Lagatar24 Desk
New Delhi, Aug 23: Even Lord Shiva could be from a scheduled caste or tribe, according to JNU Vice-Chancellor Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit, who made the statement at a time when the nation is experiencing caste-related violence.
She stated that “no god belongs to the higher caste” in reference to the recent caste violence that involved a nine-year-old Dalit youngster.
“Most of you should know the origins of our gods anthropologically. No god is a brahmin, the highest is a kshatriya. Lord Shiva must be a scheduled caste or a scheduled tribe because he sits in a cemetery with a snake and has very few clothes to wear. I don’t think Brahmins can sit in the cemetery,” she said.
She also stated that the ‘status of shudras assigned to women in Manusmriti’ renders it exceedingly regressive in her speech for the Dr. B. R. Ambedkar Lecture Series, “Dr. B. R. Ambedkar’s Thoughts on Gender Justice: Decoding the Uniform Civil Code.”
“Let me tell all women that all women according to Manusmriti are shudras so no woman can claim she is a brahmin or anything else and it is only by marriage that you get the husband or father’s caste on you. I think this is something which is extraordinarily regressive,” she added.
Additionally, she claimed that “anthropologically” speaking, none of the gods, including Lakshmi, Shakti, or even Jagannath, are from the upper caste. In actuality, she claimed, Jagannath is a tribal figure.
