Reaching out to marginalized/oppressed/historicaly discriminated groups like dalits, adivasis, women, sexuality minorities etc

First target - Dalits.

We could use a picture of Rohith Vemula and ask these questions.

• how many political parties you know who has dalits in their decision making bodies?
• at Indian Pirates we give equal rights to all members irrespective of their identity
• all you need is to demonstrate you agree with our basic principles (human rights, social justice, non violence and environmental protection)
• visit our website http://pirates.org.in, read our constitution and join as an associate

I think we should stop direct segregation of people. It is fact that we had a segregation in our society. When I discussed the same with some anthropology people they shared some insights to the root. For example the Lifeboy liquid soap advertisement and detol is came from the same root. We should fight at the root level, not just only at surface. This is the era of classes. Not the pretty old cast system. I agree that the cast system system still exist. While one growing the other one is declining.

@soorajkenoth can you please explain what you meant by the examples of lifebuoy and dettol ads?

borders are something that pirates do not agree with, therefore Pirates support Minoriten groups but we try not to call them as society does. putting people in groups disolves social empowerment.

@michaeljohnsinclai pretending that borders does not exist will not make the borders go away. We have to remove borders if we don't want them, and we have to recognize borders where they exist.

@michaeljohnsinclai @soorajkenoth watch this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKZxAAAiJdg

I am sorry for the late reply. I was trying to write an essay, but it will take more time than I expected.

@praveenarimbrathod I accept the fact that there are marginalised people. It is a resultant of existing social system. But giving preference to a group of people irrespective of individual, will lead to creation of another set of marginalised people.

There are individuals and groups. We should have a system to treat each individual separately, but in a common manner. Because each and everyone has different capacity, different limitation, and all are coming from incomparable backgrounds. We must ensure equal opportunity for each and everyone. Sometime people are incapable of even understanding their rights. The system we design must address this situation too. The reservation is not a good solution for this. We can try to adapt some mechanism from wikipedia or debian and test it.

As far as I understand the two dominant laws which govern the society are survival of the fittest and subordination of individual demand to the group. The fittest one will define the demand of the group irrespective of individual demand. Others will follow this irrespective of their actual need. We should define a system to overcome this difficulty.

@ambadyanands In anthropology there are different models to explain the origin of cast system. One of them is health conciousness. We all know as a part of evolution there different type of communities exists. They are broadly classified as Nomadic hunting and gathering society and agrarian society. Agrarians are more settled and have better technology. They usually keep there surroundings cleaner than nomad as they are not going leave the place after sometime. So they two systems might have different immunity system. Their immunity might have collapsed when two societies merge. So reducing the level of merging might be a mechanism for self protection. As part of this, one society might treated the other one as inferior to them. I quote the add in this context. The advertisement enforce people to not to share share their soap.

When we speak about marginailised sections (based on caste, race/ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation etc. saying 'we don't discriminate against...' is not enough. We need to say how we will address the discrimination in a concrete manner. Just having some dalits in the decision making structures doesn't address the issue - E.g. democratic decision making is part of the constitutions of almost all political parties, but in practice most of them are controlled by 1/few people or a family - same is the case with the presence of women-dalits-minorities-adiviasis in their decision making structures.

Some of the concrete steps against discrimination include:
- representation in decision making structures (can be done through affirmative action, reservation of seats, focussed capacity building of members/leaders from marginalised communities...)
- policies of the organisation (positions/proposals with gender-just/ anti-brahminical/ anti-racist/ pro-LGBTI/ secular perspectives)
- culture of the organisation (how the organisation functions in reality)

@soorajkenoth when entire groups are being discriminated and not specific individuals, don't you think the corrective action should address the groups too? Or are you saying a women is being discriminated only for her individual actions? We won't need any affirmative actions if there is no discrimination.

We don't need reservation in this group as everyone will have an equal voice, we just need to fill in the missing voices. When we bring more women to our group, the men are not losing their position, because we are not talking about limited number of positions.

I don't think capacity is the right word to choose, may be they are conditioned to follow someone, rater than thinking for themselves. That is a very larger problem for the entire society, because our education system forces everyone to obey authority.

We already have a non-hierarchical/peer to peer structure, which is not the case in most organizations and society. We are about rights for everyone and not survival of the fittest.

I don't think the nomads vs agrarian idea is relevant in current society.

@manoharelavarthi thanks for your comments, I agree we need corrective action and not jut pretending there is no discrimination.

@praveenarimbrathod I already accepted the fact that the discrimination was as group. But corrective action should not be in the same pattern. The corrective action should touch each and every individual. We should not repeat the same mistake in an another way. If you try to do the correction more and more with statistical average, the discrimination will take new form. More importantly the system, rules, regulations, governing law and everything will become more complex. As something becomes more complex, effectively it will become inaccessible.

We don't need reservation in this group as everyone will have an equal voice, we just need to fill in the missing voices. When we bring more women to our group, the men are not losing their position, because we are not talking about limited number of positions.

Yes, that is what we need. We should not put down everything into just numbers. We need something more than that while taking a decision. I am person having learning disability. If I were the only person having this problem in this group, I may not be able to win the vote of majority, even if I am starting the proposal for a good cause. The same thing happens in the society especially in the case of tribes and other less educated people.

I don't think the nomads vs agrarian idea is relevant in current society.

I am really sorry. The model still valid. If you don't agree with me, I request you to take 10 of our friends(not from pirates :-) ) along with you to travel in vivek express at least from Salem to Thiruvanathpuram. Our friends should travel without showing any hesitation or irritation.

@soorajkenoth
I request you to take 10 of our friends(not from pirates :-) ) along with you to travel in vivek express at least from Salem to Thiruvanathpuram. Our friends should travel without showing any hesitation or irritation"

.. Could you elaborate pls