CASTE IS ABOVE MAN

Tejpal Singh Dhama had a classmate Guru-vachan. One day he went with Tejpal to the latter’s home. Dhama’s mother served both of them some food. Suddenly Dhama’s grand father came there. He asked Guruvachan, “Who is your father and what are you by caste?”
Gurvachan told, “I am the son of Ramvachan, a cobbler by caste (Scheduled Caste) to Tejpal’s surprise, grandfather grew furious and shouted at him, “How dare you make a friend with low caste boys and bring them home?” Grand father threw Gurvachan and as well as his plate in which he was served food, out of the house.
Grandfather used to live in a small room in the fields. The next day Tejpal Singh went there to give lunch to his Grandfather washed his hands and sat on a mat to have food. Before he started eating, he gave a chapati to Tejpal and said, take this and give it to mother cow. Tejpal obeyed the order and came back. He sat beside his grandpa and asked, “Grandpa, why do we call cow mother?” “It gives milk and feed us like mother.” Grandpa replied. Tajpal argued, “Grandpa, in this way we can call buffaloes, goats and other milk animals mother”, “yes, you are right my son.” Grandpa said.
“Grandpa, one more question”.
“Ask, what you want to ask,” said grandpa.
“And a person who ploughs our fields, sheds his sweat and cultivates crops for us, what should we call him?” he continued, “The land lord only sits and dictates the people like Gurvachan and his father and they work hard in the fields.” Grandpa was embarassed with this question but he confessed that the people, specially the low caste people whom we treat as untouchables, do very important jobs for us and they are like gods. In Yajurveda it is said that a person who works hard is like a god.
In this way, Tejpal made his grandpa realised that his rude behaviour to Gurvachan was not right.
After a pause grandpa said, “Tej, you ask your friend to forgive me and I promise you that I would respect all scheduled castes and give up the feeling of discrimination on the basis of caste as the man’s caste is man and no caste is above man.”