Caste Census and Its Repercussions on Reservations and Politics in India

 

Caste Census and Its Repercussions on Reservations and Politics in India

Shrikant G. Talageri

 

Al Jazeera, that preeminent Arab media spokesperson of Islam and Islamism, never leaves a chance to express its anti-Hindu and anti-Indian views and conclusions about, and solutions to, anything and everything that happens in India. In this respect it is the Islamist representative of viciously anti-Hindu and anti-Indian Western Media monoliths (I will not call them Christian or Evangelist, since their anti-Hindu and anti-Indian antecedents spring from a much wider range of Hindu-hating and India-hating entities apart from the religious ones) like the New York Times. Washington Post, and countless others all over America, Europe and Australia.

This time it has taken up the very divisive and nuclear-bomb-proportioned issue of caste reservations in India, in an article titled "How a landmark caste census in India threatens Modi's grip on power":

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2023/10/4/how-a-landmark-caste-census-in-india-threatens-modis-grip-on-power?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-intl

Before going into the real issue of caste populations (as testified by census figures) and caste reservations, and the effects on Indian society and on the future of India (and possible "solutions"), I will deal with the fake issue of linking the whole thing up with Modi and the BJP or with any particular political party in general and with electoral politics as is done in the article:

I. Political Parties and Electoral Dividends.

II. The Ethics and Logic of Reservations.

 

I. Political Parties and Electoral Dividends

The article in question does not, except in the usual superficial manner, talk about the ethics of reservations and caste politics: it merely discusses the matter in the context of political parties and electoral dividends, particularly as a counterweight to Hindutva. A close examination shows not just the superficial nature of the article and its conclusions, but its willingness to resort to outright (and demonstrably) brazen lies in order to push its point.

To begin with, the article reasons: "After having been criticised for failing to present an alternative vision for the country, the opposition parties seemed to have found their mojo, in taking on Modi and his BJP through this issue. An overwhelming majority of Indians belong to marginalised castes. A 2021 Pew survey had found this to be at 69 percent of India’s total population. By championing their cause, the opposition alliance hopes to woo them, broaden its popular base and defeat the dominant BJP, which has won two comfortable majorities since 2014". And to buttress this hope as correct, the article goes on with a brazen and blatant lie: "History might worry Modi and his aides, too. In the early 1990s, the BJP’s attempts to come to power through a communally-charged campaign to build a temple at the purported site of the birth of Hindu god Ram was undercut by the Mandal movement, which demanded greater opportunities and affirmative action for OBCs."

As a matter of fact, the election results of the eighties and nineties show anything but what the article claims. The BJP in its debut Lok Sabha elections in 1984, when it had completely abandoned any pretence of Hindu ideology and declared outright that it was more secular than the other parties, got only 2 seats out of 543 seats in the Lok Sabha. And the two seats were Mehsana in Gujarat (only because that seat had never before in its history till then voted for the Congress, and the BJP was the only major non-Congress party in the fray in that seat) and Hanamkonda in Andhra Pradesh (only because of an alliance with NTR's party Telugu Desam. In short, the BJP was completely decimated, and the 2 seats they won were actually tantamount to 0 seats. In fact, here is a list of the partywise tally in 1984: see the names of the parties which got more seats than, or equal, to the BJP:

Congress 414

Telugu Desam 30

CPM 22

Independents 13

AIADMK 12

Janata Party 10

Akali Dal 7

CPI 6

Indian Congress (Socialist) 5

Lok Dal 3

RSP 3

National Conference 3

BJP 2

Other Parties with 2: DMK, Forward Bloc, Muslim League, Kerala Congress, (Appointed) Anglo-Indians.

Parties with 1: Plains Tribal Council of Assam, PWP, Jagjivan Ram Congress.

It was a complete decimation of the party, and the party would have had to be wound up forever, if it had not immediately decided to once again become "Hindutvavadi" for election purposes, and take up "Hindu cards" like the Shah Bano case, the Assam anti-infiltrators agitation, and most of all the Ayodhya Ram Janmabhoomi issue. And in the next elections, in 1989, the BJP got 85 seats.

After picking up the Ayodhya "card" and strategically aligning with the outright Hindutvavadi (under Bal Thackeray) Shiv Sena, the fortunes of the BJP were on a continuous upswing until they managed to capture power in 1998-99. The following are the number of seats won by the BJP in Lok Sabha Elections till 1998-99:

1989: 85.

