It's easy to say forget about caste, don't get obsessed with the issue and the like... as long as we are not ourselves victims of casteism. Or, if we want to pretend that this issue doesn't exist.
It does! It's more honest to acknowledge it. As my friend and journalist P Sainath told me once, as we crossed the ferry from Chopdem (Pernem) to Siolim, "If you were born in a Dalit family, you would have known the meaning of caste... and your place in the world... by the age of two." Sainath, incidentally, is the grandson of the late V V Giri, the one-time vice-president of India. A great journo, who has spent years looking at the 'other' India. Likewise, it's a bunkum to argue that Catholicism doesn't recognise casteism, ergo caste doesn't exist in Catholicism. Caste may have no sanction at the ritual level; but does that mean it doesn't exist (and have widespread acceptance) at the social level among the Catholic community in Goa (and elsewhere in India, including Kerala, etc)? On the question of whether one can be a Brahmin and an anti-casteist at the same time, perhaps the question would be better framed if it had asked whether one can subscribe to Brahminism and believe in anti-casteism at the same time. (You can fall into one category by accidents of birth, and into the other by subscribing to a value system which, perhaps not wrongly, has come to be seen as keystone to upholding the inequities of the caste system.) Just a few thoughts that struck me while reading some recent posts.FN -- Frederick Noronha (FN) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Independent Journalist
