Cultural Barriers Can They Be Broken?
India's culture of categorizing their citizens called a caste system has been going on now for about 15 centuries. Legend has it that the Hindus ranking system "emerged for a primordial being (O'Neill, n.d.)." The mouth of the being spewed out the priesthood and the tutors, the arms expelled the soldiers and rulers, the thighs produced traders and businessmen and from the feet came the laborers. Yet a lower class exist among them, labeled as the "Untouchables"or Dalit. They have no place in the primordial being division of the people and they are considered unclean and unworthy and treated that way.
"Wrestling is popular throughout India, but the state of Maharashtra has a particular obsession with the sport, in particular maati kushti, or mud-wrestling. Many poor farming families train at least one son as a wrestler, and for a lucky few it provides an escape route from a life of poverty and caste discrimination (Jha, 2015)." This was the case for one man named Amol Sathe of a small village called Masoli who became famous for his mud wrestling skills. It was not an easy road for this man to get where he is today. Wrestling was his way out that class of poverty but as an outcast no one wanted to touch him which was going to happen in the sport of wrestling. His skill level and success began to make compulsive for other to have contact with him as he climbed in popularity. Cultural Relativism says that we should all understand other cultures beliefs and practices no matter how taboo they are. It is difficult however to always understand and accept these cultural difference especially if they clash with the culture we belong to. In addition, the Hindu culture seems to have little to no regards for the lives of the people that were born into their Dalit caste. This can truly be troublesome for someone to accept that lives in a country that endeavors to show that all men and women are created equal. We are far from perfect but far from this caste system as well.
O'Neill, T. (n.d.). Untouchable @ National Geographic Magazine. Retrieved May 15, 2015, from http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0306/feature1/
Jha, R. (2015, May 9). The mud-wrestler no-one wanted to touch - BBC News. Retrieved May 15, 2015, from http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32625666
Enel,
ReplyDeleteThe caste system in India is difficult to understand, but what's harder for me to understand is the fact that it hasn't been changed after so many centuries. Cultural change comes from within, and if the people affected by it aren't doing anything to change it, then maybe they like it.