1991: 121.

1996: 161.

1998: 182.

1999: 180.

On the other hand, VP Singh, the Prime Minister who revived and implemented in 1989 the Mandal Commission Report (devised ten years earlier in 1979 by the Janata Party government of which the Jan-Sangh-BJP was a complicit part), with exactly identical expectations (based on the percentage of OBCs in the  population of India), as expressed in the above article, has fallen into the dust-bin of history. See, above, the continuous rise of the BJP seats after 1989.

Does it seem as if supporting (or not supporting) OBC-caste- reservations has a direct effect on the number of seats that a party gets, or that Hindutva sentiments and OBC-caste-reservationist sentiments among Hindu voters necessarily, in any way, work in opposite directions? That voters voting with Hindu issues in mind will necessarily change their preferences on the basis of reservation issues, or vice versa? Hindus by and large are not that naïve or stupid, and this is shown not only in respect of the BJP (1989-1999) or VP Singh, but in most other cases as well. Two examples will suffice:

1. The Congress (in the past, not necessarily now) is perhaps the only party which never made a major issue out of OBC reservations. The Mandal Commission completed its report in 1980. the Congress government from 1980 to 1989 simply sat on the report for nearly ten years, till the new opposition PM VP Singh, unleashed it on the nation in 1989. But it made no difference to its support base, whether or not, and regardless of to what extent, its support base consisted of OBC voters: in 1984, for whatever other reasons, it secured 414 seats which is to this day the all time record for a single party.

2. The Shiv Sena, the majority of its voters were OBCs, was the only party whose leader Bal Thackeray opposed the Mandal Commission report in 1989-90. And his party, in alliance with BJP, was swept to power in Maharashtra in 1995. The following account of what happened at the Shiv Sena's annual Vijayadashami rally at Shivaji Park in Mumbai in 1989 or 1990 will illustrate the point: the newspapers were full of predictions that Thackeray would not dare to openly oppose the Mandal Commission since most of his Shiv Sainiks were OBCs, and the important (then) Shiv Sena leader Chhagan Bhujbal (himself an OBC) had openly supported the Commission report. But Thackeray stunned the media at Shivaji Park: he asked all the people who were in the massive rally, who belonged to the "OBC" communities, to raise their hands. A massive number, nearly 80-90 per cent of the crowd, raised their hands. Thackeray explained in detail that such reservations did not benefit anyone, except for a few elites among them, and the only result would be a divided and infighting-ridden Hindu community. He declared: "I am opposing the Mandal Commission. Are you with me in this?". A huge uproar as the crowd replied: "We are with you!". And they remained with him, in even greater numbers!    

 

Caste-and-community politics does have a centre stage role in Indian electoral politics, but not precisely from the point of view of reservations. Thus, "normal" caste politics has consisted of giving prime party positions to influential leaders from different castes and communities (including religious ones), infiltrating party members into different caste/community organizations, giving (with much fanfare) special honors (national awards, renaming universities or districts in their name, etc.) to eminent departed leaders of caste/community groups, donating money to influential caste/community organizations, and, going further, having adjustments or alliances with caste-based parties representing smaller caste/community groups,  forming alliances of caste/community groups (the historic Congress KHAM strategy of Madhavsinh Solanki in Gujarat, or the AJGAR combination of Charan Singh in UP, for example): all these have been staples of politics in India. Some of these strategies have also involved elements of hatred, against certain other castes/communities, as a cementing force in caste alliances.

The idea fondly entertained by the writer of this article in Al Jazeera, or by other politicians or political analysts, that playing caste-reservation cards can work against the BJP's Hindutva strategies, is extremely flawed, not only because history (as detailed above) shows that reservation politics does not necessarily ensure electoral dividends, but because the BJP is the most ruthlessly unprincipled party in the whole of the history of electoral democracy, and can adopt any strategy it wants (however lethal and destructive such strategies may be to the unity or future of the nation) to grab at and to stick to power. What its critics do not take into account is:

1. The BJP's basic strategy which brought it to power (in a series of mounting number of seats from 1984 to 1998-99, see statistics above) in the first place was by playing the Hindutva card. The only two times it faced setbacks was in 1984 and in 2004, both times when it had decided that the Hindutva card was not necessary any more, and had gone for elections on secular agendas. But the party has learnt its lessons very well now, and, even after carrying out anti-Hindu policies and activities throughout its tenure whenever in power, it has now learnt to suddenly become (with the help of an impressive variety of tactics) a Hindutva party par excellence at the time of every election (helped by "enemies" in India and abroad who never fail to lend a helping hand in furthering this image at these crucial moments).

