‘I rode a horse and wore Rajvadi clothes at my wedding to make a point’

I got married in February to Aruna. For my wedding, I got two mares and we carried out varghodo (bridegroom procession) in my village along with a music party for garba, which was attended by around 700 people. For the occasion, I also got two pairs of Rajvadi (royal) clothes stitched that are traditionally worn by people from the Kshatriya community. Each pair cost me Rs 8,000.

The reason for riding a horse and wearing Rajvadi clothes was to make a point — no caste is upper or lower in the society and that we, Scheduled Castes (SC), can ride a horse and carry out the varghodo. And that so-called lower castes can do everything that the so-called upper castes do.

By profession, I am an expert in shuttering for building construction and I earn around Rs 30,000-40,000 a month. As a school drop-out, I had initially planned on being a diamond worker, but decided against it since I didn’t want to be a slave to someone else. So, I joined my elder brother who is also in construction and learnt shuttering from him.

I don’t like the term Dalit. We don’t want to be Dalits and I don’t like to be referred to as a Dalit. At the most, one may call us Scheduled Caste, but certainly not Dalits.

I live in Gangda, Gir-Somnath district, Saurashtra. Our village has not seen much of discrimination and people actually live without any caste-based confrontation, it’s not the same across my state. My village is dominated by SCs, people from the Kshatriya community, followed by Muslims. I have many friends from the Kshatriya community and we regularly visit each other’s homes. Some of them also attended my wedding and participated in the varghodo.

However, that does not mean that discrimination and atrocities are not committed against our community. There are many places in Gujarat where SCs cannot carry out varghodo without police protection. There have been caste-based offences against our community, like murder and rape. Whenever I hear of such incidents, I visit the place with my friends.

For my wedding, I got two mares. One from my friend, Ramesh Sarvaiya of Mota-Samadhiyala village, and the other from a Patidar community man from the neighbouring Panchvada village.

Ramesh bhai was a victim of the infamous incident of public flogging of his family by some self-styled cow vigilantes in Una in July 2016. There was a false claim that he and his family had killed a cow.

The videos of public flogging of the Sarvaiyas went viral on social media; it led to a huge agitation. We did play a part in making those videos viral and even participated in the agitation.

This incident led to Ramesh bhai asserting his identity and buying a mare which he rents out for weddings in the region. He usually charges anywhere between Rs 8,000 to 10,000 for the procession; I got a concession!

As told to Parimal Dabhi