This morning I was reading '21 Lessons for the 21st century' by Yuval Noah Harari, I have read parts of it earlier but never read the full book and felt it was a good time to read it. So far the reading list has had two fiction novels, so felt it was time to turn towards non-fiction for a change. even though it is a pleasant read, it still went a bit slow, hopefully that improves tomorrow. While reading it, there were so many ideas and thoughts that kept constantly popping up in my head. Perhaps it would've been a good idea to write them down then itself, but didn't want to risk putting the book down at that moment and lose interest in it so I continued reading it. 

Anyway the first chapter talks about the fight between Fascism, Communism and Liberalism and how the various events in history have shaped the views of the global population in opting for them. He talks about how Liberalism emerged as the option eventually and also about how in the current era which he refers to as the Trump era, there is this nostalgia to go back into some supposed golden past and so on. My intention was not to sum up what he wrote in it. One thing did catch my mind however, he was talking about how when the west like British were talking about Liberalism, it took in consideration only a few group of men and excluded the women, working class, minorities and also the people in the countries they colonized. 

I am not going to dispute what he said, but just want to add something to it. When the British arrived in the Indian Subcontinent, there was no such concept of India to begin with, there were many small kingdoms which ruled several regions and they were fighting amongst themselves trying to expand their territories. The interesting thing is while the whole of present day India was never completely unified, they did have one thing in common, it was the rigid system of caste which dictated their daily lives. The norm of this region was social division, division of labourers in the name of division of labour. This system continuously alienated a whole section of people from basic human rights. They were denied of these rights, and made to believe that it was some kind of price to pay for the sins of our previous life and it was the duty of the oppressor to ensure that the oppressed remains oppressed. 

The advent of British led to the formation of India as it seen today. And our textbooks are filled with copious details about how the British oppressed us, drained our resources and exploited us and so on and how our great leaders fought with the British so that we could gain Independence. This revolt/fight was predominantly led by a certain section of people, who predominantly fell into one of the upper castes, especially Brahmins and Banias/Vysyas. They told the common people that we need to fight the English man because he was curbing our freedoms and trying to impose his culture and religion on us, that the english man is ruining our land, and exploiting our resources and labour. 

But what is ironical is that the Brahmin was doing the same to the Sudras and the Ati Sudras for centuries. For a Sudra or Ati Sudra how different is it? True the foreigner is exploiting but he still treated them as human beings, recruited them in army as opposed to the menial and inhuman jobs they were forced to do for generations. The foreigner gave them access to education, something that was not even considered a right for these sections of people. The brahmin man and the English man have both exploited the labour of the lower castes but it was the foreigner who in fact accorded some human dignity to the lower castes. To put it shortly the foreigner was the lesser of the two evils.  

I do think I would have done a better job in writing this out properly had I done it at that time when it came to my mind, nevertheless, this could be something I could probably edit sometime in the future and improve it further.