After Indian-origin Parag Agarwal was appointed as the CEO of Twitter following the exit of controversial founder-CEO Jack Dorsey, left-liberals in India had abused him over his caste. Left-liberals, Dalit activists and white supremacists had targeted Agarwal wrongly assuming that he is Brahmin. But now that they have learnt that he is not Brahmin, they are hailing him as someone who smashed ‘Brahmin supremacy at Twitter’.
In an article published on the Hindi edition of The Print, professor Dilip Mandal hailed Parag Agarwal for getting the top post at the microblogging site, saying he is not alone to shake the dominance of Brahmins at IITs. Quoting a tweet by Malini Agarwal, the founder of gossip website missmalini, where she had said that this is an example of Bania power, Dilip Mandal claimed that Bania power is a reality after a Bania became the Twitter CEO.
Mandal claimed this even after Malini Agarwal deleted her casteist tweet and apologised for the same, after she was widely slammed on the social media platform. He further claimed that she was forced to delete the tweet because only Brahmins or Thakoors in India take pride in their castes, and when people from other castes take pride in their caste identity, it seems awkward.
Ugh. I apologise. I shall be more mindful going forward. Have learned a valuable lesson today. All I can say is that was absolutely not my intent. 🙏💙
— Malini Agarwal (@maliniagarwal) November 30, 2021
Dilip Mandal says that the summit of Parag Agarwal is not a coincidence, and Bania professionals have achieved good success in IT and IT-related fields in recent years. He claimed that this area was once dominated by Brahmins which is about to collapse. Mandal further claimed that India’s IT revolution was mainly led by the educated upper castes of the second or third generation, and the majority of them were Brahmins.
In the Print article, Dilip Mandal goes on a long rant to claim that everything etc knowledge, power, engineering education were dominated by Brahmins, and now the Bania community is challenging them in those fields.
This is notable that while Dilip Mandal is dancing with joy that a Baniya Agarwal became the Twitter CEO, not a Brahmin, the fact is that Agarwal does not belong to a lower caste that Mandal seems to be assuming. Agarwals are a business community known for their expertise in trade and their wealth, and they are not considered as an ‘oppressed’ community. Agarwals from Rajasthan, the native state of Parag Agarwal, are upper caste and they come under the general category, the same category as Brahmins.
Therefore, it is not clear why a Dalit activist is happy that one upper caste is replacing another upper caste in dominance in IITs and IT industries. He might be confused by the wide range of Baniya communities, as some Baniya communities, especially in eastern India, fall under Scheduled Caste, and they are historically not as wealthy as the Baniyas from western India.
It is also amusing that Dalit Mandal is happy that Parag Mandal replaced Jack Dorsey. Because, while the views of Parag on Brahmins are not known yet, Jack was a rabid Brahmin hater. During his India visit in 2018, he had posed for photographs with a placard that said “Smash Brahminical Patriarchy.”
It is notable that earlier in 2019, Dilip Mandal had accused Twitter of being casteist because he was not given the verified blue tick. He had called then Twitter India head Manish Maheshwari a casteist bigot for allegedly being unfair to Dalits and not verifying his own Twitter handle. But after his account was verified by Twitter, he had demanded to remove it, saying that everyone should get an ‘equal status’ on Twitter.
