What is Social Justice?

The word social justice is lingering in the minds of many Indians for quite sometime especially after the Mandal era (after 1990). If I am not wrong many of them does not know the exact meaning of social justice or many have wrongly understood the meaning. In this blog, let me try my best to explain what does it precisely means and how people are performing social injustice in day to day life knowingly or unknowingly by show casing the one simple scenario.

I have attended one of my friends house warming ceremony in Virginia recently in which the Hindu rituals are performed by a priest* in Sanskrit( it sounds alien to most of the people in India, so it is sacred - a weird thought ). The priest was given a Red carpet welcome from the moment he entered the house till the time he get out of the house as if he is directly jumped from the sky to earth. My friend was so humble before him and he is so obliged to perform the activities he was told to do by the priest during the ceremony. By seeing the politeness shown by my friend, I thought that the priest is doing all this for free of cost. To my astonishment, at the end of the rituals he fell down on the priest feet and paid a heavy sum of $300 for an hour which is 4 to 5 times higher the then average software professional paid here.

I really don’t care how much he paid for the priest, but the question here, is he able to show the same respect which he shown to priest to all (mason, carpenter, painter, electrician etc.) who really worked to build the house. I strongly believe he won’t. Why is this partiality to fellow human beings who are all working for our needs and happiness? I doubt the same respect can not be shown to the Doctor who is saving the human life.

This is where exactly the social injustice comes into picture. This is not only happening in one place, it is happening everywhere around the country. Every one of us is doing the same injustice to our people day by day.

It is one of the macroscopic observations regarding the social injustice. The social justice can be given hundreds of definition. The social imbalance caused because of the undue respect enjoyed by the priest like him who does not do anything for the betterment of the society and by denying the due respect for the hard working community here. It is all done in the name of caste and religion.

Can the Indian temples allow any socially deprived class man or women to perform the duties which the upper caste monopolized for them? Will the Hindu community appoint any Scheduled caste person as Head priest in any renowned Hindu temple?

Can the government ready to come out with a White Paper regarding the participation of oppressed class in Administrative Services? Can anyone reveal any office or department in India which has representation of people from all caste in right proportion depending upon the population?

Can anyone show upper caste men or women working as a carpenter, mason, scavenger, a farmer (not a land lord), a coolie, and cobbler? These jobs are reserved for us to do. Why is this discrimination?

* The Priest whom I am referring here is a normal person like us who leads a happy family life. He is not like the Christian Father who scarified his life for spirituality. The basic qualification to become a priest of his kind is the upper caste he belongs to. So the readers should not consider him as of the same stature as of Christian Father. The advantage and privilege is due to caste and only caste nothing more than that.