Recently, Nirupama Pathak from Koderma, Jharkhand, an alumnus from Indian Institute of Mass Communication New Delhi, a journalist with Business Standard, is killed by her family members. She was opposed to get married to her batch mate Priyabhanshu from her institute, as he, a Kayastha, was not from her caste Brahmin. In order to stop her from getting married outside the caste, Nirupama’s family did not find anything but to kill her.
As we are moving ahead, we feel that the distinction between Inter-cast and Intra-cast is slowly fading away, because people are becoming educated, mingling with other cultures, beliefs and principles, and so open to accept it gradually, though old generation still exists to resist against the gradual changes. But, this incident fired up the debate in many minds about Love and arranged marriage. Some people of my generation also still have a firm belief in old value system, inherited from their cultures and want to stick with them, whereas some want to embrace new changes to eradicate the limitations put by the castes and creeds. Whatever be the case, a life is lost in this fight – a loss that can never be recovered, a heinous crime that can never be pardoned.
Let me put my point of view on this. 'Love and arranged' and 'Inter-cast and Intra-cast', these four words that I mentioned above have some connections with each other. Unfortunately, they get related in very limited sense. If you put these words in a simple matrix, you should have four different combination. But, only two exist in our society. Love and arranged marriage always go with Inter-caste and Intra-cast respectively. And other two possibilities: Inter-caste arranged and Intra-caste love marriage are too rare to be considered. Our society can never think of Inter-caste-arranged-marriage presently and probably in near future. It still has to wait for considerable time to appear. I believe, arrival of this will end the caste system from the society, and will be able to establish ideal atmosphere where people will be distinguished by their expertise and abilities. Intra-caste-love-marriage is the best form available, but I never understood why people find their love outside their communities to trouble their parents. I wonder if anyone would have asked his/her counterpart’s community she/he belongs to, before being committed. One of the reasons might be the existence of a number of religions, castes, sub-castes and sub sub-castes. It narrows down the probability to the negligible. So ideally, there exist two forms of marriage - fighting against each other to proof their superiority. One existed since long and dispersed its roots so dominantly that it has been ruling since long in our mind despite many flaws. Another is trying to come out of its womb to fight against the existing one to get some place to surface.
Let me explore the other dimension of marriage – without considering whether it is love or arranged. For me, it is sanctity of a union of two incomplete halves doomed separately on this earth. One has to bear the pain and put sufficient effort to get the other part to make life complete and meaningful. It must be independent of any religion, any boundary and any kind of constraint, which can distort its shape. Caste is one of them. God never created us with any label; it is us who named it. It is us, who made it complex.
If caste is such an obstacle for anything specially marriage, then how did it emerge in our society? One of appropriate explanations is that our ancestors created the caste system in accordance with the role different coteries played in the society. Initially, it was based on the profession of the person he chose, not on his family background he belonged to. But, as it happens with every noble cause, upper and powerful caste exploited the opportunities and confined their knowledge and abilities to themselves and passed on only to their descendants. Marriage was the best tool to execute what they wanted. Therefore, one’s birth decided one's worth.
What is needed to do is to break the shackle and produce a system independent of any such fuss – a society, which will be able to dissolve all these and become transparent and clean with no specific constituents.
P.S: There might be different points of views from you on this. Thus, you are requested to comment.
