Google recently released a list of its Orkut’s top 10 communities in India and interesting enough to see that none of them is about or related to SRK or Ace Khan, Ash or Bebo, Sachin or Mahi, Rahul or Raj. But they are
* "StYlIsH PeOpLe"
* "India"
* "Chocolate"
* "MTV & still more MTV!"
* "TCS 2009 Batch..........!!!!!!"
* "Tom and Jerry - Cartoon"
* "Boys VS Girls (Who Is d Best?)"
* "India Stock Market (BSE NSE)"
* "Tamil Cinema"
* "I hate to wake up early"
* "Friends"
The "community" part in orkut is really awesome. You love to be a part of the community about the person, sport, speciality, place you love or even community representing your birth date, year, sun sign, initials etc. But it also helps others to know you better like what this person is, what are his/her interests etc. I myself am a part of numerous intersting communities.
While just randomly surfing through orkut, I always stuck and wonder when I come across the communities people join which are something similar to these
I am Brahmin
Proud to be Chitpavan
Leva Patil software engineers
We Khatris
Deshastha Brahmin
Mee MARATHA
Daivadnya Brahman
Chandraseniy Kayastha Prabhu
(I do not remember the exact names of these communities but these are quittte close)
I mean why? Why such a great obsession of public display of the caste you come from (with no contribution of yours whatsoever)? Is your identity/introduction/portfolio going to be incomplete if your caste is not mentioned? You still are going to be what your are, both professionally and personally, without attaching those small pre/post fixes to your skills/personality.
Is this to highlight how superior you and the entire community (read caste not orkut community) of yours is or how deserving candidates you are for the reservations? I thought we are the generation who respect reservation but only based on financial background and not the caste based.
I always, used to, still do and will do forever, wonder, ridicule the ideas of the social gatherings or meet-ups of particular castes (where the entry is allowed if n only if you hail from that particular caste) and the great response they used to, and they still do, get. Never ever attended any of that though got numerous invitations.
Everyone knows how worst the caste system in India, how it still run a parallel governments in small villages, how it works wonders in elections et cetera and that was not the topic for today's discussion. I was just wondering how it successfully managed to quietly enter the e-world/social networking groups which are pretty much (supposed to be) dominated by youths and their liberal urban thoughts. Or does that mean just the year on calendars are changing but not the mindsets? anyways, enough for today !!!
U a part of Loads of Maratheee grps rite...in ur grp mails if m nt wrng..thus that mean watever u hav written above..or it was just a write up written without belief. DOn go ahead and tell me oh thts just a grp of meaning ful frnds kind of stuff ok...or its just a grp to communicate marathi fwds...because all those reasons can stand true for ppl joining these communities.okies
ReplyDeleteNot sure whether you read it carefully but sure that u got it wrong completely. I never spoke about a language here. I was more focusing about the hold of caste system in the e-world and that too by youths coz I feel that at least the youngsters should not follow these caste system. And ab rahi baat mere Marathi groups ki. It was not gropus but just a group. As it was meant for marathi speaking people in hyderabad (OPEN FOR ALL CASTES) to help them do the initial setup and settle down. Of course we do have a lot of healthy debates too..
ReplyDeleteHi Heramb,
ReplyDeleteI second you in saying "We need to stop social gatherings based on Caste". But I have a strong view towards how these "Social Cate agtherings" are looked upon.
When "a less privilaged caste" helds a socialy gatherings, it is looks as "Empowerment", "Unity" perspective. They get a very good positive media coverage. People say that it is "Kalachi garaj".
In defence,when "a privilaged caste" does the same thing, it receives all sorts of negative feedbacks. It is looked upon as a criminal act.
As an Indian, I feel that "Castism" in growing more and more in India and I don't have any hope..
Hey Mayur, This is a quite commonly raised question about caste-based social gatherings and my answer to it always has been the same i.e. when I say I hate caste-based social gatherings it's always applicable both to alleged privileged and not-so-privileged caste gatherings. The statement holds true regardless of the participants. But yeah, I agree that media always mis-portrays it the way you were saying. But you can always debate with them openly/privately. BTW, i too peeped thru ur blogs.. nicely written short posts.. liked it... btw, do we know each other? :)
ReplyDeleteHi Heramb,
ReplyDeleteI am Mayur form HyderabadMarathi group. Basically from (Latur-->Pune). But currently situated in Hyderabad (living a software engineers nomadic life).
Thanks for visiting my blog. I created this blog to put down all sorts of "Random thoughts" I have. Title just tries to potray that.
Oh OK.. You too are from MHYD group. That's why the name sounded familiar initially :)
ReplyDelete