Caste restricts opportunity. Restricted opportunity constricts ability. Constricted ability further restricts opportunity. Where caste prevails, opportunity and ability are restricted to ever-narrowing circles of the people.lohia said that- but he should have added: caste restricts common sense too.
long ago, a friend's marriage was arranged by a political party. this is how it happened: he was a card carrying member of one of the communist partes and the immediate leadership found a progressive match for him in a fellow member of the party. my friend was a brahmin, a kannadiga, and employed in a bank. the girl was a kamma, a telugu, and a doctor of some kind. my friend didn't find anything restrictive in the party finding a suitable girl for him. in fact, he was very proud of the fact that he'd defied his father and married a girl of a lower varna.
yes, that's what he said: a girl of a lower varna.
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5 comments:
http://obcvoice.blogspot.com/2006/06/oppressors-and-obc-script.html
says about lists of OBCs:"the Kammas and Reddies appear in the Tamil Nadu and Karnataka lists (the reddies, curiously appear in the Kerala list too) and not in the Andhra Pradesh list where these two communities together have shared, between them, overall reins of the state's top leadership for the last fifty years."
I think that kammas are a subcategory of Shudras but one of my communist uncles was very upset when I mentioned this.
thanks swarup garu, for all your comments.. they help me think, and sometimes trigger off some of my posts. please don't consider those posts a reaction to your comments- your comments only help me focus on some commonly held notions with regard to issues of caste, and the current status of many lower caste communities in india.
In spite of the mention of caste in many media reports, there seems to be some avoidance. For example, I have read several write ups about Ghantasala and his family but I have not seen any (I might have missed some) mentioning that he had two wives, one from a 'lower caste' and had three children by her. I think that it is a good idea to keep reminding people of this evil and its consequences in detail and blogs may have a role in the fight. See Chris Blattman's post about fighting corruption through blogs:
http://chrisblattman.blogspot.com/2008/02/tackling-corruption-via-blogosphere.html
i dont know what caste u r from but who gave u right to talk bad about kammas
I think that the posts are more about the hegemony of groups; in the Indian context these are often formed by the accident of birth, and the resulting sufferings of the underprivileged. These hegemonies are often maintained through media, literature. You can see the comments about castes in Sumati Satakam and changes when some of the castes became powerful (discussed in Katten's 'Colonoal Lists', like changing komati to komali, velama to shudra etc). I know many kammas and brahmins concerned about this. See the work of Kakani Ramamohan Rao of breadsicietyindia or Ramanaidu at his rural development insitute. As far as I know both are kammas and many beneficiaries are from other castes. The work of Gora ( a brahmin) and his dscendents is also well known.
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