Love in the time of WhatsApp: Breaking the barriers of caste and distance in "modern" India

Subhadra

By Rahul Banerjee*
A young cousin of Subhadra Khaperde, a well-known social worker with the Mahila Jagat Lihaaz Samiti or Society for Respect for Women and Earth, also known as MAJLIS, formed by Dalit and Adivasi women of western Madhya Pradesh, had been dating with a man living in Banda district of Uttar Pradesh. Hailing from Kanker district of Chhattisgarh, the girl continued dating for over a year and a half on WhatsApp.

Finally they decided to marry and broke this news to their respective families. The first thing that these families, situated deep in rural areas, asked was about the caste of the partner.
All hell broke lose for the young woman. She was a Mahar, a Dalit caste, while the man was a Brahmin. The Mahars in Chhattisgarh are very endogamous and put a hefty fine on and ostracise any family from which a son or daughter marries outside the caste.
The girl's family had been trying to marry her off to prospective Mahar boys for quite some time, but since the girl was staying in Kanker town and working as a dental assistant in a private clinic, she had a mind of her own and refused to agree to the various suitors. And now the girl had dropped a bombshell that she was going to marry a Brahmin boy all the way from Banda in Uttar Pradesh.
Anyway, since there were many members in the extended family who were educated and in jobs, and also some who had married outside the caste, eventually the boy's father, brother-in-law and the boy came down to the girl's village and they met face to face for the first time.
The girl's family asked how the boy would reconcile his caste people to the fact that he was marrying a Dalit. The boy replied that they were to say that they were Saryu Brahmins if asked by anyone about caste and he would handle everything else! So a Dalit Mahar girl would take a dip in the Vedic purity of the Sarayu River and become a Brahmin!
The marriage took place a few days ago in a rented Dharmshala in Chitrakoot, which is a temple town in Madhya Pradesh. Subhadra was invited to attend the marriage because of her experience in these matters. She had blazed the trail by snaring a Bengali Brahmin (Bangali Maharaj in Chhattisgarhi) and had successfully kept him in leash for twenty five years!
The boy had persistently stonewalled all efforts by the girl's family to visit his home saying that is against the custom in Banda. Subhadra would have none of it, however, and so she hired a car and with some family members went to the boy's village in Banda to check out his credentials.
They found that the boy's family lived in a small mudhouse with roof tiles of baked clay and that contrary to his statements that he was in a flourishing business, learnt that he actually ran a tea stall! The family had some agricultural land, but these days farming in Bundelkhand is in severe crisis.
So the family was just about making ends meet. Some of the girl's family said that since the house was so small they had made a mistake in buying many things like sofa sets, fridges and the like and they should sell them back again!
Subhadra, however, said that the family looked to be good at heart even if it did not have much wealth and since the girl was a skilled girl and was in love with the boy who were they to intervene.She said that when she had married then she and her husband were also penniless!
After they came back from their investigations, the boy phoned the girl to say that if the family had seen his house before then the marriage would not have taken place. The girl then asked anxiously what was the scene in Banda to which Subhadra replied -- "Pyar Kiya to Darna Kya".
This is modern India -- a poor Brahmin boy from a village in Banda gets hitched to a poor Mahar girl from Kanker breaking the barriers of caste and distance through WhatsApp!
---
Source: Facebook timeline of Rahul Banerjee

Comments

Uma Sheth said…

Good news. I hope this spreads and the Hindu Taliban learn something from this

March 16, 2018

A tale of horror and fraud: Profits in trillions of dollars for vaccine manufacturers?

