Born naked...

Are we sure that babies are born naked in this world? Like the answer to any stupid question, the response for this also usually ranges from sarcasm to insult.

Ok, no babies are born with clothes, but on a second thought, we come across different ‘categories’ to which a physically and mentally sound baby is born into.

The first and the most obvious one is whether the baby is a boy or a girl. Of course, you need to distinguish the baby as a boy or as a girl. If the baby is a boy, everything appears fine. If a girl, we need to think about when to stop her education, get her married, when to start purchasing gold for her marriage, how to deal with her boyfriends and the list goes on and on and on.

Ok, now onto the region. The baby will be born in a particular district of a particular state of a particular country in any one of the seven continents.

Now, the next classification, religion. The baby is born to a Hindu/Christian/Muslim father and a Hindu/Christian/Muslim mother, who also gain their religion just because they were born to similar parents and the hierarchy just keeps on going higher, until you stop counting.

Now, that we have decided the religion, something more interesting comes up – the caste. The baby can be born as a SC, Varma, ST, Dalits, Menon, Ezhava, Nair, Brahmin, Roman Catholic, Latin Catholic, Syrian Catholic, Jacobite, Sunni Muslim, Shiite Muslim,  Wahhabi Muslim, Sufi Muslim and the list just keeps on growing bigger and bigger. There are again sub classifications for the caste, and I am not going so far!

As if none of this is enough, in many places, especially in India, you even decide the career for them. You want them to be a doctor/engineer/C.A or anything which you deem they will prosper with.

Even before you cut the umbilical cord off from the baby, you have planned out a majority of the kid’s life. You have decided whom all the kid should fear, who all can exploit him/her, who all can be friendly with him/her, which religions he/she should respect, which castes should he/she belong to and subsequently which all castes are different from his/hers. You have a whole list of things which identifies your kid different from other kids. Knowingly or unknowingly, you teach and preach inequality. 

Of course, the baby knows nothing when he/she is born, and it is important that we plan things out. The question lies in the rigidity, or more of flexibility in the above plans, as and when the kid grows up. Are we flexible enough to allow them to choose the religion they like to follow when they grow up? Are we flexible enough to allow an inter-religious/inter-caste/inter-country marriage? Will it be fine for us, if they decide a future for themselves, a future which they feel will be good for them? 

And when you ponder over the reason of rigidity, it all boils down to ‘society’ and ‘culture’. Ultimately, you feel that if your kid chooses to do something different from the “normal” practice, it is not according to what the society deems them to do. Your fear for the society, and respect for culture is more than your love for your kid. And, you just fail to understand that society and culture are nothing else, but human creations which have evolved over time, again and again. You ignore the fact that today’s “normal” practice was not normal long before, and there were changes that made it normal today.

And when we start accepting that only change is permanent, we start thinking differently. That is when we start evolving, start contributing to tomorrow’s society, a place where the future generations might think of the changed rules as another "rigid" set.