“CASTE FEELING” or is it? After a very long time an old friend of mine and I met up and reminisced. As a part of casual innocuous teasing I teased her with guys who have ‘Reddy’ in their names because she was from the ‘Reddy’ community; In India marriages within same community are much more common than any other kind of marriages. At the mention of her full name, which included ‘Reddy’, she immediately took guard and strongly protested that I omit her surname, leaving me to wonder whether I had pulled a delicate and sensitive cultural or communal fabric. In retrospect, I felt horrible momentarily. Later, I questioned why is caste feeling such a wrong thing? Does it create divide? Or does it create a sense of belongingness? One might argue that caste feeling deserves nothing but loathe and that it should be abolished just as sati system was. How we differ in our perceptions about it is akin to “half empty- half full” perspective split, in which neither view is wrong. The bias against caste feeling is undeserving. In my highly unpopular opinion ‘Caste feeling,’ which I would rather address as caste affiliation, is highly constructive if followed in the right sense. If belonging to a family is a basic unit or building block of oneness, then belonging to a community is the next level and then belonging to a religion and then belonging to a nation and so on and so forth. It truly brings a sense of belonging-to-a-community. It helps to knit people together and bring in a feeling of oneness. A shirt is beautiful and colorful only when fabrics of different color and type are dexterously woven together. Similarly, a society is harmoniously colorful when it has tightly woven people of multifarious castes. A sense of blandness sets in when the society is devoid of such richness and continues so when caste affiliations become a rarity. I, myself, witnessed several community get-togethers. Each community boasts of how rich in heart and mind it’s members have been. When you belong to such a community and attend such events you encounter a revelation. You are given a sense of your natives, though distantly connected. You know what is expected of you from your brethren: honesty, bravery, charity, loyalty and erudition. These are the highly ambitious founding principles of any community set to guide its members. Apart from these, each community lays emphasis on certain aspects. For example, “Kamma” community stresses on how its members have established life-changing businesses, helping the community on the whole. When people of such kind are applauded in front of the community, people who digress from serving community might have an incentive to try gaining applause, warranting a welcoming change. I mentioned about following caste feeling in the right sense i.e., we must limit ourselves to the affiliation and avoid the sense of false prestige and class. After all, ‘caste-feeling’ is just a sense of unity not discrimination. People who shared a common interest, which varies from self-protection to self-sufficiency to self-development, formed each caste. Castes as varied as the reasons for their formations are one of the initial associations, next to the kinship, for any person. Affiliates of such kind have potential to cater to individual wellbeing. So, yeah have caste feeling, but have it in the right sense. Let us have ‘caste feeling’ and be united in that aspect. Let us have ‘locality feeling’ and be united in that aspect. Let us have “we-belong-to-the-same-college”, “ we-belong-to-the-same-office” and many more; and, be united in each of those aspects. Let such feelings transcend our boundaries of isolation until a complete sense of oneness sets in, until a beautiful multicolored shirt is formed.
Posted on: Mon, 22 Dec 2014 11:41:43 +0000
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