Khan Saheb Kamal Haasan's Jamaat/Jeba Koottam/Devasthaanam - Part 8

[Bala (Karthik)]

PR
I don't quite "feel" the caste identity is identical and implies/evokes the same things/reactions within the self, to begin with, that the other identities mentioned here evoke. They may have started as ways of life. What does caste mean *now*, having the baggage it has and causing the effects it has caused? By clinging on to that identity, what are we saying overtly/implicitly?

The question I always like to ask is - do we today feel a sense of affinity for a stranger of one's own caste. i.e. feel an affinity simply because he belongs to one's own caste (namma paya). Most of us feel no such thing. But for our parents, grandparents would have felt that way. The identity was more important to them.
And even in their case I allege, it was largely to do with how a certain caste dictated a way of life, even including education, exposure, employment etc.

Now, we all still judge people based on education, exposure, employment etc. But these are primary considerations and therefore caste is relegated to the background. i.e. we aren't "better" people than our previous generations. Just that the social relevance of caste has watered down.

Get your point but i don't think it's a fair comparison at all (judging on education/exposure/employment being a replacement of juding by caste). It is a lesser evil way to judge. Class discrimination ellaam prachanai dhaan but adhukku apparam varuvom.

The way such a thing goes out of the window is by social irrelevance.

I will refrain from making the shaky argument that caste can persist without discrimination. That is not something I can say with certainty. But it is certainly true that over time there has been a great decoupling.

I do think people feel an affinity even now. This generation. Which is why the identity itself must go, discrimination laam eppadiyo ooduruvidum nu thonudhu. I don't share your optimism when you say we have seen a great deal of decoupling. I get how different things are from the past but it is not good enough.

Ambedkar argues exceedingly well in his treatise "the Annihilation of Caste" that it is impossibly for caste to exist without discrimination. That, it is either a genuinely naive pipe-dream or intentionally duplicitous line of thinking to say caste can exist without discrimination.

And it had to go. Of course, being the thinker that he is, he saw caste for what it was - a social institution that rose from the ground over time- rather than as a cunning scheme whose sole purpose of existence was subjugation. And most importantly he observed that the urge to preserve caste identities is definitely not something top-down but across the board in the hierarchy.

Exactly

Personally, I don't think we will ever become like America, or for that matter those of Indian origin in other countries - who can't trace their ancestry back to more than 4-5 generations. It is only in such contexts of substantial absence of social history can caste 'vanish'. In our case, I think it will continue to exist, but what it means will keep changing.

Agree