With the aim of creating awareness and shining a light on ‘casteism and its issues in our society today’, and celebrating India’s platinum jubilee on this Independence week, IEEE SPIT organized an interactive webinar with Dr. Avkash Jadhav.
The event started with Sir asking all the participants to introduce themselves and give one thing they like about their country to make it an interactive event. Further, he explained how the events will be divided into 2 parts. Starting with the background and history around the caste system and next with how it has changed over the years.
The event started with sir explaining a wonderful quote by Swami Vivekananda,’ A soul has neither sex nor caste nor imperfection’. He explained how the caste system was formed. The mindset with which it was started and how one section of society was told that they are the base of society which means they are inferior, and the hierarchy was created. They were told to do the specific roles and had to follow them, irrespective of one’s interests. The caste system started emerging close to 700 BC. Four sections of societies were made. Sir gave many examples of how badly everyone treated the lowest varna and how difficult it was to live even a normal life. The situation was so bad that even the lowest varna’s shadows shouldn’t touch the upper caste varnas.
These practices went on for years and years. They were deprived of buying land, having good quality food, drawing water from wells, and performing rituals. There was no one to fight for this exploitation. He gave many examples of how much exploitation was done on the low caste section, on girls, etc. He explained how Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar helped the community, how he has done wonders in social equity, and how he always challenged all the injustices happening to just one section of the community. Sir gave many examples from which he explained how casteism works and how it has changed in today’s life. He also talked about reservations and their purpose back in the day. He ends by giving yet another wonderful quote by Edwin Ellen ‘There is no caste in blood’.
The webinar transformed into a very interactive session when the floor was opened for questions and answers, where Dr. Avkash answered and explained each and every question beautifully. The session seemed so interesting that the hour-long webinar was further extended for about twenty-five minutes. There were many questions by the participants coming through and all their doubts and queries were solved by Sir. At the end of the webinar, the IEEE SPIT team paid gratitude to all those who took their time out to attend the session, especially Dr. Avkash Jadhav who graced the event and very precisely and beautifully answered all the questions which all attendees have had regarding casteism and for making the event a huge success.