The only good news here is that it looks like the family got away before the sentence could be carried out - although their house was ransacked afterwards. Apparently the man (Ravi, who is an untouchable/Dalit) and the woman (a higher-caste Jat) fell in love, but the woman’s family married her off to someone else. She escaped and eloped with Ravi in March. Both the woman’s family and a powerful part of the council are Jat. While the man’s family has escaped, they are very worried about the safety of the Jat woman, who may be pregnant with Ravi’s child.
This is not the first time this has happened, and last year it was a 14 year old who was raped.
A report that has some background data from Times of India - low caste vs high caste, and guess which end of that seesaw would be literally screwed here.
Wouldn’t it be poetic if we could ship off some of our gun toting crazies who need to kill a few people to the councils in India who need to be killed… just a matter of logistics really
I work with a very accomplished Indian engineer. He has worked with wealthy Indian business men on internet startups. I am sure there are people in India with the resources of Bill Gates who could work on development in remote areas, building schools and funding teachers. Problem is, there is nobody there with the vision of Bill Gates.
It’s not just that. It’s almost certainly also a caste issue. A lower caste running off with a higher caste. Which makes it much more of a violation [of their perverted, caveman rules].
You thought Jim Crow was oppressive? Indian caste system is if anything much more oppressive. In one town, the lower castes have to take off their shoes whenever they walk by a higher caste; if they refrain from doing so, they will be summarily beaten.
Edit: Apparently it does involve a Dalit (Untouchable) running off with a Jat (mid-level caste).
I think Bill Gates was a bit off a fluke to be honest. Generally to accumulate that much wealth in business you have to be a literal psychopath - something that doesn’t lend well to humanitarian efforts!
From what I’ve read, Bill Gates is rich today for just a few reasons, none of which seem to really be his own responsibility. The first was that he was born to a rich family, so he went to private schools with computer labs and had the ability to pursue anything he wanted. The second is that he just has a very good eye for hiring. And he also gambled really big on QDOS, and just happened to win. He had no assurance that the first deal he did with Microsoft would work out. In reality Microsoft got its start in a dangerous deal simply running middleman between IBM and a third party company. Glorified license dealers really.
I’ve met the guy once. Seemed really nice. Genuinely seemed to care about the state of education in Washington State.
My brother also met him a few times while he was working as a valet. Gates tipped him pretty well, but not like a huge wad, or nothing. Just better than most.
I’d say fluke describes Gate’s early successes pretty well. And once a company achieves a critical mass, it’s easy to just keep accruing personal wealth.
I like to think of money like radioactive materials. In small amounts it’s useful and has power. In increasing amounts it contaminates stuff nearby when handled improperly, and in its purest densest forms it ends up making everything around it radioactive (neutron activation) and contaminates everything and is generally beyond our ability as a species to safely handle.
How about fund raising to support them the first year after they leave India? What does India have to offer them?
This is caste related violence. Most Indians living here are quick to dismiss the caste system as only being practiced in villages but with 1/7 of the world’s population living India and 68 percent of India’s population being rural the caste system affects close to 1/10 of the world’s population.
It’s mainly based on statements that Seymour Hersh gave to the ACLU in 2004. No photographic evidence has been released, but there are still thousands of images that the US Government hasn’t released because of the risk to national security. There’s also an official witness statement (pdf) and other claims related to the detention and abuse of children in order to break their parents’ will. BoingBoing also provided some links to the evidence available at the time.
[quote=“dave791, post:36, topic:64722, full:true”]“US soldiers at Abu Ghraib and Bagram raped children”
Puh…lease. Source?[/quote]
I believe this was first published by Seymour Hersh, and resulted in a smear campaign being mounted against him by the Bush administration. However, US Major General Antonio Taguba’s investigation bore out Hersh’s allegations, as has every other official and independent investigation I know of. Taguba obtained the videos, along with still photos of rapes and sexual torture of men, women and children by US soldiers and “contractors”, and put them into the hands of the Obama administration, causing the President to reverse his decision to release all evidence from Abu Ghraib. This is common knowledge almost everywhere in the world except in the USA, where newspapers don’t like to publish controversial material concerning the acceptance of rape within the US military.
But don’t trust my word; google the phrase you quoted and spend some time with Wikipedia. Documentation is abundant despite heroic efforts by the Bush and Obama administration to repress it. There are even some first-person accounts from survivors, although many of them were murdered either by their torturers or by their own families (supposedly often at the victims’ own request).
Why did you find this so unlikely? That’s a serious question, that I hope you will answer, as I answered yours. I am surprised that anyone would still be skeptical at this point.
