From what I can recall, asking somebody’s gotra used to be reserved for various puja ceremonies when the priest asks for it so as to make sure God doesn’t forget or for families when they wanted to strike an alliance and contribute to India’s overpopulation. This was seldom part of mainstream politics but hey, trust the BJP to change that. Recently, the party’s national spokesperson and one of the rare people in the world diagnosed with the blood group Hindu +ve, Sambit Swaraj Patra demanded INC’s crown prince and Indian electorate’s only other stupid alternative, Rahul Gandhi to tell the world what his gotra is because surely according to him, RaGa is hiding some “deep state” kind of secrets without which India cannot move on… Apparently, I need to know the religion, caste, gotra and sub-caste of everyone around me. May be this would be printed in BOLD letters on Aadhar cards if they come back to power in 2019. I’m not ruling that out.
His comments have naturally elicited reactions from the internet and social media space including retorts from Omar Abdullah, Karuna Nandy and Rajdeep to name a few. The reactions, overall were indifferent because the rhetoric is almost normalized now, so much so that a majority has become immune to it. There’s another perspective of “woke”, “liberal” and “free-thinking” Indians which goes like “People like us don’t really care about gotra or caste or religion”.
The reality is that a majority of us (the privileged lot) still lay a lot of emphasis on the caste that we are born into regardless of the cruelties that are peddled in the name of it or the discrimination that it feeds into day in and day out. Case in point, the top 10% of Indian intelligentsia think that caste isn’t an issue anymore as it is reserved for “villages who don’t know any better” but on the same hand feel that some sort of restrictions is good for cultural preservation (in terms of love or getting married). Talk about irony!
If you’re thinking this is just a minute population, think again. A study showed that almost 36% of Indians who belong to the Gen Y and Gen Z category are against inter-caste marriages; while most of them support reservations, they believe caste doesn’t matter anymore. The irony is that a common reply that you might get from them is that “Caste doesn’t matter but you know how Moms are…” which brings me to my larger argument. We are so comfortable in our little cushy bubbles thinking that we are above discussions on caste and gotra and it’s a waste of time to even get involved that when push comes to shove, we aren’t left with much of an option other than to accept it as something that can’t be questioned or changed.
For all the “I’m above caste system” talk, Indian youth still toe the line drawn by their parents when it comes to arguably the most crucial decision of their lives, getting married. That’s an institution which breeds on caste hierarchy. A simple glance at some of the classifieds in newspapers should give us some context. In a recent study, only 22% said that they are willing to marry someone their parents wouldn’t approve of and in another study, only 10% of respondents in urban areas said they had a family member marry outside their own caste. A study on more than 10,000 Matrimonial ads between 1970 and 2010 showed a decreasing trend of inter-caste marriages from 30% to 19%, In refusing to participate in the “caste” and “gotra” narrative, we have given it enough air to claim legitimacy.
There’s an air of disconnect when it comes to India today. There’s also a carefully constructed atmosphere of religious bigotry that when a spokesperson attacks the leader of the opposition on gotra, caste lines and questions his “Indian-ness” on prime time news, he isn’t called out on it; he isn’t ridiculed enough which in-turn emboldens him to push it further next time. “Sab ke Saath Sabka Vikas” be damned. The INC is guilty too, remember them jumping on to the Janue-Dhari bandwagon?
Arrogance of the liberals and their attitudinal indifference has led us to this inflection point. I am afraid it would take us decades if not centuries to go back to times when we didn’t identify ourselves by which political party we supported or which religion we practiced. We have grown up on a steady diet of debates across classrooms and universities, Model United Nations that convinced us to stand up for what’s right; even if it went against the majoritarian point of view, but when it comes to breaking the myth of gotra or convincing our parents to that effect, I’m afraid to admit that we have terribly failed.
Spaces & Dots 
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