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Encouraging public debate on the caste system, exposing its weaknesses, the structural violence inherent in it, would be tantamount to embarking on its subversion. As sociologist M.N. Srinivas asked: "What would happen to Hinduism without the caste system?"

My reasoning, I like to imagine, is simple and straightforward. It issues from a very uncomplicated observation of social and political currents as I see them. It, therefore, surprises me when I find myself in a min -ority of one in stating what appears to me to be commonplace.

And commonplace these observations are when I am with backward castes and theminorities in the course of my rounds as a journalist. Every lower caste and Muslim minister in P.V. Narasimha Rao's government not only agreed with me but with thumping enthusiasm dilated on the inevitability of the Brahmin's decline in the political arena, particularly with the Congress party. It reflects on the suffocating hypocrisy of our ways that an assessment made by those who represent the majority in terms of votes and numbers becomes the view point of an infinitesimal minority, like yours truly, in the ranks of the nation's opinion makers. The means of communication are in the hands of the upper caste minority, with the Brahmins leading the pack.

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