Memoirs of fifties Akividu or Akiveedu (ఆకివీడు), and neighbouring villages. Educational, geographical, historical, literary, philosophical,
religious and social postings included. Copyright Raju (PD). (bondadaa@gmail.com)
Marijuana
frequently gets a bad rap. But how much of it is deserved?
After my
previous post, “Should Marijuana Be Legalized?“ I conducted
research to understand the benefits and risks of marijuana. Here are just ten
of the many health benefits attributed to the plant, as well as some of
the problems associated with its use:
Harvard Medical School found that marijuana may
have anti-anxiety effects. Of course, keep in mind
that high doses may increase anxiety and paranoia.
3.
Arthritis
Marijuana
can alleviate pain and inflammation linked to arthritis.
4. Cancer
Research
published in the journal “Molecular Cancer Therapeutics” suggests that cannabidiol, a chemical compound found in
marijuana, turns off the “ID-1″ gene, which cancer cells use to spread.
5.
Epilepsy
Studies conducted by researchers at Virginia
Commonwealth University indicate that marijuana may stop seizures.
6.
Glaucoma
Researchers are working to develop new
cannabis-based drugs to treat glaucoma pain after determining marijuana’s
effectiveness for treating the condition. Glaucoma is a condition that increases pressure
inside the eyeball and can lead to vision loss.
Marijuana
contains a minimum of 60 cannabinoids. THC is the primary chemical associated
with its mind-altering effects. THC has been used in the treatment of nausea, including drug- or chemotherapy-induced
nausea.
10.
Parkinson’s Disease
Research
published in “MedPage Today” found that
marijuana use eased tremors and improved fine motor skills in patients with Parkinson’s disease.
Despite
these health benefits, it’s also important to consider the potential health
risks of marijuana use:
•
Addiction can cause uncomfortable withdrawal symptoms in people who discontinue
marijuana use.
• In high
doses or in sensitive individuals, marijuana can cause anxiety and paranoia.
•
Marijuana may impair memory.
•
Mind-altering effects are particularly evident among young and first-time
users.
•One
study found an increase in
risk of heart attack within the first hour of smoking marijuana.
NEW DELHI — It is one thing to have a theoretical knowledge of
caste. It is quite another to see it in action. A few months ago, I was given a
small, relatively benign glimpse into how this idea of spiritual purity
actually affects people’s lives in India.
I was in Varanasi, India’s most sacred city, conducting
research for a book about Brahmins, the priestly caste at the top of the Hindu
hierarchy. I was speaking at length to a young student who, like his Brahmin
ancestors, was steeped in the study of Sanskrit and the Veda. One day, we drove
together to the village where he came from. Our driver on this five-hour
journey was a voluble man from the neighboring state of Bihar. Along the way,
the driver, the student and I chatted amicably, but as we neared the Brahmin
village, our dynamics swiftly changed.
My father was Muslim, and since religion in India is
patrilineal, my presence in the Brahmin household should have been an
unspeakable defilement. But it wasn’t. I belong to India’s English-speaking
upper class and, in the eyes of my host, I was exempt from the rules of caste.
As we approached the village, he did make one small adjustment: He stopped
calling me by my conspicuously Muslim name, and rechristened me Nitish, a Hindu
name.
The visit was going well. But, as evening fell, and we
finished dinner with my Brahmin host and his parents, a terrific tension came
over the household. Unbeknown to me, the family had made an extraordinary
exception: They had allowed the driver, who was of a peasant caste called
Yadav, lower in the hierarchy, to eat with us, in their house, using their
plates. But now there was something they absolutely could not do.
“I can wash your plate,” my host whispered to me. Then,
gesturing to the driver, he said: “But I cannot wash his. If people in the
village find out, it will become difficult for us.” By the rules of caste, a
vessel that has come into contact with the saliva of another person is
contaminated. At that point, it cannot be handled by someone whose status is
higher than that of the eater. My host wanted me to make this clear to the
driver.
I was mortified. I had never had to tell anyone something so awful. I
froze. I neither had the courage to upset their laws — and get up and wash the
driver’s plate myself — nor the ability to tell him this terrible instruction.
My host must have sensed my consternation, and so he went to tell the driver
himself. The man crumbled at the mere suggestion of this transgression. “You
are like gods to me,” he said. “I would never dream of …” I couldn’t listen. I
walked away. A few moments later, I saw him washing his own plate in the light
of a naked bulb.
Ancient Indian society was divided into four varnas, or
categories: Brahmins (priests), Kshatriyas (warriors), Vaishyas (merchants or
traders) and Shudras (laborers). An unofficial fifth varna were the Dalits, or
untouchables, a group so low that its members are assigned jobs like cleaning
latrines, sweeping the streets, tanning hides and handling the remains of the
dead.
These ancient categories are not the same thing as the caste
system, but they undergird it. Caste is a religious notion of spiritual purity
that defines one’s function on earth. It comes alongside strict restrictions on
how a person can live and what a person can eat and whom they can marry. Caste,
or jati, as it is known in Hindi, is a bio-spiritual identity, which has
nothing to do with money or power, and offers no escape save for death or
renunciation. As Octavio Paz, the Mexican writer and onetime ambassador to
India, wrote caste is “the first and last reality.”
