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    This post was due two days ago, due to lack of time I couldn't finish writing it.

'The Prisons we broke' is the book i recently read, as recent as yesterday. It was part of my reading list for a long time and I am glad I was able to get to it finally. It has been really hard to my hands on any books because of the lockdown, so I feel all the more happy about being able to finally get the book and complete reading it as well. 

It is an autobiography of Baby Kamble, initially written in Marathi, which was later translated by Maya Pandit. I won't go too much into the details of the book but I believe it is one that everyone must read if one were to get an insight into how horrid things were for the Dalits. I'm not saying they aren't bad now, they are, but in a much different manner than compared to what it was like back then. I think if there is any thing really horrible in this world it is the religion called Hinduism, I don't think there is anything worse that in this whole world. i think it is as simple as this, if the central doctrine of a religion is inequality then it cannot be a religion that people must follow. The whole basis of hinduism is caste and whatever else anybody else says this is the ultimate truth about hinduism. It is the duty of a Hindu to ensure that those born in a caste lower to theirs must be oppressed and only if they fulfill this 'dharma' will one have a better life in their next birth which is to be born as a brahmin. While reading the book I felt so heartbroken and angry and sad thinking of how terrible things have been and for so long. How we were forced to live subhuman lives in ignorance. There is a legend that there are 33 crore gods and goddesses in the hindu religion, but not one of them ever had showed any love, kindness or mercy on our people or ever tried to emancipate our people from the depraved conditions we were forced to live in. What good are your crores of gods and goddesses if they lack humanity? 

I kept thinking of things probably would have been if the europeans never came and if we did't have Babasaheb, it was too tough to even imagine. While our country men exploited us and treated us like scum, it was the foreigners who gave us dignified jobs and access to education. It was our Babasaheb who told us to give up these false gods who gave us nothing but pain and degradation and educate ourselves and break free from the chains that have been  imposed on us for hundreds of years.   

In some of the hypernational movies and advertisements we usually are shown how the Britishers put up notices of "Dogs and Indians not allowed" in restaurants and cinema halls etc which were sections only reserved for Europeans. I remember being infuriated on seeing these things and thought of these people as villains and hated them with a burning rage, the irony is that we were treated even worse by the upper caste who were of our own country mind you. Our people were not allowed to even tread on the road whilst an upper caste man was passing by, we had t get off the road and bow down and make sure that even our shadow wouldn't fall on them. We were never allowed access to proper drinking water, we were forced to live in filth. 

Whom should i be more enraged with, the colonizer who exploited our people yet gave us access to things we could never have even dreamt about or the upper caste who continue to exploit us and discriminate us even to this day and strive hard to keep the systemic oppression in place to ensure that we can never be equals even though our constitution says so..?











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