The Ant and the Grasshopper

Got this mail from one of my friends. Couldn’t help but post it here. Just a continuation of few of my earlier blogs like ‘I am an upper caste, Hindu, Brahmin North Indian‘. Its a very interesting read – an old story with a new angle to it.

 

 Original
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The Ant works hard in the withering heat all summer building its house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The Grasshopper thinks the Ant is a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away.

Come winter ,the Ant is warm and well fed.

The Grasshopper has no food or shelter so he dies out in the cold.

Indian Version
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The Ant works hard in the withering heat all summer building its house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The Grasshopper thinks the Ant’s a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering Grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the Ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.

NDTV, BBC, CNN show up to provide pictures of the shivering
Grasshopper next to a video of the Ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food..

The World is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be that this poor Grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Arundhati Roy stages a demonstration in front of the Ant’s house .

Medha Patkar goes on a fast along with other Grasshoppers demanding that Grasshoppers be relocated to warmer climates during winter .

Amnesty International and Koffi Annan criticizes the Indian Government for not upholding the fundamental rights of the Grasshopper.

The Internet is flooded with online petitions seeking support to the
Grasshopper (many promising Heaven and Everlasting Peace for prompt support as against the wrath of God for non-compliance).

Opposition MPs stage a walkout. Left parties call for ‘Bharat Bandh’ in West Bengal and Kerala demanding a Judicial Enquiry.

CPM in Kerala immediately passes a law preventing Ants from working hard in the heat so as to bring about equality of poverty among Ants and Grasshoppers.

Arjun Singh makes ‘Special Reservation ‘ for Grasshoppers in
Educational Institutions & in Government Services.

Many years later…

The Ant has since migrated to the US and set up a multi-billion dollar company in Silicon Valley ..

100s of Grasshoppers still die of starvation despite reservation
somewhere in India …And….

As a result of loosing lot of hard working Ants and feeding the
Grasshoppers, India is still a developing country !!!

 

I’m an upper caste, Hindu, Brahmin, North indian

The first thing that people ask me when i introduce myself is why is my name Pratyush Pankaj and why don’t i have a surname. There is a very simple answer to that. Its because my Father didn’t want me to use our surname. He believes that surnames are used to distinguish people on the basis of their caste and religion. A Sharma or a Singh would be an upper caste and Mahto or Ahir would be a lower caste. He never believed in Caste system and he didn’t want his children to get into this either. Hence, none of us has a surname.

 

When I was a young kid, I only knew i was an Indian and I very firmly believed that. I didn’t even know what my caste was. I realized that I’m a Hindu during my history lessons in school when I was told that people in India are mainly divided into four religions – Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and Christians. It was somewhere in early nineties that I realized that apart from being a Hindu, I’m also a Brahmin – which means an upper caste (thanks to Mandal Commission).

 

 

These things were irrelevant to me until I witnessed a riot after the Babri Masjid demolition where I lost one of my best friends who was a Muslim. I realized the implications of being an upper caste when I was denied admission in city’s top college despite getting very good marks in my Boards exams, and another friend of mine who got much less then me, got through on ‘Quota’ (he was a ’schedule caste’ – incidentally, he was always this rich spoilt kid)

 

As a young boy, I never understood this logic of treating the citizens of same country in different manner. I never understood the logic behind “special treatment” to these poor (?) minorities (?). I don’t know if my forefathers didn’t let them enter the temples or to fetch waters from the well (I’ve heard people narrating such stories on TV – specially the politicians). All I know is that by virtue of being born in an upper caste Brahmin family, I couldn’t get through the best college in the city even after securing much higher marks (trust me – much higher) then the so called lower caste kids (who would zoom around on their bikes and waste time everywhere except studying).

 

So, by the time I came to Pune for higher studies, I knew I was an upper caste, Hindu, Brahmin boy and not just an Indian which I always thought I was. And then, after spending almost 10 years in Maharashtra, I got a new identity. I was told that I was a North Indian and hence I shall go back to North India.

 

So now, In 25 years of my life in India, where my father wanted me to be a proud Indian, I’ve been given different identities. Thanks to politicians, so called social activists, Human rights activists and few others, I feel like an outsider in my own country because I’ve realized that I’m not just an Indian. I’m an upper caste, Hindu, Brahmin, North Indian and I’m not very sure how many more tags I’ll have to add to my identity.

 

I always wondered if my father has failed. He wanted to give me one identity but now I’ve so many. But i when i think about it, its not my father’s fault. He had a very noble intention. He wanted his children to be above caste, religion and regionalism. But thanks to the dirty politics of dividing the country into castes religion and regions, none of us is just an Indian – we all have multiple identities.