Youth tackles caste system and socializes self-interest
Güncelleme Tarihi:
by Kristen Stevens
Oluşturulma Tarihi: Haziran 20, 2009 00:00
ISTANBUL - Istanbul tenth grader Sid Shekhar wraps up a global leadership week at Harvard University where he is taking a yearlong project to the next level: He hopes to contribute to a movement to abolish the caste system in India. If world citizenship is revealed through one's plans to help people who benefit the least from the globalization, then Shekhar is surely a leader among citizens.
Sid Shekhar returns to Istanbul from Harvard University this Saturday after a week among some of the world’s brightest young people. A junior at the private Istanbul International Community School, he was nominated and accepted to the People to People program for his outstanding academic record and standardized test scores, community involvement and potential as a future leader.
That’s what it says on paper anyway. Sure, he wants to start a company someday dealing with renewable energy. But meet this stand-out point guard on the playground as he hams it up for a photo shoot or hear his ideas on making human self-interest work for the poor, and it’s obvious there is much, much more.
During a tightly scheduled between-classes meeting, something slipped from this writer’s plan to disarm the young man with an inquiry about his yearlong project to expose and break down India’s caste system. Soon he had scuttled the line-up of questions appropriate for someone too young to vote, drive or get into an R-rated movie.
Shekhar was quietly leading the interview. So sit back, I said to myself, let’s discuss getting into journalism, living off wages that don’t match one’s educational investment, even life as a working parent. Especially beguiling about this teenager’s panache as a leader is his sincerity as a communicator.
No surprise then that Shekhar likes books about "psychological interactions". Writer Robert Greene’s "The 48 Laws of Power" is his current favorite: "He shows how great leaders got to power not through their genes or birthright but through social skills."
Later he noted leaders in Indian politics from lower castes who had risen through the ranks despite taboos. "Child prodigy A.P.J. Abdul Kalam was given opportunities because he could contribute to society," he said. He cited other notable exceptions, including Mayawati Kumari, an "untouchable", who is the chief minister of India's Uttar Pradesh state.
’In places like these a little communism could help’
The son of the chief financial officer for Xerox in Turkey and a teacher who raised kids while earning her masters in education via the Internet, Shekhar doesn’t take social mobility for granted.
Turkey doesn’t have a caste system but everything seems to be based on status, he said. Bordering Istanbul International Community School’s bucolic rolling green campus and state-of-the-art facilities is the small village of Kara. Shekhar and his classmates pass through it each day on their service buses to and from school.
"The bus drivers treat the [village] kids with contempt if they get in the way or ask a question. Meanwhile if we have a concern we’re treated with respect just because we come from privileged families. I don’t think that’s fair."
He sees this type of extreme disparity playing out in all Third World countries, he said. When he lived in Egypt, he saw locals treating foreigners and rich people in the bazaar with exception. "They look at you with respect and speak politely while locals get brushed off," he said.
In places like these a little communism could really help, Shekhar said. "Capitalism has failed in developing countries where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer."
Shock to the system
Shekhar was born in India and lived there until he was six years old, but he has returned during summer vacations. While in India when he was 12 or 13 years old he saw the violent beating of lower caste teens at a local college on the news. "It was gory footage; they were beating the kids with sticks and there was lots of blood," he said. Concerned, he wanted to know more about the system.
"If I were born in the lower caste system in public school, I would have to sit in the back of the class," he said. "A boy who is rejected from school and doesn’t have religion or faith to keep him going resorts to begging or drugs and his family depends on him for money. Then there’s a lack of health care and condoms. It’s a vicious cycle."
At the Istanbul International Community School, 10th graders produce personal projects over the course of the year. India’s caste system was a natural focus for Shekhar as he was already engaged in learning about it. He took the research deeper, interviewing experts and focusing on news portrayals and leaders in the struggle to dismantle the system. His final product, an article he hopes to publish in India, discusses how the caste system poses problems for India’s society and explores "ways toward a ’caste-less’ India".
Most people he canvassed weren’t knowledgeable about the caste system but could relate it to racism, he said. Not unrealistic about the challenge of undoing cultural hierarchy, he aims to reach a wide audience. "It requires a big number of people to actually make an impact so [the movement] has to be a worldwide thing," he said.
