Inter Yada-Yada Marriages in India

[Believer]

Namaste,

The idea about inter-caste or inter-ethnic marriages to unify India is nothing new. It started with Gandhi's efforts to liberate the dalits from their lowly status. Starting in the 50's (of the last century), Bollywood jumped in to reinforce it with some movies like Sujata, Raagini and Ek Dooje Ke Liye. A new term - 'National Integration' - was also coined. Many a discussions were conducted, huge seminars organized and speeches made about it. We even got to write essays about it in our English class. Laws were also made to outlaw caste based discrimination. But then the Govt turned around and set up quota system, which essentially is reverse discrimination. The reserved quotas for disadvantaged for admission to universities and for jobs were in the 5-10% range and did not sting the people too much. Over the years, militancy (as in becoming hard nosed and learning to hit back) of the disadvantaged coupled with capturing some of the state houses by them and the desire of various political parties to court the dalits for vote banks, has resulted in these quotas to be pushed up to as much as 80% in some areas. The Indian middle class is seething with anger. A bright average person cannot get admission into medical schools, or engineering schools or management schools because only 20% of the seats are open to them. Once you get admission against all odds and graduate from these universities, you run into the same reverse discrimination in finding a job, as massive chunks are spoken for, for the dalits or some other classified disadvantaged. Under these conditions, I would think, inter-caste marriage would be the farthest thing from people's mind. The built in animosity borne out of frustration at being left behind for not belonging to some variation of the dalit class will definitely work against any inter mingling. Quotas can be legislated and enforced, but the institutionalized biases in people's minds, and now reinforced as a result of quotas, are going to be hard to deal with. That is not something that can be wished away or fixed by legislation. I am glad I am not the one who has to find solutions to keeping the country together. How does it look from your vantage point?

Pranam

[sm78]

As far as marriages are concerned within the Hindu fold, the obstacle to intercast marriages has always been and still is the religious caste predujice. While reservation and reverse discrimination in govt jobs do make many middle cast indians sulky at times, but the anger, if any (since I don't see people persistently sulky of this issue), is towards politicians and not the other castes who may be benefitting.

Even now, if an two adults from different caste falls in love, the objections from parents and relatives must be religious predujice in 99% cases. I cannot imagine somebody object because the other caste have taken the jobs! If jobs were the issue, higher caste Indians (as Indians are) would instead rush to get their children marry to lower castes because they have jobs. At least in the poorer rural community this would make much economic sense, would it not? Instead what do we see? Khap panchayats passing death penalty for the intercaste couple. So, no, I think you are once again jumbling up different things which are very unrelated.