Principal Correspondent
Kohima, July 4
Moving on pressurising the government to do away with the caste system prevailing in the country, the 40-day-long Bharat Yathra, led by lawyer and social activist KK Sarachandra Bose, arrived here today covering the 21 state capitals.
Addressing a press conference at Kohima Press Club this morning, Bose said the Yathra, flagged off from Thiruvananthapuram on June 9, has been receiving an enthusiastic response from all sections of the society.
Dubai-based Bose, who hails from central Travancore in Kerala, informed that he has already served a mandatory notice to the government of India to eradicate the caste system by December 31, 2014. The notice is in the form of his 208-page book brought out in November 2013 entitled “Caste Away! India, Hinduism and Untouchability”.The book (a 13-month mandatory notice to the government), he said is supported by 40 years of research, and it has already been handed out to the President of India, the Prime Minister, all Members of Parliament, besides Chief Ministers, legislators, judges of the Supreme Court as well as several High Courts and lower echelons of the judiciary.
He reiterated that the caste system was brought to India by the Britishers in order to divide and rule the country while the present leaders of the nation are continuing with the same policy.
“Caste system was not existent before the Britishers arrived, and the Government of India should do away with it or face the consequences,” he said.
Bose quoted that Supreme Court ruling that ‘the caste system is a curse on the nation and the sooner it is destroyed the better’.
He also said the usage of the term ‘caste’ goes against the 1948 UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
“Eradication of caste may sound a bit over-ambitious for my compatriots at large, but then my missions have always been driven by absolute faith in realizing the goal and a great sense of optimism,” he said.
Bose asserted that he would be visiting the capitals of all the states and would conclude the Yathra in Delhi by July 20, traversing a distance of almost 14,000 kms.
Along with a team of 34 volunteers, the sexagenarian has been addressing people and freely distributing copies of his book all along the way to root out the deep old malady from the nation.
The Yathra has so far covered places like Port Blair, Trivandrum, Nagercoil, Puducherry, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Goa, Pune, Mumbai, Daman, Ahmedabad, Bhopal, Nagpur, Raipur, Bhubaneswar, Kolkatta, Ranchi, Gangtok, Guwahati, Itanagar and Kohima. The team moved ahead for Imphal from Kohima.
