Breaking caste knots

When Deepak Kumar of Patna named his son Sanskar and daughter Sanskriti,he wasnt looking for alliterative names...

When Deepak Kumar of Patna named his son Sanskar and daughter Sanskriti,he wasnt looking for alliterative names; he was sending out a social message. When nine years ago,Kumar decided to go in for an inter-caste marriage,the two words,Sanskar and Sanskriti,roughly meaning value and culture,were thrown at him,a reminder that he stood to lose them if he married a girl from a lower caste.

Now,years after his marriage to Sita Kumari,Deepak,a provision store owner at Yarpur,claims to have enhanced his social standing. Far from losing Sanskar and Sanskriti,he sees them running around in my courtyard,in flesh and blood.

This is just one example of what Manav Jodo Abhiyan MJA,a mass organisation inspired by JPs call to roti and betithat is,people would have to break caste barriers to eat together roti and be willing to give their girls in marriage to boys from other castes betihas achieved in a society that infamously still casts its vote for caste.

The groups achievement of facilitating 1,215 inter-caste marriages in the last 10 years is phenomenal when compared to the state governments record of 292 inter-caste marriages in the last three years. Though the state has an incentive scheme to facilitate inter-caste marriages,it has no available record of such marriages before 2007. Social welfare principal secretary V K Verma says,We distributed

Rs 22 lakh for 88 marriages in 2007-08,Rs 20.5 lakh for 82 marriages in 2008-09 and Rs 30.5 for 122 marriages in 2009-10. The Cabinet recently doubled the incentive for inter-caste marriages but that wasnt enough incentive for couples to come forward.

MJA convener Krishnakant Kranti says: Couples felt discouraged with the whole rigmarole that the social welfare department made them go through. As the money goes to the girl,the department presses for her residential certificate before marriage. But in most cases,girls start living with their husbands at the time of pressing claims for incentives.

In last 10 years,we have facilitated 1,215 marriages across the state. This year has seen over 60 marriages so far. We keep getting updates from our village networks and have also got computers to maintain records, Kranti says.

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Though MJA started in 1992,hammering its objective with seminars,written and verbal slogans and introduction camps for young boys and girls at district and block towns,it couldnt facilitate more than 10-15 inter-caste marriages in a year till the late 1990s.

But from 2000,the message began to have its impact. A group of three individualsChandrabhushan,Ramakant and Krishnakantdid the round of several districts with their ideas and pamphlets,asking village panchayats to hear them out. The group,meanwhile,kept collecting bio-datas of prospective brides and grooms and called their parents to persuade them about inter-caste marriages.

In 2003,MJA arranged 40 marriages in a day at Patna. Other districts followed suit with mass inter-caste marriages.

Chandrabhushan,a long-serving member of the group,says despite a fund crunch,they kept organising awareness campaigns. He says that in most of the marriages,girls came from the so-called lower castes. We mostly have upper-caste boys marrying OBC girls and OBC boys marrying EBC or SC girls. We also had some inter-religion marriages.

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But while these marriages have transcended caste,the word still hovers over peoples psyche. I am not against speaking about my inter-caste marriage but I am worried if that will spoil my sisters marriage prospects, says a Gardanibagh resident when asked about his wedding.

As Chandrabhushan says,its a tough task. He recalled an incident in Bhagalpur in 2005 when they were almost thrashed by the family of a girl. But thats a known hazard of attempting to break caste barriers in Bihar, he says.