2. At the same time, the BJP has  mastered the caste-politics game in ways which would be the envy of former masters of the game in other parties: both in respect of all of the "normal" caste strategies listed above (the awarding of the Padma Vibhushan to Mulayam Singh Yadav, who was responsible for shooting kar sewaks in Ayodhya, while Savarkar, who is also utilized for his Hindutva value whenever required, is yet to get even a measly Padma Shri, is only one of the more cynical examples of its ruthless and unrelenting caste politics) as well as in respect of reservations: it must be remembered that the BJP was a part of the government in 1979 which instituted the Mandal Commission, and in 1989-90 it became one of the most vocal supporters of the implementation of the report, especially in Maharashtra where it held violent demonstrations calling for its implementation and crossed swords with its electoral ally, the Shiv Sena, which was the only party to openly oppose its implementation. Its record after that has been in line with this cynical attitude: it not only fought for and secured reservations for Jats in Rajasthan, but today it has started a new, dangerous and anti-Hindu strategy of promoting the idea of OBC reservations for "OBC Muslims" ("Pasmanda Muslims"). The National Commission for Backward Classes (NCBC) has been given constitutional status, and the powers of a civil court, by the present BJP regime.

3. Apart from becoming a Hindutva party at the time of every elections, and becoming the most successful master of caste-centered political strategies (both "normal" and reservations-based), the BJP of today is different this time from the BJP of 1984 and 2004 in many different ways:

a) Firstly, it is literally a different party, not just because it has sidelined many of its most prominent former leaders and broken off with longstanding allies, but because a very large and increasing contingent of the BJP leaders, and its new allies, consists of influential people (often the most opportunistic, corrupt and cynical ones) from its former "enemy" parties, who were enticed or browbeaten (with the help of government agencies like the Income Tax Department, CBI, Enforcement directorate, etc.) into joining the party or breaking their earlier parties (and of course became ideal and doodh ke dhule leaders in the process).

b) Secondly, it has become (after the two US parties and the Chinese Communist Party) the richest and most powerful political party in the world, and established close and strong links with most powerful corporate entities in India and the world.

c) Thirdly, it has acquired a "charismatic" leader who has become the God of millions of adoring bhakts − a phenomenon formerly witnessed only in states like Tamilnadu and (under NTR) in Andhra Pradesh (also, remember Indira amma whose image helped the Congress retain the South at a time when the Emergency excesses had wiped out the Congress from the rest of India). And religious adoration and fervor have no parallel, and brooks no doubts, facts, statistics or logic.

d) Fourthly, it has become technologically a super-entity (of the Orwellian 1984 variety) which controls the media narrative in all the ways that matter to it for electoral and political purposes. Yes, Hinduism is under lethal attack from all sides as never before in its history, but this is not a matter of any importance to the BJP except where it can be used to polarize Hindu voters in its favor to the exclusion of all other issues. On all other narrative fronts, the BJP has become an unchallengeable behemoth.

 

So, in short, anyone who is living in the fond and wishful hope that the BJP will in any way be adversely affected by caste-based developments like caste censuses and caste issues like reservations, are living in a fool's paradise. The BJP is now near-invincible in Indian politics, and will probably sweep the 2024 elections, though let me admit that this is a prospect which terrifies me beyond words at the thought of all the things which will inevitably follow such a victory.

Therefore, instead of wasting any more time discussing these fake issues involving the question of which political parties will benefit and which will lose from further caste reservation developments, let us examine the real issues of the logic and repercussions (on India and Hinduism) of further caste politics and possible solutions. Again, let me admit that this also is a futile process, since it is an absolutely hopeless situation, but nevertheless it is necessary for the record if nothing else.

