Anthropologically and scientifically, “no god is a Brahmin and the highest is Kshatriya”.
In her BR Ambedkar Lecture Series address in a function hosted by the Union Ministry of Social Justice in New Delhi on Monday, Jawaharlal Nehru University Vice-Chancellor Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit said, “I don’t think that Brahmins can sit in crematoriums. Lord Shiva wears snakes around his neck, sits in crematorium and wears less clothes; so, he may be from a Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe community.”
With this remark, Pandit said the caste system should be abolished for the betterment of the society.
“Anthropologically, Lakshmi, Shakti and even Lord Jagannath do not belong to the upper caste. Lord Jagannath is from Adivasi community,” she reportedly said.
She further said that according to Manusmriti, women are Scheduled Caste; a woman cannot say she belongs to Brahmin or other community. Till marriage, a woman gets her father’s caste and then she gets her husband’s caste which itself is regressive.
Pandit supported implementation of the Uniform Civil Code (UCC), saying that Ambedkar himself was in its favour. The biggest tribute to gender justice would be implementation of the UCC, she argued and remarked that without “social democracy”, the “political democracy” is meaningless.
She pointed out that out of the 52 Indian universities now, only six have women vice-chancellors, of which one is from the reserved category.