Hinduism has always policed temple entry & access to drinking water sources (think caste-segregated wells), punishing those who flout these “rules”. Poor Asif was “punished” for his “transgression”, as countless Dalits have before him. Be appalled, but spare me the surprise. 1/
I’ve been to many villages in Rajasthan and UP where people from disadvantaged castes would be risking death if they dared to try and drink water from a well earmarked for so-called “upper” castes. And the situation is no different elsewhere in the country. The entry of Dalits 2/
..into temples was fought tooth and nail by Brahmins and other “upper” castes. In Bengali, the term for castes who are of “similar” status is “jol-chol”, ie quite literally “those whom you can share water with”. Not sharing space, water and food: this is CENTRAL to caste.
Casteism infects the practice of even ostensibly egalitarian religions in S Asia. The original sin of Asiya Bibi, the Pakistani Christian woman hounded for blasphemy, was to drink water from a shared glass. Mangalore matrimonials: “RCBC” stands for “Roman Catholic Brahmin Caste”.
Kerala’s Surianis occupied a special place in the social hierarchy because they supposedly descended from Namboodiris converted ~2000 yrs ago. The idea of hierarchy, which caste formalizes, is incredibly powerful. As many have found, you can convert but your caste follows you.
Most regressive social practices in the subcontinent can be traced back in some way to the fundamental idea that some people are, by virtue of their birth, superior to others. It is also true that people have resisted this idea for millennia - but it remains incredibly powerful.
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I was surprised that @sarkar_swati, who claims expertise on Bengali society/culture, was unaware of something as basic as castes in Bengal having been classified as “(A)Jol-chol”. Since she insisted I was somehow concocting this, here are some references for her edification. 1/
Dasgupta, A (2000), “In the Citadel of Bhadralok Politicians: The Scheduled Castes in West Bengal”. Journal of the Indian School of Political Economy. ispepune.org.in/PDF%20ISSUE/20…
Roy, U (2010), “Aestheticizing labor: an affective discourse of cooking in colonial Bengal”, South Asian History and Culture. “...the most significant distinction in caste status .... was in terms of jalchal and ajalchal...”.doi.org/10.1080/194724…
Bangladesh’s excellent human development/social indicators are deservedly lauded as far better than India’s, but I was curious how they compared to West Bengal, arguably a very good comparator. So here are some data. 1/
Total Fertility Rate: West Bengal - 1.6 (2016 estimate); Bangladesh - 2.17 (2017 estimate). So both Bengals have dramatically reduced their birth rates, but West Bengal has actually done even better and is now well below replacement levels of fertility. 2/
Literacy: West Bengal (77.1%) again higher than Bangladesh (72.8%). WB rate is from 2011 and Bangladesh’s is the UNESCO estimate for 2017, so the gap may have changed assuming both continued to become more literate. 3/