By Aruna Rodrigues* John Leake is a best-selling and “experienced non-fiction, true crime author”. Having just read what must be described as an extraordinary ‘telling’ of the Covid-19 saga, his book “The Courage to Face Covid-19: Preventing Hospitalization and Death While Battling the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex”, co-authored with Peter A McCullough, MD, MPH, is the narration of true crime on a scale that could top the list in the history of ‘man’s inhumanity to man’. The book chronicles the unique role of national governments across the world and their health agencies, led by the USA and WHO, which followed an agenda that led to completely avoidable fatalities numbering several million. The question is why? The usual culprits are money and power. But to ascribe cause to these two is woefully insufficient. The sheer magnitude of the ‘dark agenda’ – coordinated and played out by governments, health agencies, the medical establishment (hospitals, doctors and chemists) and the massive a

You promised 50 lakh houses, give us one: Ahmedabad migrant women's plea to Modi

Women display letters containing rakhi for PM By Hirabhai Solanki, Bhartiben Dantani, Ramesh Shrivastav* Poor labouring families, including seasonal or long-term migrants of nearly 15 squatter settlements -- working as construction and casual workers and petty vendors, providing cheap but critically important labour for Ahmedabad city, living under plastic sheetings -- have reminded the Gujarat and Central Governments about the promise made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi of building 50 lakh dwellings, wherein every pavement dweller and homeless would be given a decent home by the end of 2022. Holding a meeting in Ahmedabad under the aegis of the Majur Adhikaar Manch, they also referred to the appeal of the Prime Minister to poor and labouring women, seeking his support as brother by sending rakhis to protect their humble basti dwellings and provide them with decent housing, which is secure for them and their families. So far, about 300 women have posted rakhis to the Prime Ministe

A countdown to disaster: Breach in fly-ash bunds of Nagpur's thermal power plants

Fly-ash dyke, Koradi thermal power plant By Dhwani Shah, Deepmala Patel* Last month the residents of several villages of Nagpur district woke up to the nightmare of being inundated with fly-ash. Located in the north of Nagpur city are Koradi and Khaparkheda thermal power stations which have their ash dykes in the vicinity. On July 10, 2022 at 3 am, the ash dyke of the Khaparkheda thermal power station broke, leading to ash contaminating the Kanhan river. Though the authorities claimed to have acted quickly and the fly ash dumping in the river was stopped, the claim stood to be misleading and false. Even today, the Kanhan river continues to be polluted with fly-ash, and the water supply to the city is affected. Not only did ash dyke of the Khaparkheda power station break, on July 16, 2022, the ash bund of the Koradi thermal power plant also broke. Fly-ash and water stored in the dyke gushed downstream to six villages -- drowning houses, water bodies and farmlands. With such large-

Golwalkar's views on tricolour, martyrs, minorities, caste as per RSS archives

By Shamsul Islam* First time in the history of independent India, the in-charge minister of the Cultural Ministry in the current Modi government, Prahlad Singh Patel, has glorified MS Golwalkar, second supremo of the RSS and the most prominent ideologue of the RSS till date, on his birth anniversary, February 19. In a tweet he wrote : “Remembering a great thinker, scholar, and remarkable leader #MSGolwalkar on his birth anniversary. His thoughts will remain a source of inspiration & continue to guide generations.”

RSS, Sangh Parivar consider tricolour as "state flag" and not "national flag"

By Teesta Setalvad* Today, when the nation has been independent for 67 years, the Sangh Parivar is set to launch ‘Tiranga yatras’ and Satyagrahas to defend the honour of the flag and the nation. Yet when the Indian people were involved in the decades-long struggle for freedom against British imperialism, the RSS was conspicuous by its absence in the struggle. When thousands of people faced lathis, bullets and jail sentences for hoisting the tiranga and participated all over the country in satyagraha during the Civil Disobedience and Quit India movements against the British Raj, the Sangh publicly took the stand that it would not take part in the movement and seldom missed the opportunity of assuring the British rulers that they would keep to the right side of colonial law and avoid any clash with the authorities. Of course the reason given for this was that the Sangh was secretly strengthening itself and would take on British imperialism only when it was strong enough to do so! A simil

