Excerpts From An Essay On Identity, Conflict And Violence By Fredjeev

Chapter 5 - The Upward Mobility of the Downtrodden

The plight and fight of the socially (pushed) backward and traditionally oppressed communities is more like a life on the wheel. The victims of violence and injustice today being identified and recognized as such, command more than demand their special provisions for upliftment in the name of social justice - be it the Dalits from India or the Africans settled in America or the indigenous people who were devoid of their rights in their homeland like the Maoris of New Zealand or the Red Indians of America and every other colonized country like India that is yet to recover from the after-affect of the mad nightmare of the past.

This self-imposed need to be identified and recognized as one belonging to the victimized, marginalized and scheduled groups is a mandate to avail the welfare rationed from the stored loot of his/her majesty’s invasion supplied in the form of grants, aid and other concessions. This identity of the ‘receiver’ as an ever-marginalized group or as a forever-developing country at large, gets further cemented by the media and good Samaritans of the development sector who make a sensational coverage of this group time to time to showcase them as dirty, humbled and always dressed up in rags while at the same time, the ‘giver’ wears the cloak of superiority, authority and pride to break and throw morsels for the rest to fetch.

On one hand, the people who carry the burden of the earlier oppressors and who are widely pointed to for the blunders committed once for which they have no rationale claim to be blamed, are subjected and go through the same level of human disregard and discrimination which once their predecessors (alone) had to be blamed for. This phenomenon is a turn of the wheel as we see the ones who were up yesterday being crushed by the ones who were down today - just for the simple way in which things have turned. Sadly, identities that were fought to be cast away have simply become more certain, defined, nurtured, wilfully promoted by many and unwilfully thrust on the rest - for the same reason it was earlier done - for survival. 

A resulting paradox - an ingroup that fought against an outgroup for stratifying and discriminating it by labeling it, now takes up yet another fight to belong and be identified with the group it is fighting with - quite ironically incidentally is the new identity the ingroup wants to establish while taking pride in upholding it only reaffirms its identity rather than find opportunities to shed.