Aam aadmi ke khaas masle - (The peculiar problems of mango man)

Caste and Class only apply for the middle range people. The middle castes and middle class are victims of most of the prickly societal issues ranging from caste based marriages to petty corruption. People at the top rung and the bottom are exempt from most of these real life problems.

Is it that the people in the middle make a lot of fuss of everything, or is it that the ones at top and bottom don’t give a damn about it, or are they institutionally beyond these petty affairs?

If the Hindu religion and tradition are alive in India, it is mostly due to the adherence of these middle castes to them. They hold on to rules laid by the Brahmans who themselves might not really bother much about. If not for the middle castes, most of India would have been converted to other faiths, due to the reasons like untouchability, stigma of caste, and the oppression of Dwijas over non-dwijas. The so called avarnas or the Scheduled Castes do not hesitate to leave the religion and accept other non-indic faiths; not only to protest the injustice but also to gain equality. It’s a separate discussion as to how far they were successful in achieving equality in their new faiths. Even any rough estimates would show that the majority of the people visiting temples and making huge donations like the ones at Triupati is the middle castes.

Caste, which is a side-kick of religion, stands to be the most complicating factor in understanding what rules people in India live by. The question of caste occupies an undue predominance particularly in marriage among middle castes. These castes not only look for caste, as in the classification by varna (ex Brahman, kshatriya, vaishya, shudra) but also are particular about the sub-caste ie, the ones like yadav, reddy, kamma, velama, vokkaliga, kurumba etc. which are based on vocation Though all of these fall under the varna of shudra, there is again a mind bogglingly insane hierarchy of superior and inferior complexes. I call them complexes because that is what I believe they are. It’s all in the mind, which is allowed to be controlled by the rules written by someone who considers him the most superior. The insanity does not end even after years and years of liberal, education. How shamefully people call themselves ‘very educated family’ in matrimony profiles, but in the same breath, they write off all other castes putatively lower to them from marrying into. The shamelessness stoops to self-disrespect when they write they are open to an inter-caste marriage but on the condition that the other side is ‘higher’ than their own in the hierarchy of caste wretchedness.

The Brahmins, I think, would be open to marrying into any sub-caste, so long as they fall in the rubric of Brahmins. I mean they only care for the Varna. The scheduled castes I guess would marry into any family which is again a SC without deeper classification. Of course, there is again the factor of region and language, which goes without saying.  The other groups like the ultra-rich, celebrity groups, political families, business houses etc marry on different logics which do not apply to the aam aadmi. It is the middle castes who are the most insane when it comes to the caste question.

Since class is in terms of economic power, the middle classes are strapped with the curse of eking a livelihood even the harshest conditions without even breaking any major rules. Even positive things like education, a decent family, a low paying job become liabilities to the middle class aam aadmi who cannot think of taking any radical steps to break out of this cycle of monthly recharged life. Those at the top are too high up even to imagine the everyday scarcity of common man. They make millions in minutes from crooked deals be it due to their connections, or information or capital clout. They can bend rules, get them amended or even better enter the legislatures and make their own rules. The people at the bottom, on the other hand are too poor to lose anything by taking any risk. They are so at the bottom that only direction they can move in is up. The rags to riches stories of both the good and bad kinds are examples of such risk taking. It is only the middle class that is stuck with the semblance of prosperity and which has a lot to lose if the risk works against them; which the entire socio-economic-political system ensures would happen.

This way, the mango people of this complex country live on…