A messy love affair

In a viral video Sakshi, a daughter of Bareilly MLA, announces to the nation (especially to her father) her love for Ajitesh. She fiercely tells her father, who is harassing the couple, to back off or face the consequences. Sakshi Misra has alleged that her father and others were out to eliminate her and Ajitesh.

She is now giving teary-eyed interviews to the news channels and visibly going through serious emotional trauma. Sakshi has not only committed the crime of falling in love with a man but a larger crime of falling in love with a Dalit man. She is not just posing a threat to Indian patriarchy but also to our nation’s favorite discrimination sport- casteism.

One just has to check the comments on Instagram and Facebook which are heavily against Sakshi. India is angry with Sakshi for choosing love instead of parents. In an average scenario, we would have believed Sakshi to submit to her fate to the idea of Indian unfulfilled love. After all, in India love is a secret part-time vocation to be performed in the trance of youth, away from the eyes of your parents and relatives.

Caste has proved to be the graveyard of love. The slayers of romance are either the family member or sometimes lovers themselves who are nothing but the clones born out of our very own regressive society. I have seen many passionate love affairs of my friends to be bulldozed by the JCB of casteism. Mad with the hurricane of love, many of them wished to get married but in the end, the family didn’t pay any heed to their desires. In some cases, girlfriends have started maintaining the distance when they came to know about the caste of these Dalit men who first seduced them with their charm but later turned them off by revealing their caste. During my college time, one of my close female friends had to deal with the trauma of a very rough heartbreak when her upper caste boyfriend broke the 5-year-old relationship by declaring that his family will never agree to the marriage. She still wonders why boys suddenly become meek when it comes to convincing their family, even when a large part of their youth is spent listening to the songs of rebellion and using the phrases about fucking the system.

In this context, the video where Sakshi is taking ownership of her love life has the signs of very important social undercurrents.

Inter-caste marriages are still very rare in India. Many states are giving incentive for a legal inter-caste marriage where a couple can receive around 2.50 lakh per marriage. However, according to the India Human Development Survey, only about 5% of Indian marriages are inter-caste.

One should also ask a larger question what kind of changes inter-caste marriages can make to dismantle caste? One answer is that dilutes the idea of purity and creates confusion. The idea of purity has clarity whereas confusion is very ambiguous. For instance, misleading surnames have long created confusion and in a strange way helped to dilute caste in public spaces. Random people in public spaces are curious to know your surname. Especially in trains, the decision of talking to you or sharing the food with you will depend on your surname.

These days it is becoming difficult to identify the exact identity of a Dalit by the surname. Many Dalits have surnames like Verma, Singh, Panwar, Choudhary. These are the same surnames which are also used by many upper castes. This confusion creates unrest in the caste curious upper caste person who is out there to judge you on the basis of your surname but getting frustrated by the lack of clarity in the surname.

The caste system is hereditary, and the whole idea of marrying within the same castes ensure the preservation of the purity of the caste system. If Dalits are marrying upper castes then it creates a strange social-cultural Integration where the caste identity will be diluted for the upcoming future generation. This is one of the most dangerous threats to society and which is the reason why there is a fierce opposition for the inter-caste marriages.

Dr. Bhim Rao Ambedkar married Mai Savitha Ambedkar, a Chitpavan brahmin from Maharashtra. In 1936 Ambedkar wrote a speech Annihilation of caste where he said “ Inter-dining and inter-marriage are repugnant to the beliefs and dogmas which the Hindus regard as sacred. Caste is not a physical object like a wall of bricks or a line of barbed wire which prevents the Hindus from co-mingling and which has, therefore, to be pulled down. Caste is a notion, it is a state of the mind. The destruction of Caste does not, therefore, mean the destruction of a physical barrier. It means a notional change,”.Ambedkar, however, believed that real change will not come by criticizing or ridiculing those who don’t practice intercaste marriage or inter-dining but by dismantling the authority of Shastra from where the very idea of caste emerged. He further adds “ Make every man and woman free from the thraldom of the Shastras, cleanse their minds of the pernicious notions founded on the Shastras, and he or she will inter-dine and inter-marry, without your telling him or her to do so.”

The social project of achieving complete annihilation of caste has very different means and we have still not figured out the correct cure for it. Lovers loving freely irrespective of caste is a potent punch on the face of the established order. The real brand ambassadors of ‘New Idea’ are such youths who are rebelling against the old dogmas and risking their lives by believing in the idea of love. If we fail these lovers then we will fail as a nation.