Caste apart
2 min read
Last Oct, Bihar launched final results of India’s initially caste-based census right after Independence, and this January Andhra Pradesh introduced a very similar exercise, with officials going from residence to property inquiring folks which caste they belong to.
What is worrying me is that Haryana, where by Bunny and I are living, may possibly follow accommodate, and also make a decision to have a caste survey. Getting asked which caste I belong to poses an existential conundrum. Because for the everyday living of me, or that of Manu, I have not the faintest strategy as to what my caste is, if any at all.
Ostensibly, the census is intended to identify underprivileged castes who are entitled to get govt freebies, like gasoline cylinders. Not so ostensibly, the identification of distinctive castes is mentioned to be an opposition strategy to split NDA govt’s supposedly monolithic Hindutva vote.
What ever the rationale at the rear of the exercise, to me my caste is, to quote Churchill about Russia, a riddle wrapped in a secret inside an enigma.
According to my eldest sister, who taught Hindi, in that language the phrase Saraiya – which is how my identify should to be spelt – implies ‘tunnel’ or ‘hole’. In accordance to her, our family was descended from barbers who typically pierced noses and ears for nose rings or earrings. Barbers belong to what are now referred to as OBCs, so I may possibly qualify to be an OBC, even nevertheless I never know the ABC about caste. Bunny is even extra clueless about her caste than I am about mine. Until finally remaining enlightened to the opposite, she imagined that gotra was an ailment brought about by iodine deficiency and varna was a misspelling of an automobile model of Korean provenance.
In accordance to her dad, their family members identify of Sood might show that before settling in Punjab they originated in the south, Sud – pronounced Sood – currently being the French word for south.
Does that imply that Bunny is what northerners connect with a Madrassi passing herself off as a Punjabi, and that also of French extraction? Caste has under no circumstances been additional cosmopolitan.
If the census-wallas come about probably we’ll just place ourselves down as out-castes. Or outcasts?
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Disclaimer Sights expressed higher than are the author’s own.
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