This week’s topic for an altercation with mom was the caste system and why is it so important to marry just within our tiny little caste. What is the difference in culture between all the different castes, when all of them speak the same Telugu?
Everyone talks the same lingo,
everyone cooks the same recipes, everyone watches the same movies,
everyone adores the same stars, everyone cries for the same daily soaps,
everyone laughs at the same jokes…….and an endless list of similitudes.
She saw my point but her contention was that it is a part of our culture that has been passed on through generations. Her parents did the same for her and she wants to do the same for her kids… Congraaats …!!!! And Thanks..!!!!
Origins: In ancient history, roles were defined and people were classified according to their function, occupation and economic place in society. Brahmins’ were to be the spiritual and temporal guides, teachers and exponents of law; Kshatriya were the warriors, princes and kings – in short, the nobility; Vaishya, took on the tasks of agriculture and merchantry; and Shudra included individuals who performed service communities — manual and agricultural laborers, artisans, masons, etc. It made a lot of sense then, as an artisan’s son was trained to be an artisan like himself and so on. So the caste system remained pretty stable.
Couple of centuries later, everyone wanted to be enlightened through education. This did not happen overnight. Couple of generations went by where they had dreams of being highly educated but could not afford it. Then they dreamed of at least providing good education to their kin and many were quite successful. And a generation later when education seeped in through every hierarchy of society, no kin was even remotely associated to the same profession on which his caste was based on… This is the present generation where every other kin is a software engineer, electrical engineer, electronic engineer or an MBA. None of which existed a 100 years ago. Congraaatss.. !!! no escape..!!! join the bandwagon or even better, sleep through it and wake up after your marriage.
Shackling your kids with the same or not, is your wisdom. Looks more like this story…
A little girl was watching her mother prepare a fish for dinner. Her mother cut the head and tail off the fish and then placed it into an over sized baking pan. The little girl asked her mother why she cut the head and tail off the fish. Her mother thought for a while and then said, “I’ve always done it that way -that’s how grandma did it.”
Not satisfied with the answer, the little girl went to visit her grandma to find out why she cut the head and tail off the fish before baking it. Grandma thought for a while and replied, “I don’t know. My mother always did it that way.” So the little girl and the grandma went to visit great grandma to find ask if she knew the answer.
Great grandma thought for a while and said, “Because my baking pan was too small to fit in the whole fish”.
Explains everything…!!
dude, I always feel that there is some sense in same caste marriages….not becos my ancestors followed it or I followed it but I could think of the below reasons:
1) people look for same caste because the bride and the groom shouldn’t start arguing right from day 1 about whose caste/creed is greater in tradition, who has greater values
2) Marriage is not a moment or a phase of life but it is a part of our entire journey after the knot so at any point of time both the partners should never feel inferior or superior in any aspect which would affect their married life…..finding a match using all the possible ways would only help come to a decision that there would not be major hickups.
For example:- In intercaste marriages or for that matter marriages where in both the partners are of different religions, which culture should the next generation follow? who should have the final say? should it always be the male partner becos of the domination he has over the other sex? Already there are a lot of inequalities, why do you want to increase them???
3) Why do people look at the color, height, build, kundli etc., of a person before they recommend someone??? it is not becos someone’s parents did it for him…it is only becos none of the two partners should at any point of time feel inferior or superior becos of the other person’s qualities which were built in but not cultivated
As you said……… something should n’t be followed becos it was done earlier but, I feel that we are lucky to be born in a part of the world which has its roots from several thousand years and in most of the cases traditions are only guidelines to do something in a way which bought our ancestors success…..yes there can be several other ways of doing it….some right which can be followed with no harm but should not be thinking more out of the box that we change the entire cycle (like why should marriages be done between opposite sex…..)
Rahul..
As usual some very sensible stuff from you dude.
Esp, the second and thrid point, I never thought about from that point of view.
Thanks for sharing