Reflections from Africa-9

Apartheid must be a universal phenomenon. But the worse form of it might have been in India and South Africa. Caste system was very strong in India at certain period. In Kerala, my State, there was a time when women of some castes were not allowed even to wear a blouse to cover their breasts. Women in the last century led a strike called "rouka strike" ( protest by wearing top), before they got freedom to do that.

When we visited the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, we could not but weep at the magnitude of segregation that existed in this land in the previous century. There is nothing like being treated as 'animals' in one's own native soil. Innumerable videos and pictures take us to a time of sheer atrocities and humiliation, beyond words.  We in India greet people  with the word ' namaste ', which means " I bow down before the God in you". If God is in us, how can we treat our brothers and sisters like beasts? This should never ever happen again in history at all.  Abraham Karickam