Yes, Indian is my caste too!

One social evil that I've hated since I first came to know about it in my childhood is the caste system in Hinduism. There are many good things in Hinduism and I'm proud about that. But caste system is one thing which I can never agree to. It's disgusting; it's very inhuman; undemocratic. I see traces of racism in caste system.

Fortunately I was born in Assam where caste system is much less prevalent compared to other regions of India. There was a great social reformer in Assam circa fifteen hundred century named Sankardeva. There is no politics or politician in Assam based on caste. Assamese surnames are not based on caste. My surname Saikia can be written by people from different castes. But Assamese society is still not a completely casteless societies. Villages were named after castes. For example, hira-gaon (village of the caste hira), kalita-gaon (village of kalita caste), koch gaon (village of koch caste) etc. In rural areas, people from upper-caste-Assamese-Hindu won't eat at the same table with people from lower castes. Inter-caste marriages take place in Assam; but across some castes; not all.

Caste system is much more prevalent in rest of India. There are political parties whose main vote plank is castes. Inter-caste  marriage is a very rare phenomenon.

I wonder why caste system was not abolished during the social reforms that took place during the 18th and 19th centuries in India. We could abolish other social evils like untouchability, sati, and aversion to widow-marriage etc. I don't know if there was any social revolution against caste system in our history.


I thought gradually caste system will go away from India. With education and contact with the rest of the world, I thought Indians will realize how inhuman is this caste-system. I would love to see a society where there is no caste. I wish the government enacted a law banning the caste system. But I don't see that happening. One recent phenomenon has demonstrated that instead of  discarding the evil, we are moving towards it! In the latest census currently undergoing across the country, people will be asked to mention their castes.


I have always rebelled against the caste-system. I won't teach about the caste system to my next generation. I know there are many like-minded people in our society now who abhors caste-system. I'm very inspired to know that Amitabh Bacchan in his blog has written that he would write his caste as INDIAN in the census. Let's us all record our castes as Indians.


References

1. Interrogating the caste census, K. Subrahmanyam , Indian Express
2. Reviving the caste system, Kuldeep Nayar, The Dawn
3. Untouchable, National Geographic
4. Rediff's campaign against caste in census