India’s last caste census was conducted in the early 1930s,
when the country was still part of the British Empire. It found that while
Brahmins constituted only some 6 percent of the population, the other lower
castes, even without Dalits and the tribal people, who are not part of the
caste system, came to as much as 40 percent.
In 2010, Vinod K. Jose, writing in The Caravan, conjectured
that the shape of society was roughly the same, and “as a block, the Shudras
and untouchables could reach 70 percent of the Indian population.” In 2011, the
government conducted a “socio-economic census,” but its findings on caste were
never released, in part because the issue is so explosive.
The modern Indian state has tried to correct the imbalances
that caste creates. The Constitution bans discrimination based on caste, and
the government has instituted quotas for low-caste people in government jobs
and at universities. But the wound is so deep that even when this form of
affirmative action throws up the odd success story, tragedy can quickly ensue.
The same week that my driver in Varanasi was forced to wash
his own plate, the issue of caste roared back to the forefront of Indian
political life.
Rohith Vemula, 26, was a Ph.D. student at the University of
Hyderabad, in southern India. He was active in student politics, and part of a
Dalit organization that frequently clashed with a Hindu nationalist group on
campus. In August 2015, he was accused of assaulting a member of the student
wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Hindu nationalist party that now
controls the government. The group wrote a letter, which eventually made its
way to the education minister, accusing Mr. Vemula of “casteist” and
“anti-national” activity. The next month, Mr. Vemula, along with four other
students, was suspended. In December, the university decided to uphold the
suspension.
In January, Mr. Vemula, who had once hoped to become a science
writer in the tradition of Carl Sagan, committed suicide, hanging himself from
a ceiling fan. The suicide inspired protests across the country and forced
Indians to once more confront this fundamental inequality.
Mr. Vemula should have been part of a national healing. Here
was a student from among the lowest castes, attending one of India’s most
prestigious universities. His story could have been about the country’s success
in putting this terrible history behind it; instead it became a testament to
its inability to do so. In a suicide note, he wrote that he could not move past
“the fatal accident” of his birth.
The 2014 election of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his
B.J.P. emboldened every variety of Hindu nationalist group. The primary aim of
these groups is an aggressive form of nationalism. But there is a contradiction
at the heart of this ideology: As Mr. Paz wrote in 1995, the idea of the nation
itself is “incompatible with the institution of caste.” It was not possible to
want everyone to be homogeneous while at the same time believing them to be
fundamentally unequal.
The contradiction presented by caste and nationalism was never
clearer than in the searing
images that emerged from Mr. Modi’s own home state, Gujarat, in July. They
showed Dalit boys being stripped and beaten with iron rods. They were accused
of killing a sacred Indian cow. But they claimed they were only skinning a cow
that was already dead, work that is typically reserved for people of low caste.
The irony could not have been more stark: It was caste on one hand that had
forced this occupation upon them, and it was caste that was degrading them further.
Modernity should be the natural enemy of caste. And, in many
ways, it is. Urban life, apartment buildings, restaurants — even something as
simple as municipal water and housing — have the power to erase the
prohibitions under which caste functions. Democracy, too, is an enemy of caste:
The low-caste groups form a powerful voting bloc, and so politicians are
obliged to be responsive to them. But by upsetting hierarchies, modernity can
also exacerbate old tensions. It can make the higher castes, whose numbers are
small, insecure about their place in the world and drive them to reinforce it.
The spread of modernity in India has certainly undermined
caste, but it has also made the need to assert it more vehement. And the
unfolding story in India is not one about the disappearance of caste, but
rather of its resilience. Brahmins still have an outsize presence in
intellectual life; the armed forces are still dominated by the martial castes;
a majority of rich businessmen and industrialists are still of the mercantile
castes; the lower castes still do the least desirable jobs.
In the cloistered, English-speaking world where I grew up,
caste seemed hardly to exist. As a child in Delhi, I could no more tell a
Brahmin name like Mishra or Sharma from any other. And even if I could, I would
not have held it in regard. Our only category was class, and it was determined
by privilege, education and how well one spoke English. But there are some
categories so deep that they hold without needing to be enforced. What I didn’t
realize was that in one very important respect, caste did exist among us:
because the lowest castes were not represented.
For the last two years, I have been speaking with a Brahmin
from Bengal, a philosopher and a teacher of ancient logic, a man conversant
with both Eastern and Western intellectual traditions. I admire him in many
ways — his immense learning, his defense of tradition in the face of Western
influence — but when I questioned him about the prohibitions of caste he gave
me an answer that turned my stomach.
“If a person is suffering from a communicable disease, you
would not let him touch your utensils,” he said. “You have this one idea of
contamination, but you refuse to accept that there might be certain spiritual
conditions …” His voice trailed off. He seemed to know that he had lost me. As
if wanting to clear the air, he said: “You have to understand that modern
European culture is based on the idea that all men are born equal, and later
become differentiated. The Indian idea is different. We believe that men are
born unequal, but we are all — Brahmin, sage, cobbler, outcaste — heading
toward the same destiny.”
It was a valiant attempt at a defense, but in the end absurd.
It would mean that millions of lower-caste Indians, like Rohith Vemula, had to
forfeit the aspirations of this life in exchange for the promise of some
ultimate destiny, many lifetimes away, in which all differences would be
obliterated.
Aatish Taseer is a contributing opinion writer and the author, most
recently, of the novel “The Way Things Were.”