 

II. The Ethics and Logic of Reservations

The two arguments for reservations are:

A. Righting Historical Wrongs.

B. Achieving Equality or Equity among different sections of the Population.

 

II.A. Righting Historical Wrongs:

This argument, made in this context, is fake, fraudulent and dishonest.

To begin with, it is perfectly true that historical wrongs have to be righted. The wrongs of stealing or destroying goods and properties can be righted by returning the goods or properties to the original owners or providing full compensation. The wrongs of killing someone cannot really be righted in any way, but it can be punished − although various cultures have devised different ways (involving  "blood money") by which the wrong can be deemed to have been "righted". The wrong of spoiling someone's name with lies can be righted by apologizing and admitting the truth in public. The wrong of eulogizing and glorifying historical tyrants and evil-doers, or vilifying historical heroes, can be righted by publicly apologizing and accepting the truth. In all these cases, it is of course expected that the goods/properties are still in the wrong hands, or that the perpetrator of the crime (if murder or torture) is still alive.

[And yet, in actual cases, when the victims have been Hindus or some other similar targeted groups in the world, the righting of the historical wrong has itself been treated as a historical wrong: e.g. the destruction of the Babri Masjid structure, which was built on a deliberately desecrated and destroyed Hindu temple on one of the holiest sites of Hinduism. The recovery of the site by Hindus is regularly treated, in the predominantly left-controlled international media and academic discourse, as a monstrous historical wrong on the proportions of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki!].

[Again, newer and newer historical crimes are being committed all over the world even as fake discourse on "righting historical wrongs" is in fashion. In India alone, thousands of acres of forests, and millions of trees are being completely destroyed, and people who have been living on their land for hundreds or thousands (in the case of the Andaman islanders, the figure runs into tens of thousands) of years are being uprooted from that land because politicians and their Capitalist cronies want to commercially exploit that land and make money].

 

But this dictum, when applied to issues such as reservations, is actually based not on the principle of righting historical wrongs, but on the principle of punishing descendants for the real or alleged crimes and sins of their ancestors. This is a typical Abrahamic principle central to Christianity, which has been the basis of all the historical anti-Semitism, and all the Inquisitions, pogroms and massacres in Christian history. One cannot right historical wrongs by punishing the descendants for real or alleged ancestral wrong-doings, but this is actually the "historical" basis of anti-Semitism in Europe, as well as of caste reservations in India.

In the Bible, we have the concept of Original Sin, a concept apparently established in the fourth century of the history of the religion. As per the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Original Sin, in Christian doctrine, is "the condition or state of sin into which each human being is born; also, the origin (i.e., the cause, or source) of this state. Traditionally, the origin has been ascribed to the sin of the first man, Adam, who disobeyed God in eating the forbidden fruit (of knowledge of good and evil) and, in consequence, transmitted his sin and guilt by heredity to his descendants". Only belief in Jesus and baptism can free any human being from the responsibility for, or consequences of, the "original sin" committed by "Adam" (of eating an apple)!!

Likewise, Numbers 14:18 tells us: "God punishes the children for the sin of the parents to the third or fourth generation". And Matthew 27:24-25 tells us that Pilate (representing the Romans) washed his hands of the responsibility for having Jesus crucified, when he found that the Jewish mob in front of him continued to clamour for his crucifixion, but the Jews relentlessly called out: "His blood be on us and on our children"!

Clearly, this barbaric principle cannot be a sane justification for caste-based reservations. What if similar logic was used to rake up every historical wrong committed by every race, nation and community in the world, and entire masses of people all over the world were expected to suffer punishments and deprivations to atone now for the "sins" of their ancestors in the past?

The most amazing aspect of this argument is that this vengeful "punish the descendant for the ancestral actions" logic is not applied everywhere even within India, but only against selected targets, i.e. against the usual bakras whom it is always safe to attack: i.e. Hindus. It is a matter of massive historical record that Muslims started invading India from the west more than a thousand years ago, and, in the course of almost 1200 years of invasions and rule, killed literally millions of Hindus, took millions more as captives and sold them in the slave markets of West Asia, destroyed lakhs of temples and replaced them with mosques, and forcibly converted many more millions to Islam− these converted millions now proudly considering themselves to be descendants of these invaders and glorifying them as heroes! Is there no need to right these historical wrongs? Can we right these wrongs by wreaking vengeance on the present-day Muslims of India for the actual recorded-in-ruthless-detail wrongs of their ancestors?  

