Caste manifests into social, economic, and political violence. It perpetuates a fear among the people against whom it is stacked. This silent violence manifests into actual violence in the form of caste-based atrocities which is the crime against humanity.

The root cause of caste is the religious ideas which are part and parcel of people’s minds in India. They are governed by these ideas as they are raised to the level of religion. There is no Hindu religion in India, it is only the religion of castes. The caste conditions a worldview and that worldview gives rise to behaviour. The caste is an example of instrumental conditioning.

It is the gross delusion. In it, the view that the Brahmins and the allied castes are superior beings is enforced through language, stories, myths, and poetical works like Ramayana and Mahabharat. A normal Indian gets infested with these ideas despite of themselves as the invisible hand of Brahmanism is always controlling the thoughts and imaginations of the people.

The gross delusion and the hysteria goes in hand with superficial markers of nationalism like cricket and Bollywood. It has now emerged as Cricketo-Bollio-Capito Nationalism. The real issues of the societies are put aside in the media and any discussion worth the value for the common masses.

The caste infested/colored consciousness needs to be purified and cleared. The first step towards this purification is to denounce the sources of these ideas, that is, Brahminical ideas, mythologies, and religious books. There is no spirituality in it where human beings are treated less than humans.

There must be a drastic change in the way we understand the world. The understanding of the world is conditioned by the dominant narratives, words, proverbs, myths, rituals, and culture. This way of making sense of the world through the tainted lens of Brahminical Hinduism must be discarded fully and completely.

To stop this conditioning all the forms of education that leads to such a caste infested conditioning must be discarded. This is a difficult process, but without this process, the true human freedom cannot be achieved. Examining everything including the past in the light of present and for future growth is a mark of an alert and inquisitive mind. Nothing can be accepted without proper examination and the methods to examine everything must be developed.

For the people who are treated lesser humans, it is essential that they have methods to dismantle the installed caste system in their minds which causes severe violence to their persons. However, most of the people treated as lesser humans live in the false paradise that they are higher than at least some lesser humans.

One of the methods to destroy this structural violence is the empirical methods known as scientific methods used by the scientists to unravel secrets of nature with evidence. This method is now part of what is called cognitive science. The cognitive science throws much-needed light on how prejudices come into being and how they can be processed.

The annihilation of caste is a multilayered process and cognitive methods along with the methods to understand the world around are going to be key to de-caste the minds and the societies.

Author – Mangesh Dahiwale, Human Rights Activist