The Patel shift

In keeping with our secular credentials and our universal lack of access to education, opportunity and sundry basics like housing, we, being the adaptable nation that we are, decided not to waste time making these available for way too long a queue and are tweaking the definition of minority instead. How will this work, you ask? It is very simple, and quite ingenious. Are you from a wealthy community that can say, pull you and your family overseas when one of you manages to get a visa and that too not without a shipping container, or if that is the only choice, a shipping container well stocked with theplas? Do you head something, say a small village? Is employment possible by word of mouth through a social network rivalling the godfather? Do you have an unspoken reservation in elite neighbourhoods and schools? And the ultimate test: Can you do a mild canter from one end of Harrods to another without bumping into at least one of your own? You are minority enough for India. The majority, the pejorative, is that mass there that stands in the queue, that fills the form, that never knows what is at the end of that application process, that hopes for a berth but is assigned RAC. The numbers of those who live in our few pockets of certainty are dwindling. There is a reason why even the Tirupati Balaji Temple or Siddhivinayak has a VIP darshan and it's a small minority that has access to it. Why restrict minority status to the Patels, the wealthy clout of the Jains have it, and if you ask the erudite editor of Tughlaq, Cho Ramaswamy, he would explain to you quite succinctly why the Tamil Brahmin is south India's new minority, sorely in need of reservation. But if you are not in need of a coherent argument, and the man is ailing, you can just ask Subramanian Swami on Twitter. Our brahminical minorities are an endangered species. God save the minorities.