By Vanishri Pokley
I remember as a kid when in school my dad never filled in the " caste" column while filling up my details in the blue calendar which we got every year. No one had any objections to it. Just giving your religion info was enough. Fortunately, I was brought up in a family where surnames of friends and acquaintances were never a criterion to carry forward a relationship with them. So were we more humanely evolved then, or is today's progress taking away that realisation that we all, at the end of the day are just homo sapiens.
During earlier times caste defined the profession which a family must have chosen to earn a living for themselves. So, we had Kshatriyas, Brahmins, kshudras and then gradually the more closer to their profession ones like the lohars, shimpis, nhavis etc. The Parsis too still have surnames like batliwala, sodawala etc in sync with their businesses.
Having a sense of belonging to a particular community because they have followed a lifestyle which accentuated their type of work seems so redundant now. I believe the idea behind identifying with a community was more to bring people together, likewise today it's a clear segregation of mindsets.
Casteism....this word now has definitions far-fetched from its original sense. It's now confined mostly to Politics, and maybe for wedding alliances. In fact, wedding alliances were sought from the same community simply because the bride would already be in the know of the lifestyle aligned to the profession followed by the community. That provided for a win win situation for both the concerned families and the community too. The bride would have the right knowledge of food habits and recipes that a particular community followed, so the natural choice for same community marriages.
Not anymore, the professions are definitely not in sync with the community where we are born and brought up. The present day sees a lot of professionals from the basic engineers, doctors, lawyers, architects to specialists and micro specialists in every field of work and study. So, a new approach towards identities too. Citing an example of Mr. Amitabh Bachchan, whose surname Bachchan was actually his legendary poet father Mr. Harivansh Rai's poetic non de plume. They actually belonged to a kayasth family bearing the surname Shrivastav.
Similarly, if we gave away with caste-based reservation and have the economically backward quota instead we would automatically be uplifting people. So clinging on to a particular caste or community to satiate your sense of belonging seems so regressive in a fast paced progressive world.
New generation work ethics demand a novel lifestyle too. Today's work arena has an array of professionals working in sync with the demands of the job, thus showcasing their skills acquired through knowledge of their professional degrees which has little concern with the caste to which they belong. Family values may affect but community conduct certainly doesn't shine through. As for today's eating habits, Zomato and Swiggy come into the foreplay giving homemade tiffins a backseat. Culinary skills are to be honed exclusively for the weekends.
The millennials today are eyeing more for the profession and package rather than caste and community when scouting for wedding alliances. Netizens today are voicing their opinions more through hastag usernames rather than the family names. So, we have the instagrammers, the twiterrati sharing away their thoughts under hashtag usernames minus the baggage of their caste background. It's the thought that counts not the persona. On a lighter note, we should have hashtag usernames instead of surnames for individual identities. A world where it's completely okay not knowing what work an individual's ancestors resorted to eke out a living for themselves.
If we as individuals desisted from using surnames and caste as identity indicators, we would embrace humanity more as a living species of homo sapiens thus evolving ourselves more as a progressive genre of mankind.
By Vanishri Pokley
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