of it: the rural poor are very, very unhappy with both the Congress Party and the BJP.

Again, I’m not defending him, or his ideology. I’m just saying we need to take seriously an uprising that is verging on going nationwide, with millions of followers and the potential to totally destabilize Indian democracy. Even if it’s only a matter of “understanding one’s enemy.”

Size of the crowd: It is common to transport people in trucks and lorries to such meetings. Entire villages are mobilised this way. Where there is a train service, the trains are packed with the villagers and no one dares to ask them for tickets. For them, its just a day out to the city/town- the transport is free and in most cases, food packets are arranged as well. Also, Gaddar’s meetings, unlike the meetings of professional politicians, are hugely entertaining with lots of folk performances. If the size of the crowd was a true indicator of following, these groups would have gladly joined the mainstream and claimed political power.

Maoist victories in some parts of WB: In WB, people have no alternative to the CPI (M), which in any case is as mainstream as Cong or BJP. The ideology is an eye wash. So, in some places, certain rural factions that have been neglected by CPM rule have found the Maoists as the alternative.There is hardly any Cong/BJP presence in those areas for the people to be unhappy about them.

Do we need to take Maoists/Naxals seriously? Yes..we need to. But I don’t think we need to characterise it as an uprising. Thats too strong a word Indian democracy is not in any danger from these players.

We need a two-pronged approach: Political will to stamp out the violent elements and Focused rural development and employment creation in these areas. The problem is with the political will and the left-leaning intelligentsia.

Amardeep,

Gaddar was not the only one inspired by anti-Imperialist revolutionary movoment. The source of all the south asian ultra-left (SAUL) movements in US have also been inspired and share a common goal with “Gaddar”. Before starting a publication called “Ghadar”, the SAUL debated on “Red brownies” !!!, “counterFOIL” etc after deciding on “Ghadar”.

The name resonates with the historical, revolutionary, anti-imperialist Hindustan Ghadar Party (of the 1920s), that existed in India as well on this continent.

Thanks for your comment. One clarification: I don’t think Gaddar is in the U.S. Rather, he’s been interviewed by U.S. reporters in Andhra somewhere. (Perhaps from the Voice of America)

I don’t think the U.S. would grant someone with his history a visa — nor is it likely that the Indian government would let him leave!