 

II.B. Achieving Equality or Equity among different sections of the Population:

Now this is logical: it is certainly always good to try to achieve equality or equity among different sections of the population. It is actually a bit hypocritical to talk of equality and equity in a society which is based on ruthless Capitalism and exploitation, and in which the gulf between the rich and the poor, and the privileged and the under-privileged, is widening every day by leaps and bounds, but nevertheless it is in itself a valid goal.

But how exactly do reservations achieve that goal? It is interesting to note that the people who pontificate on the need for caste-based reservations are themselves most often people from privileged castes and classes who have made it good in their life and have nothing personally to lose from caste-based reservations, and who find it profitable to show their fake objectivity and generosity by fake "self"-flagellation. A look at the caste and class background of most woke leftist and secularist writers of this genre will make this clear: in the case of this particular article (from Al Jazeera) itself, the writer is Kunal Purohit (the name certainly sounds like that of a Brahmin), and one of the three people he quotes is Sudha Pai (another Brahmin) and another is Rahul Gandhi (one of the most privileged of the privileged). I don't know about the possible caste identity of the third, a Yashwant Zagade, but he occupies an academic position at the prsetigious TISS. These are the kind of persons orchestrating the discourse on caste reservations!

As at this point, we have disposed of the "righting historical wrongs" argument and are examining the "equality or equity among different sections of the populace" so let us not go into history here and only speak about present-day equality and equity.

It is definitely a social and ethical necessity to have as much equality or equity as possible and feasible among different sections of the population. But how exactly does one achieve it? It would require a totalitarian and authoritarian state like Nazi Germany or the Communist USSR or Communist China (or the nations in Orwell's world of 1984) to be able to control millions of people, tabulate them into groups, and then distribute things equally or equitably among them, and there would be all kinds of practical problems of resources, logistics and procedures.

 

And how does one decide how privileged or under-privileged different caste/community groups are, and the exact degree or extent of this privilege or under-privilege? Committed propagandists from woke leftist organizations are always churning out figures to show what they want to show, and it is a total mystery how they arrive at these figures. Take the following article, for example, in the Indian Express, 14 February, 2019:

https://indianexpress.com/article/india/upper-caste-hindus-richest-in-india-own-41-total-assets-says-study-on-wealth-distribution-5582984/

This article talks about a "two-year-long study jointly undertaken by the Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU), Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and Indian Institute of Dalit Studies" (the institutions are the usual suspects in the Breaking India coalition) which reveals that "The top 1 per cent (in terms of wealth) of the total households own 25 per cent of the country’s total assets, while the top 5 per cent owned 46 per cent of it. In stark contrast, the bottom 40 per cent households were found to own just 3.4 per cent of the country’s total assets". Fair enough: these, or similar, figures will be  representative of any and every country in the world, ancient or modern, and they reveal the grossly unfair and inequitable distribution of wealth in any society at almost any point of time in world history or the history of the human race. There is nothing specific in this to India or to the caste system.

However, the above is revealed in the second paragraph. The first paragraph shifts the focus on to caste, and tells us "Caste continues to play a significant role in the educational and professional choices available to an individual, and the resultant income and assets....Only 22.3 per cent of the country’s higher caste Hindus own 41 per cent of the country’s total wealth and form the richest group, whereas 7.8 per cent of Hindu Scheduled Tribes own only 3.7 per cent, or the lowest wealth share of the country’s assets", and the article itself is provocatively titled: "Upper caste Hindus richest in India, own 41% of total assets; STs own 3.7%, says study on wealth distribution".

The logic (apart from the very way in which this "study" arrived at these figures) is a complete mystery: if the figures show that "The top 1 per cent (in terms of wealth) of the total households own 25 per cent of the country’s total assets", how does this tally with the fact that the figures also show that "Only 22.3 per cent of the country’s higher caste Hindus own 41 per cent of the country’s total wealth"?

Tally the two figures: if the "top 1 per cent" consists exclusively of "higher caste Hindus" (or doesn't it?) who own "25 per cent of the country’s total assets", then doesn't this mean that the rest of the "22.3 per cent of the country’s higher caste Hindus" = 22.3 minus 1= 21.3 percent, own just 41 minus 25 = 16 per cent of the country's total assets?

