“Well, you say you are neither religious nor you belong to any caste, then why do you fill in those columns?” my sister asked, while I was filling the columns for community, caste and religion in one of the forms. Her question not only made me wonder, but thoughtful. Not being religious does not mean I’m an atheist or I hate religions. There are several talks that speak about “Unity”, several movies directed under the theme of “Unity” and we all know, though we part ourselves into different regions, we are still united.
Now, the question is, “Is it mandatory to fill in these columns?”, “Are we rated or selected mainly because of our religions, castes and communities?” .
It is mandatory to fill in this columns, so that one day we can have statistics that more and more people are going beyond of the religious boundaries.
ReplyDeleteThe main thing is we should have an option to choose "N/A" or "None" as an answer, but sadly, it is needed even in our school/college admissions as a rule.
Thoughtful post Gayu...I am religious, but still I can understand about this. There is a column for religion, caste etc etc due to the fact that seats are allotted as per the reservation policy in India. I still look forward to that day when religion or caste doesn't matter who you are, and what matters is the beneficial stuff which you have done to the society!!!
ReplyDeletethis is how caste and religion in our country has been politicized...
ReplyDeleteand the irony is we have accepted this as it is thrown or say projected to us.......
Anonymous : I wish they had an option like that.
ReplyDeleteSowmya Swaminathan: I wonder if that would happen. It is mandatory only because we created it.
Prashant : I completely agree with what you said.^_^
We should have a column called Spirtual, so that Govt can know the number of ppl who crossed the religion boundary.
ReplyDelete