{"id":6517,"date":"2008-01-06T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-01-06T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2008\/01\/06\/the-present-reality-of-brahmins-in-india\/"},"modified":"2008-01-06T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-01-06T12:00:00","slug":"the-present-reality-of-brahmins-in-india","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2008\/01\/06\/the-present-reality-of-brahmins-in-india\/","title":{"rendered":"The Present Reality of Brahmins in India"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"source\"><a HREF=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB119889387595256961.html\">online.wsj.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"summary\">CHENNAI, INDIA, December 29, 2007: Historically, brahmin caste Indians as priests and scholars led privileged lives in India. However the life of privilege, especially in India&#8217;s larger cities, has been replaced with a much different existence. The article explains, &#8220;Brahmins have been advisers to Maharajas, Mughals and military rulers. Under British rule, they served as administrators, a position they kept after Indian independence in 1947. But in today&#8217;s India, high-caste privileges are dwindling, and with the government giving extensive preferences to the lower-caste majority, many brahmins are feeling left out of the economy&#8217;s rapid expansion. The reverse discrimination is rooted in Indian history and politics. For decades, brahmins were resented for their dominance of the government, economy and culture.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>R. Parameswaran, a 29-year-old school teacher in Chennai is suffering the repercussions of the situation. &#8220;In Tamil Nadu, nearly 70% of government jobs and public-college slots are reserved for people from lower castes and other historically disadvantaged groups. Although he says he graduated near the top of his high-school class and had strong test scores, Mr. Parameswaran couldn&#8217;t get into any of the state engineering colleges. His family had to borrow from friends to send him to a second-rate private college. He now teaches English at a small vocational school. On a salary of $100 a month, Mr. Parameswaran can&#8217;t afford an apartment, so he sleeps in the classroom at night,&#8221; the news release says.<\/p>\n<p>Elaborating further the news piece goes on to say that on average members of the brahmin caste, who make up about 5% of India&#8217;s population of 1.1 billion, are better educated and better paid than the rest of Indian people yet close to half of brahmin households earn less than $100 a month, according to the Center for a Study of Developing Societies, a New Delhi think tank. In a perverse twist, the efforts to ward off discrimination seem to have created a new form of it. <\/p>\n<p>Mr. Parameswaran continues to apply for government positions but on every application he has to declare his caste and right away he knows that he is at a disadvantage. <\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>online.wsj.com CHENNAI, INDIA, December 29, 2007: Historically, brahmin caste Indians as priests and scholars led privileged lives in India. However,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6517\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}