Reservations and Youth for Equality

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An Email from my brother-in-law:

You may be surprised at the suddenness of this mail but you must be konwing (sp) about the anti-reservation protest that is gathering storm in India.

Kindly visit the link http://yfemumbai.blogspot.com/
and do endorse their campaign, if at least by boosting the hit score.

Please also pass this on to Dada and as many people you know for mobilising their support. Even if you have friends from the so called "backward" community, they should support the anti-reservation campaign because the only purpose reservation is serving is to divide the country once again.

If you accept people on the basis of caste alone and they are not academically prepared, these are possible outcomes:

- They will wash out academically, or accomodating them would mean a lowering of academic standards at colleges and universities that have produced world-class professionals.

- There will be another "brain drain" of India, as students seek opportunities outside of India.

Casteism is a cudgel for others to whip India. I joined other members of the Hindu American Foundation on their Government Outreach Day last fall, when they met with a staffer from the office of Representative Chris Smith (consider him the equivalent of an MP), who had held congressional hearings on casteism. It was clear that the staffer was hostile to our message. We said that we deplored casteism, and took issue with the fact that many of the invited speakers were anti-Hindu and had Communist leanings. I noted that reservations were already set aside for SC/BC/ST at universities and colleges, and the staffer said what about the secondary schools? The solution seems to be to redress discrimination early on so that everyone regardless of caste can compete for admissions on the basis of merit.