'Grossly inadequate': NREGA allocation 0.29% of GDP, World Bank recommended 1.6%

By Rajiv Shah A civil society tracker, seeking to periodically analyse the implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), has said that NREGA budgetary allocation is only 0.29% of GDP and 1.85% of the total government expenditure of the financial year 2022-23, which is grossly inadequate. Thus, “As per estimates of researchers of the World Bank, for NREGA to run robustly, its allocation must at least be 1.6% of the GDP.” Prepared by the People’s Action for Employment Guarantee (PAEG), a group of activists, academics and members of people’s organizations, who came together to advocate for NREGA in 2004 in order to catalyse discussion and strengthen the top Government of India rural jobs guarantee scheme, the tracker states, the NREGA budget as percentage of the total government expenditure has also decreased -- it stands at 1.85% for FY 2022-23, just about half the level in FY 2020-21 (3.65%). The tracker, titled “Meagre Funds and Unlawfully Low Wages: How

Buddhist shrines were 'massively destroyed' by Brahmanical rulers: Historian DN Jha

Nalanda mahavihara By Our Representative Prominent historian DN Jha, an expert in India's ancient and medieval past, in his new book , "Against the Grain: Notes on Identity, Intolerance and History", in a sharp critique of "Hindutva ideologues", who look at the ancient period of Indian history as "a golden age marked by social harmony, devoid of any religious violence", has said, "Demolition and desecration of rival religious establishments, and the appropriation of their idols, was not uncommon in India before the advent of Islam".

Since 2015 Govt of India didn't allocate single rupee to Gujarat for RTI training, awareness

By Pankti Jog* The Department of Personnel and Training, Government of India (GoI) has allocated Rs 8.7 crore to Maharashtra for conducting Right to Information (RTI) training and awareness between 2015 to 2022. Of this, Rs 5.9 crore has gone to the Maharashtra State Training Institute, YASHADA, and Rs 3.01 crore have gone to the State Information Commission, Maharashtra. Gujarat, on the other hand, has not received even a single rupee over the last seven years for RTI programmes. Even Gujarat’s State Information Commission too has not not received any funds since 2005. RTI is one of the effective tools to bring transparency and accountability in the administration, thus improve governance. If citizens are aware, they would participate in a more meaningful manner in governance. They would effectively monitor planning and expenses of public programmes. Indeed, it is necessary that RTI is taken to every citizen, for which the government needs to conduct awareness drives and training

Anti-untouchability brass coin yatra to Delhi getting 'overwhelming' response: Macwan

By Our Representative Gujarat’s top Dalit rights leader Martin Macwan, who is currently leading a week-long procession to Delhi carrying a 1,111 kg brass coin with the pointed question embossed on it, “Will the 1947 dream of untouchability free India be a reality in 2047?”, has reiterated that the removal of untouchability in India is Dalits’ primary concern, and not opposition to the new Parliament building. The march began in Ahmedabad on August 1 at 8:00 am amidst refusal of the Gujarat police a day earlier refusing to give the permission for the procession, which involves a small truck carrying the huge brass coin, another one with an Ambedkar statue, two trucks full of about 25 lakh one rupee coins donated by Dalits across India, and six buses with 300 Dalit activists. The brass coin has the image of BR Ambedkar on one side, and of Lord Buddha, on the other. Starting at the Dalit Shakti Kendra (DSK), founded by Macwan to provide technical-cum-empowerment training to the underpriv

Quit India stir: What archives say on Hindutva leaders 'colluding' with British rulers

By Shamsul Islam* On the eve of 80th anniversary of the glorious Quit India Movement 1942 [QIM], we must evaluate the anti-national role of the Hindutva flag-bearers (who shamelessly claim to be the original nationalists) in India's anti-colonial freedom struggle. QIM also known as ‘August Kranti' (August Revolution) was a nation-wide Civil Disobedience Movement for which a call was given on August 7, 1942 by the Bombay session of the All-India Congress Committee. It was to begin on August 9 as per Gandhi's call to ‘Do or Die’ in his Quit India speech delivered in Mumbai at the Gowalia Tank Maidan (renamed as August Kranti Maidan) on August 8. Since then August 9 is celebrated as August Kranti Divas. The British swiftly responded with mass detentions on August 8th itself. The contemporary official documents confirm that over 100,000 arrests were made which included the total top leadership of Congress including Gandhi, mass fines were levied and demonstrators were subjecte

Search This Blog