Aya Ikegame's "India's Cruelest Tales: The World's Toughest People" Summary and Impressions - The deep-rooted darkness of the caste system. A recommended book to learn about the present day India, a great country!
I would like to introduce "India's Cruelest Tales: The World's Toughest People" by Aya Ikegame, published by Shueisha in 2021.
Let me say this first.
I was strongly shocked by this book. As a Buddhist monk, I could not help but be shocked by the issues it discussed. I will discuss it in more detail later in this article, but for me, this book raised a major issue in my thinking about the existence of India.
Let's take a look at the book.
India is one of the world's leading superpowers, and it is dashing forward at a blistering pace. Hidden among its 1.3 billion people is the voice of the voiceless. An up-and-coming social anthropologist who has spent many years researching the people of India, this book examines the strength of the people who live without flinching from the cruel caste system and unreasonable changes in their lives!
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Although the country has become familiar to Japan, there are actually not many works on India.
Its themes tend to be more exoticism, such as religion, food culture, and the arts, and in recent years its focus has been exclusively on economic growth.
This book is a valuable record that does not turn a blind eye to the cruelty of caste, but captures the voices of the people of the city and describes their unknown activities.
This is a book that conveys a true picture of India, with an emphasis on thorough realism, but also includes scholarly commentary.
In this unprecedented coronal disaster, the importance of resilience in extreme situations is being reevaluated.
The way of life of the people of India, a society of super-disparity, should serve as an inspiration for our time, when we must live with a "new strength".
This book is a work that discusses the caste system in contemporary India. As mentioned in the book introduction above, this book is a valuable record based on the author's field research. There is a real life there that cannot be known only by reading literature on a desk.
The author describes the book in the "Introduction" as follows
In this book, I would like to focus solely on being "private".
Much of the description is based on what I spoke, heard, and felt. The speakers also tell us about their own lives, which can only be private and personal. Can some of these personal and individual life stories offer a glimpse into India today, a country that is currently undergoing profound change? That is the modest aim of this book.
Here, there is little in the way of statistical or electoral data that comprehensively captures contemporary India. Rather, we would like to pick up the voices of those who fall through the cracks of such large data.
Although not specifically intended, many of the book's characters are urban workers, not upper caste urban elites, and landless agricultural laborers, not rural landowning powerhouses. Perhaps partly because of this, the book may be a bit different from recent Indian theory, which puts forward a new positive image of India as a dynamic IT powerhouse with a growing economy, an expanding middle class, and a political powerhouse that competes with China.
But I do not intend to depict the darkness of India.
Surprisingly few of the people living on the edge at the bottom of Indian society look miserable. When I point my camera at them, both the flower vendor lady and the cowherd young man stand tall and look back at me proudly. Around 2000, when I learned the local language and rented an apartment with a friend and began living in India, I met a middle-aged woman ("kerasadawal" in Kannada, who came to help me clean my room and do household chores. The literal translation is "workman"). She was uneducated and illiterate, but she was a wise and strong woman who taught me many things, even though I was naive. She was also a sounding board for many women who, like herself, worked as low-paid domestic helpers for the well-to-do middle class. She once told me.
'We poor people have no money, no status, nothing, but we can have mariadeh (honor, pride, civility).'
This is the story of such proud people.
Shueisha, Aya Ikegame, India's Cruelest Tales: The World's Toughest People, 20-22.
The book focuses not on India's elite class, but rather on the majority of the population, the ordinary people and the "dalits," those who are subject to caste discrimination.
In the first chapter of the book we are suddenly introduced to the intensely negative aspects of caste discrimination.
In modern times, the caste system has "legally" disappeared. In reality, however, caste discrimination still persists and tragic incidents continue to occur.
The reality of caste discrimination described in the first chapter is so tragic that it is painful to face.
I have recently been studying Buddhism as far back as ancient India. I also learned that Buddhism was born in opposition to the caste system.
Buddhism was against the caste system."
If I had to describe it in words, that's all I would say. I thought I had it all figured out in my head.
But when I actually read this book and learned about the raw reality of caste discrimination, I realized how little I knew.
I was surprised to learn that caste discrimination is still so strong today, but I was also horrified to learn "what kind of discrimination we actually have to live with, what kind of fear and humiliation we have to live with.
Buddhism was against the caste system."
It is easy to say the word. And it is easy to learn those words.
But it is quite another thing to imagine how people actually lived and suffered back then.
This reading made me realize that I was naive in my learning. I think I have changed one more way of thinking about primitive Buddhism.
In this book, you will get to know the shadow of India, which is showing overwhelming growth. This book will make you think about Japan, where we live, through the strong presence of India.
At a time when the pessimistic mood is "Japan is doomed," this book is a good opportunity to think again about the world in which we live. This is a wonderful book. I highly recommend this book.
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