The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : For a superstition-free and casteless India

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Monday, Jan 07, 2008
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

For a superstition-free and casteless India

Staff Reporter

‘Cow rights have become important than people’s sufferings’

— Photo: Sampath Kumar G.P.

SPREADING THE RELEVANT MESSAGE: Jaisomanathan, BJVS member, H.S. Niranjanaradhya, president, Karnataka State Vignana Parishat, M.K. Soorappa, president BJVS, H.S. Doreswamy, freedom fighter, and L. Hanumanthaiah, writer, at the Jnana Vignana Kalajatha valedictory ceremony in Bangalore on Sunday.

BANGALORE: Every day for the last 20 days, people in many villages across the State were audience to street plays, implicit with social messages, in front of their own hamlets.

While it may have gone unnoticed till now in Bangalore city, these artistes brought with them the hope they travelled with everywhere — of an India, casteless, superstition-free and rising above mere religious differences, when they performed at the Samsa auditorium on Sunday.

Mirroring the simplicity of these plays were the speeches later at the valedictory function.

There were no great statements but speakers chose to narrate personal incidents to highlight beliefs that had to be overcome, customs that needed radical changes.

G. Ramakrishna, editor of Hosata Patrike, said: “When I was talking to someone from a reputed religious organisation, I spoke of how Swami Vivekananda placed alleviation of human suffering over fighting for cow rights. It offended him. Why have we reached a time when people’s sufferings is less important than the issue of cow slaughter?”

Jai Somanathan, member of Bharata Jnana Vignana Samiti (BJVS), said: “I was travelling in the train when a child asked me what caste I was from. His mother accurately guessed my caste. When the son asked how she knew, she said it is part of our traditional learning. ‘You will also have to soon learn, son,’ she said. How does it matter which caste I belong to?”

H.S. Doreswamy, veteran freedom fighter, talking from the time when he went on padayatras to villages during the movement for Independence, said: “Small and marginal farmers are being thrown out and large land holdings given to big corporate companies. We are turning our farmers into slaves, a terrible fall-out of globalisation. It is something that we must fight against.”

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