He pulled out classified listings in Indian newspapers for marriage requests from the day before. He pointed out that every single personal advertisement had a reference to caste. "This surprised me," he admitted. In an extreme example of the power of class, a girl from a lower caste fell in love with a man from a higher caste, he told me, adding that her family then handed her over to police who beat and raped her. He showed me a photo of the girl with fresh body wounds and a disfigured face.
That’s what it says on paper anyway. Sure, he wants to start a company someday dealing with renewable energy. But meet this stand-out point guard on the playground as he hams it up for a photo shoot or hear his ideas on making human self-interest work for the poor, and it’s obvious there is much, much more.
During a tightly scheduled between-classes meeting, something slipped from this writer’s plan to disarm the young man with an inquiry about his yearlong project to expose and break down India’s caste system. Soon he had scuttled the line-up of questions appropriate for someone too young to vote, drive or get into an R-rated movie.
Shekhar was quietly leading the interview. So sit back, I said to myself, let’s discuss getting into journalism, living off wages that don’t match one’s educational investment, even life as a working parent. Especially beguiling about this teenager’s panache as a leader is his sincerity as a communicator.
No surprise then that Shekhar likes books about "psychological interactions". Writer Robert Greene’s "The 48 Laws of Power" is his current favorite: "He shows how great leaders got to power not through their genes or birthright but through social skills."
Later he noted leaders in Indian politics from lower castes who had risen through the ranks despite taboos. "Child prodigy A.P.J. Abdul Kalam was given opportunities because he could contribute to society," he said. He cited other notable exceptions, including Mayawati Kumari, an "untouchable", who is the chief minister of India's Uttar Pradesh state.
’In places like these a little communism could help’
The son of the chief financial officer for Xerox in Turkey and a teacher who raised kids while earning her masters in education via the Internet, Shekhar doesn’t take social mobility for granted.
Turkey doesn’t have a caste system but everything seems to be based on status, he said. Bordering Istanbul International Community School’s bucolic rolling green campus and state-of-the-art facilities is the small village of Kara. Shekhar and his classmates pass through it each day on their service buses to and from school.
"The bus drivers treat the [village] kids with contempt if they get in the way or ask a question. Meanwhile if we have a concern we’re treated with respect just because we come from privileged families. I don’t think that’s fair."
He sees this type of extreme disparity playing out in all Third World countries, he said. When he lived in Egypt, he saw locals treating foreigners and rich people in the bazaar with exception. "They look at you with respect and speak politely while locals get brushed off," he said.
In places like these a little communism could really help, Shekhar said. "Capitalism has failed in developing countries where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer."
Shock to the system
Shekhar was born in India and lived there until he was six years old, but he has returned during summer vacations. While in India when he was 12 or 13 years old he saw the violent beating of lower caste teens at a local college on the news. "It was gory footage; they were beating the kids with sticks and there was lots of blood," he said. Concerned, he wanted to know more about the system.
"If I were born in the lower caste system in public school, I would have to sit in the back of the class," he said. "A boy who is rejected from school and doesn’t have religion or faith to keep him going resorts to begging or drugs and his family depends on him for money. Then there’s a lack of health care and condoms. It’s a vicious cycle."
At the Istanbul International Community School, 10th graders produce personal projects over the course of the year. India’s caste system was a natural focus for Shekhar as he was already engaged in learning about it. He took the research deeper, interviewing experts and focusing on news portrayals and leaders in the struggle to dismantle the system. His final product, an article he hopes to publish in India, discusses how the caste system poses problems for India’s society and explores "ways toward a ’caste-less’ India".
Most people he canvassed weren’t knowledgeable about the caste system but could relate it to racism, he said. Not unrealistic about the challenge of undoing cultural hierarchy, he aims to reach a wide audience. "It requires a big number of people to actually make an impact so [the movement] has to be a worldwide thing," he said.
He pulled out classified listings in Indian newspapers for marriage requests from the day before. He pointed out that every single personal advertisement had a reference to caste. "This surprised me," he admitted. In an extreme example of the power of class, a girl from a lower caste fell in love with a man from a higher caste, he told me, adding that her family then handed her over to police who beat and raped her. He showed me a photo of the girl with fresh body wounds and a disfigured face.