Caste-ing doubts.

My recent trip to Rajasthan made me realize one thing - Caste is a fact that is so well entrenched in the minds of people that a person's introduction is incomplete without it having been mentioned. It is not just limited to a section of people but almost anyone who you get acquainted with pops this question to you with nonchalance that can unsettle anyone who is not comfortable with the idea of carrying that aspect of one's identity on one's sleeve. In my life, I have never had to answer the caste-question as many times as I did in my three day stay in Rajasthan.

The reason I am mentioning this is not malign the people of Rajasthan or their culture. By far, they have been the most hospitable people among all the places I have been to in my little life. I am mentioning this because despite belonging to a caste traditionally considered to be privileged I never had my caste identity in my consciousness until I reached IIT Bombay for my M.Tech. Throughout my childhood, either at home or in school, this equation was never brought into active thought or conversation except in some vague chapters of history books. Yet, to find children as young as five year olds who would have barely started uttering their first words coming and asking me my caste bewildered me.

Caste, I thought till not so long ago, plays a more secondary role in the Southern India gaining significance only in finding matches in arranged marriages. But after a house-hunting experience in Bangalore, I became wiser. "Sir, are you a veggie?" was a question that was hurled at me at regular intervals which I innocently answered everytime in affirmative. It was only after the twenty-fifth time in two days that I realized that "being a veggie" was a mild allusion to "being a brahmana". And I said to myself, "There you go again!"

Let alone we Hindus, I was amused and surprised to notice that Catholics in Goa follow the same Caste equations as Hindus and do not marry outside their castes! In fact, one of our ex-landlords had lent us our house only because we were "Brahmanas" and he was what he claimed to be a "Roman-Catholic-Brahmana". One only needs to look at the matrimonial columns of any local Goan newspaper to understand what I said.

All this has made me realize one thing - Caste is not something that can be done away with in our society. In fact, having castes is not a bad thing per se. It is the discrimination that must be checked. No society will ever be rid of castes/classes. In some it is "Brahmana-Kshatriya" equation, in some it follows "Believers/non-believers", in some it follows "comrade/non-comrade", whereas in some it might follow "white/non-white" pattern. There will be different types of people in a group and it is natural for them to form a clique. It is natural human tendency.

In short, Caste is here to stay. I just have to learn to live with the fact that people other than me will be interested in knowing this aspect of my identity.