Caste Politics

Around eleven pm, there was a huge fight in the Chawl across our house. We heard loud voices and ran towards the window to see what was happening. Some two hundred people were running towards the last lane of the Chawl. Having never seen crowds like this in the Chawl, we figured it was a fight between the two communities.  Three police vans came and then the place quietened down .  

This Chawl is for the staff who do the cleaning activities of BMC and they all belong to the SC/ST category. Yeah, after seventy years of freedom, we still give perks, benefits and advantages to them which were to be stopped in ten years. The BMC rule allows them to keep the job through generations. So on retiring, the father gives the job to the eldest son and so on. They also get to keep the house, have medical benefits and get loans from the BMC. Their children get into the best of colleges, on showing the caste certificate. And now the reality is that most children do not study through college. They barely scrape through high school. Since they are assured of the Government job of cleaning, they do no aspire to do anything else. There is no education criteria to get the job. They know they will get everything from the government on basis of their caste, so most youngsters do not do any work. There are two distinct communities. The Marathi speaking community is the followers of Ambedkar and are Buddhists. The Gujarati speaking community follow Hinduism For me, Buddha and Mahavir Jain were always Indian Gods and then much later I realised they are recognised as different from Hinduism and have all minority benefits. Coming back to the two communities, they each have a Committee which manages them. They set rules for them. The Marathi community is strictly managed by the Ambedkar party with lots of dos and don'ts. The Gujaratis are considered decadent and do not have any strict rules. They celebrate a lot of festivals together and generally enjoy life. The Marathi speaking community, technically they do not consider themselves one amongst Marathi, consider themselves victims. They have strict rules that their daughters cannot marry any Gujarati  boy and their sons anyways do not dare to marry a Gujarati girl. Then some weddings happen when the Marathi girl elopes with the Gujarati boy. The Marathi speaking side is very against these marriages and file a police complaint in certain cases. The heads of the Marathi community dominate the members. The members follow the committee diktat like a herd. The Marathis are not allowed to celebrate Laxmi Pooja or Diwali by the committee members who live there. The committee member ladies check into households of they have a photo of Laxmi in their house. The ladies hide the Hindu Gods in their cupboards and keep only Buddha s pic. Most Marathi women wear Salwar Kameez and the Gujaratis all wear saree in the Gujarati Pallu way. If the Marathi wears a Saree during a Hindu festival, the committee woman comes to her house to check if she is praying or has she made a Sheera at home which is a sweet Prasaad for God. The women who are caught doing this, then give an explanation that they have to go to work and there is Puja in their boss's house.  For every committee meeting, they are fed lies about the Hindus and how they are bad. Whatever the committee wants  them to do they say that Babasaheb Ambedkar said all these things. These people are taught that the Government is bad and so is the BMC, their only saviour is their caste which is ensuring they get all the benefits. There is another Marathi Chawl where most women do cleaning  and cooking jobs and they consider themselves different to this chawl as their children study and take up jobs without government or caste benefits.

The fight was between two children who were not even eighteen years of age. The Gujarati kid abused verbally and the Marathi kid got angry and hit him. The Gujarati Mom took her child away and her Grandmother told her kid to stay away from these kind of fights as these people are like this only. The Marathi Mom did not know about the fight and realised when the son came home. Her son said the fight happened because that boy used bad words and I hit him. No one gave the true picture to their parents. The Gujarati Grandmom said stay away from this 'jaat'. All hell broke loose. The Marathi Ambedkar people got very angry as they felt their caste was insulted. Hence of them ran towards the Gujarati's house to fight. The Gujarati mother on seeing the crowds, got scared and called the police. Now the fight became about not the two boys but about the two communities. Luckily the cops came soon and took the two boys to the police station. The Marathi who hit had to pay a fine. The Marathis are not upset about the fine or that their underage son had to go to the police station as there was a police complaint registered in his name. They are only angry only about the caste comment. The son's name is in a Police Chowky and he can become a serial offender if he knows his caste will be with him for every time he hits people. His parents never told him to deal with this verbally and not to hit others. They do not feel their son has done any wrong by hitting. They are not worried about their son's future. They are not concerned about their son's anger. ThePolice station visit is not worrisome. All they are bothered is that after the fight the Gujarati Grandmother said ''these people are like this only" .

After seeing educated terrorists in Kashmir and other places, I know education is not necessarily the key to solving this issue. But freebees is definitely the reason for these problems. When people get all free benefits, jobs, education, seats, there is no struggle and there is definitely no value for the things they are getting. When their future is assured, they have all the time to pick up fights and hit people. And then some play the victim card over caste.