[If the "top 1 per cent" does not consist exclusively of "higher caste Hindus", but includes Hindus of other castes as well as non-Hindus, then the percentage of the Indian population of "higher caste Hindus" who own 16 per cent of the country's total assets, becomes marginally even worse: it becomes 21.3+ per cent]

Note again: the actual fact shown by the actual data in the above "study" (falsely and fraudulently misrepresented in its title and first paragraph)  is that upper caste people who constitute 21.3 per cent of the total population own only 16 per cent of the country's total assets: i.e. a distinctly lesser share of the assets than warranted by their share in the population!! This hardly shows that the ""Upper caste Hindus (are the) richest in India" as the fraudulent title announces! But then this is the magic of fake "studies" which can say anything and get their fake conclusions propagated as statistically proved conclusions in the eyes of the pedestrian readers only on the strength of the "prestige" and "eminence" of the crooked "academic scholars" pushing these divisive caste agendas and who can grossly misrepresent the data and conclusions to show that white is black and black is white.

 

The fraudulent caste games of the Breaking India forces present an ugly and nauseating part of the political scenario in India. What is the solution to this whole mess? We have no control over what is happening, since Hinduism and Hindus and the future of India have no saviours (except fraudulent vote-hungry politicians) to turn to, but, speaking objectively, there are only two possible alternate endings in sight:

1. The worst and most likely ending: We should agree to allow things to continue in this way, and let politicians and the Breaking India forces continue to stir the caste cauldron, until India finally explodes into a thousand mutually antagonistic parts, and the name "India that is Bharat that is Hindustan" becomes a mere name in the pages of history like Mesopotamia, Sumeria or the Aztec Empire.

2. The best and least likely ending: Everyone who loves this country should keep aside all their political agendas and get together to close the ugly chapter of divisive caste politics, agree to an end to caste-based reservations, and set up an effective system (with a thousand effective safeguards) which will ensure equality, equity and justice to every citizen, regardless of caste and community. [Anyone who has read Anand Ranganathan's book "Hindus in Hindu Rashtra − Eighth-Class Citizens and victims of State-Sanctioned Apartheid" will see how hopeless it is to expect anything like this to happen in India].

A third possible compromise solution (it is a mad and almost-impossible-to-implement solution), if reservations are to continue, is to go the whole hog and give (as far as humanly possible) complete equality and equity to all castes and communities. This can be done by allocating fixed caste/class identities to every Indian as part of his ultimate Indian identity. First, a complete caste-and-community based census should be undertaken all over the entire country where every single person should then be identified (whether he/she likes it or not) firstly as Hindu, Muslim, Christian and Other and then in the following twelve categories:

Upper Hindu

Middle Hindu

Lower Hindu

Upper Muslim

Middle Muslim

Lower Muslim

Upper Christian

Middle Christian

Lower Christian

Upper Other

Middle Other

Lower Other.

This should be a fixed and unchangeable category: every citizen, once he/she is fixed into one category, cannot change it.

And once the census count is taken, and the state-wise percentage of each of the twelve categories of Indians is fixed, it will be counted as the final percentage and no changes will be made if the populations fluctuate in future due to different birth rates. [This clause is necessary in order to avoid future problems, as are potentially being caused today in case there is re-allocation of the state-wise number of Lok Sabha Seats as per the newest population figures: see article below]

https://www.businesstoday.in/latest/politics/story/heres-how-many-lok-sabha-seats-uttar-pradesh-may-gain-and-tamil-nadu-lose-after-2026-398962-2023-09-19

Then every single thing in the country (state-wise) should be divided among the "twelve different categories of Indians" in proportion to their percentage in the population of each state: not just government jobs but also private-sector jobs, land, houses, two-wheelers and four-wheelers, gold, licenses in every field (for example the allocation of petrol-pumps), seats in elected bodies (in the houses of Parliament and state legislatures, zilla parishads and village panchayats, municipal corporations and councils, etc. and in ministries and administrative committees) and in the police, defence and paramilitary forces, and the judiciary. And so on: no inequality or iniquity should be allowed to remain or arise in any field of life.

Does all this sound mad? It is mad. But this whole issue of caste reservations is mad. But we live in a mad world, and, as our scriptures tell us, this is kaliyug, the Age of Evil.

 

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