I have often felt discriminated in my own country.All the more when i was preparing for competitive exams.The quotas underline the fact that not every Indian is treated equally.You can be absolutely hopeless and still gain big things in life if only you belong to the sc/st/obc.My All India rank is 1358.Just imagine how I would feel when my classmate with rank 13,000 gets a better seat because he's an ST(and he's not poor).The General Merit is the most disadvantaged class in India because the system tries very hard to suppress this class.India will never become a superpower as long as the they disadvantage the most talented people in India(read general merit).This is a curse Dr. Ambetkar bought on India.If Dr. Ambetkar was alive today he would have been saddened by such vote bank politics that govern today's quotas and would have regreted this move.Even he couldnt have tolerated this inequality the other way round.Its difficult to be a patriot if my country treats people of merit this way.This poem is dedicated to this cause.
Divided Identity
I am an Indian they say.
There in lies a terrible lie.
Before I'm an Indian, my thousand identities surface.
Those identities cast my indianness aside.
Hindu? Muslim? Christian? Sikh?
Caste. Sub caste. Minor- sub caste.
Minority. Subordinated. Backward?
Minster's kin. Father's purse. Royal Blood.
The Indian that I want to be known as
Is lost among these many divisions I'm defined by.
My own country refuses to see me as an equal to another.
My IDENTITY decides the privilege I inherit.
The Indian that I should have been
Is the toy of the many vote banks and political upheavals.
They dangle a carrot every so often at this Indian.
And some donkey nearly always bites it.
Quota. Reservation. Promotions out of turn.
Merit trampled. Dreams squashed. Incompetent rewarded.
But again we are told this facile lie.
Its somehow supposed to restore equality.
When your system divides the society thus.
When your country treats it's countrymen with different measures.
Oh what irony you hypocrites!
You now want a white man to treat you as equals?
My anger is divided
And my many fears divided too.
As many as the names of my identities.
I cannot suffer to love this divided India ever.
I hope to see the day this Indian will rise above such trivialities.
Emboldened by the courage of the day.
Would bring in a time when an Indian would be Indian by himself
And not stained by the colours of identity.
21st April,2009 Raghuraj S. Hegde
