|
Dear Phukan Saheb
Agree with you, hough I am afraid I cannot help you in any other way.
The labelling a community as a Sudra or Brahmin is not a matter of law. It has of course become a matter of law now because of the need to protect the interest of the communities, particularly those coming from underdeveloped areas and those lagging behind the rest of the country in the matter of education, employment, well-being etc. Several years ago an Ahom married a tribal girl and he then applied for a job which was reserved for tribal candidates. He got the job but on challenge in the court of law, the Ahom lost it. It seems to me that if the girl would have applied for the job, she would have got it. I understand there are other similar cases. As a matter of fact I have not been able to update myself on the point. What I want to bring to your notice is another aspect. You are now living in USA away from your village and you no longer have to abide by the strictures from the elders of the society for not observing all the things that the members of a proper Brahmin family ought to do. So far as marriage is concerned, your family must be ostracised. It will happen in a little town also where there is a sizeable group concerned with preserving the social norms of Brahmins. But it may so happen that after some initial ‘shi…shahs’, people will ignore the matter altogether and will accept the couple. Dr Audrey Cantlie, the author of the book The Assamese carried out some research in a village near Jorhat and found that a number of sudras even managed to become Brahmins or higher castes in course of time. Possibly this rarely happens but obviously there are cases of this type. Then, you may remember the little historical episode known as ‘al loga Bamun’, a number of soldiers who disguised themselves as Brahmins at king’s orders during war and did not revert to their original status after the war was over. At Namti, Sivasagar, where I come from, there was a Bengali gentlemen, one Mr Dutta, a petty tradesman. He settled at Namti. A local Ahom village near which he and his family lived accepted him as an Ahom in a meeting (sobah) of elders. It is a pucca Ahom family now; that I know. |
_______________________________________________ assam mailing list [email protected] http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
