Icons Are Above Caste

The Patel agitation led by Hardik Patel that is boiling in Gujarat over OBC status for Patel Community rises a serious question on associating socio-cultural icons with the caste they were born in. By invoking Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel in his speeches and demanding reservation for his community, Hardik has made a serious error of looking at our national icons through the narrow eyes of caste.

Let me be clear. Sardar Patel, who is rightly called the iron man of India, prevented the danger of India's further division in post independence era. Had it not been to the bold decisions of this legend, our nation might have been divided in to 500 princely states quarrelling among themselves. Such was the vision of Patel, that he united a nation that was deeply divided on the basis of caste,religion,language and geography. To associate such a legend with caste is a foolishness. One can be proud that Sardar Patel was born in his community but, taking his name for the sake of further division of an already divided society by reservation is s serious error on the part of young Hardik.

If we were to call Mahatma Gandhi a bania, Pandit Nehru a Brahmin,  Bharat Ratna Dr APJ Abdul Kalam a muslim or Dr Verghese Kurien,the father of white revolution as a Christian, we are making a great disservice to a nation which is deeply secular in its tradition and has the much revered constitution having the ideals of the great Dr B R Ambedkar, the father of modern India's social awakening and reformation. The so called leaders of politically motivated agitations and movements not only disturb prevailing social harmony but also seriously threaten the channel of inclusive progress.

Everyone can be proud that a personality who has achieved a great degree of success in  one's field was born in a community that he made famous. But invoking the name of that person as someone exclusive to a community and as an ideal of selfish interest is a deep disregard to such personality.

Our icons were born in  a community much like all of us are. They made progress to break the barriers of religious ethnicity,caste based diversity and linguistic variety and rose above these divisions and became Mahatmas.

We are at a crucial juncture in modern India's progress where the majority of the nation's population is young which is supposed to be unbiased regarding these narrow sentiments, yet has a deeply polarizing example in a young leader trying to gain foothold in political arena with his caste based social movement. It is up to us to decide whether we want to be progressive or regressive.