Caste at what cost?

I am a Brahmin. In fact I’m what is now commonly known as a Tambrahm. This was handed to me at birth, just like my eyes, nose and body. Like my name, or my ‘nakshatra’, it is part of the baggage that constitutes me, something that I carry with me whether I’m aware of it or not.

Actually, anybody will tell that we are hardly aware of our caste creed or community in the humdrum of daily life. My caste comes alive when I see the male members with the sacred thread (some of them sometimes), or at poojas like the Varalakshmi Vratham or Kaaradiya nombu which are primarily brahmin festivals. At other times, it is manifested implicitly in our lifestyles- garlic is looked at with dislike (let the cardiologists say what they want), onions a taboo on religious days, the ‘panchpatram-udrani’ (silver cutlery consisting of tumbler and miniature soupspoon) make their appearance on special days. Of course, the typical Tamil Brahmin accent that is the delight of many a film director is an outright give away.

All this apart, I go about my work completely unconscious of what community I belong to.

But the world does not let me forget my caste. Nor anyone else’s for that matter. Let’s open the paper: any bets that at least 5 caste related clashes or tales of crime going down to caste politics. Even a non caste murder or robbery somehow finds its way to the caste factor.

I work in a college: admissions are on. And how! One of the first documents the student shows is her community certificate, a document scrutinized as much or even more than the mark sheet. Does it have the ‘Gopuram’ seal? (Otherwise it could have just been cooked up). Is the name correct? What is the difference between a Vaniar and a Vaniakula Kshatriya (a name so long and so frequently mentioned that it has had to be abbreviated to VKS) Is there a difference between a Vaniar and Vanniar? A Christian Nadar and a Hindu Nadar? In other words, for a country that is permanently striving to restore equality amongst its citizens, the final output  seems to be a reawakening of what castes and creeds exist in our land.

Nobody questions the lofty motives of the father of our constitution. But after so many decades, if we are still striving to remove caste by referring to castes, there doesn’t seem to be much headway. On the contrary, I can think of innumerable peope of my own caste who struggle as cooks and priests for the simple reason that their 90 % was not enough to get them a merit seat and  their income could not purchase them one under the management quota.

So while I think Brahminism as some theory of a club to which I happen to belong by birth, in the larger picture, it seems to be a subset of a major movement where the watchword is Caste.

Is India really shining???