On Monday, August 22, delivering the Dr BR Ambedkar Lecture Series titled Dr BR Ambedkar's Thoughts on Gender Justice: Decoding the Uniform Civil Code, Jawaharlal Nehru University's Vice-Chancellor Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit spoke on the caste-related violence in the country.
Speaking about the status of women, the JNU VC said, "Let me tell all women that all women, according to Manusmriti, are Shudras, so no woman can claim she is a Brahmin or anything else and it is only by marriage that you get the husband's or father's caste on you. I think this is something which is extraordinarily regressive." Sharing her thoughts on the recent caste violence involving a nine-year-old Dalit boy, she said, "No one belonged to the upper caste."
"Most of you should know the origins of our gods, anthropologically. No god is a Brahmin, the highest is a Kshatriya. Lord Shiva must be a Scheduled Caste or a Scheduled Tribe because he sits in a cemetery with a snake and has very few clothes to wear. I don't think Brahmins can sit in the cemetery," the VC added. Additionally, she said that "anthropologically" gods, namely Lakshmi, Shakti or even Jagannath do not come from the upper caste. Moreover, Jagannath has tribal origins, she stated.
In this regard, she questioned why we are still continuing this inhuman discrimination. She said that it is very important that we are rethinking and reorienting Babasaheb's thoughts. "We do not have any leader of modern India who was such a great thinker," she added.
Citing Hinduism and Gautam Buddha as the first ones to create awareness about discrimination, she said, "Hinduism is not a religion it is a way of life and if it is the way of life then why are we scared of criticism." She added, “Gautam Buddha was one of the first to wake us up on the discriminations which are embedded, and structured in our society."
