Great thread on the astrology of a sex worker by a sex worker, but my oh my, this tweet! “The ancients” who enforced child trafficking with the help of Vedic astrology? It still happens, in the same way.
I wish folks would stop with Jyotish this and Vedic that while oblivious to the ongoing context. And no, your Brahmin teacher won’t tell you. Likely, Ariana doesn’t know, people don’t know but many choose to remain ignorant.
They were talking about religious human trafficking and child trafficking. And film itself evolved from the objectification of certain women and their art. Similar to dance, “cinema has evolved from Parsi and Hindustani theatre, along with Nautanki which was initially performed by Dalits, muslims and women from denotified tribes. Today, we see invisibilisation of these communities in the cinema, do you see this as appropriation[…]?” Jyotsna Siddharth interviewing Niharika Singh.
Conditions for poverty are enforced by casteist forces and society in India, many Dalits and some oppressed peoples are still denied basic education just as they were all denied education in the past when all education was religious and if an avarna passed by their class and overheard, it was instructed to pour molten lead in their ears and cut their tongue. This is in the book of law of Hindus, the Manusmriti. Recently for asking a question about one famous burning of this book in Who Wants to be a Millionnaire, Amitabh Bachan had to make a public apology. Or a case would have been made against him. Economic oppression forces parents often to marry a young teen, as was the case of Silk Smitha, Phoolan Devi and remains the plight of many, more so during the pandemic. Some parents are forced to sell a girl child to a Hindu temple. All Hindu temples have immense fortunes amassed. Some Hindu temples still engage in child trafficking, on the pretext that to continue traditions a child must become a devadasi, jogini or whatever terms are used per region. Above and beyond such practices, lower castes and Dalits especially are treated as if their body is dominant caste property. Today when the US VP-Elect whose family is immune to such, to name-calling of that nature because they are the child traffickers, owners of temples, priests and lawmakers of the Hindu religion and society; when she was called a Jezebel by a Nigerian man, I was reminded of Dalits and indigenous women being disproportionately considered Jezebels in India. And Black women too, foreign or local (who speak local language and live there since generations).
In Kamala Harris’ case, that man was pointing to her Black side, as privileged as she may be. Were she Brahmin only, this is something unimaginable. This ‘respect’ allegedly owed to them like to people who run institutions, I see it all the time in tweets, interviews and so on. One doesn’t need to be Indian to dish it. The difference with those of us forced to submit to Brahmins and other dominant castes is there is often violence or sanctions if we don’t obey. Think, how is it helping Blackness if for the next 4 years people will assign many things including disrespectability to Blackness but respectability to Brahmins, “ancients”, Kamala’s maternal family of origin. Invaders is what they were, how d’you think they got so much money to send the eldest to Berkeley at a time when there were so few brown or Black college students?
