A Dust Over India

Maybe you should let that emotion go, it will inevitably affect your thinking.

I want to nitpick slightly, if I may, albeit the point is not related to the general discussion of poverty in India.

There is also some modern, relevant benefits to identifying someone's caste: it is an indicator that someone comes from a similar cultural or religious upbringing. That you speak similar dialects of Hindi. This is important when, say, marrying.

This says nothing of the caste system as institutional discrimination, but it's worth mentioning that caste is not "purely" an economic/political bit of culture.

Rich. No other adjectives can convincingly describe the plethora that is India. It is an experience that will kill you, and leave you discovering life – discovering you. Take your senses on a ride with its varied geographies that will raise you - with the tranquility to numb your thoughts - above the highest Himalayas and send you dipping to the complex of seas - angry some and transparent the others – not before it coats a layer of earth with the never ending plains on your humility and etches the burns of beauty on its deserts delving into the east so green as though you have travelled through the womb of nature. And all that changes the way your body smells, your senses perceive, your brain thinks. The sheer variety of a cocktail of experiences that is shoved towards you – from the dead stone caves of the Deccan to the fragrances of spice bazaars fighting among themselves, from the historical makeup of its traditions to the coexistence of its diversity layered with the shine of modernity all glued together by the religious cores of its life, from chaotic noises of it populated cities to places pure virgin, unexplored, from the finest of luxuries that the world has to offer to the free meals of a temple, from the complexity of languages to the simplicity of the hearts of its people – jostles your entire being. You learn that taste of food is not by its ingredients but by the hand that cooks it, that vivacity of culture is not in the art but in the artist that practices it, that the law of the land in not by civilization but by the embedded civilization, that modernity is not evolved from the old but that new is just a function of time and that time has varying speeds & that it can even stand still or fly by - that relationships do not necessarily need people to know each other. You may spend all your money but might not be able even cover India’s peripheries or you may travel all of India for almost no money. You may be astonished by the dynamics of families; be warned - strangers may seem too eager to help. You may follow the trails of most ancient of religions or you may stroll through shiny city culture. India doesn’t need a preparation. Indian accepts you as you are. Sometimes India will scare you. Sometimes India will confuse you. Sometimes it will demand patience and sometimes it will test your sense-of-humor. Other times, all of it would get so overwhelming that you would want it all to just stop. And yet there will be times when you will let the experience flow through you. Most people come to India in search of peace, some inner philosophy or finding religion. You will be escorted to the most tranquilizing places on this planet, to the most psychedelic aura that the nature has to offer and to the most comprehensive of eastern philosophies. But that will not quench you. And then, in the busiest of the moments, amongst the crowded of places, you may discover ‘it’. Leaving India, it may not be certain that you will have your answers but it can be assured that you will be at peace – with yourself. Incredible. Absolutely unforgettable.

This mostly has to do with the gap introduced by the Industrial Revolution the second half of the 19th century. If you follow the rise of Germany leading up to World War I, you will notice that the country was steadily becoming richer as industrial machinery was introduced from Britain (where most of the early inventions took place). Something similar occurred in the United States as well. India, on the other hand, is in many respects still a pre-Industrial country (nevermind that the government has access to nuclear weapons).

A human is made for happiness the same way a bird is made for flight. If people don't feel happy because they are underappreciated or their social life is lacking, I don't think that should be mocked.