> I had noted your tongue in cheek answer to my question on Untouchables in > Goa among the Catholics and Hindus. Unfortunately, my earlier reply to you > did not get through the ether. Cornel
Hi Cornel: Your questions suggest you are uncertain about what the grassroots situation on caste (in this case, untouchability) among the Goan Catholic really is. To add to the complication, the reality that those with access to the Net are overwhelmingly unlikely to be from any extreme sub-altern sections is unlikely to bring in anything other than tongue-in-cheek replies. Most Catholic Goans tend to pretend as if caste doesn't exist, or that they know nothing about it. Firstly, you might be aware that every village has its "Mharvaddo", which is almost always located at one extreme of the village. In Saligao, given the derrogatory connotations the word has, the name was sought to be adapted -- amidst some reluctance from those who don't feel the pinch -- to Bairo Alto. Many predominantly Catholic (or once-Catholic) villages have this kind of a reality. The Mhars are an aboriginal group with extremely low social status, and my friend Dadu Mandrekar (whom I mentioned some while back, in the context of digital photography) is a community leader. While their network is predominantly made up of Hindu Mhars, they try to network with the Catholic Mhars, who share many but not all of the social problems. Because of the so-called "unclean" work that communities like the Mahars (basket-weavers) and Chamars (leather workers) do, they fall in the Dalit or 'Scheduled Caste' status. While I do not know of Christian chamars (the leather workers and cobblers have tended to be Hindu), there definitely are Catholic Dalits in the form of Mhars. You can read the Goa volume of the 'People of India' book by Dr K S Singh (Anthopological Survey of India) for a listing of all caste groups. Of course, Catholicism does not sanction concepts like 'ritual pollution' and 'unclean work'. (So, you could say that there is a 'social untouchability' if not a 'ritual' one.) Just because the religion doesn't accept concepts of 'uncleanliness' does not mean that people who have lived with the caste ideology for generations will not suffer biases after a change of their religion! Social apartheid does continue to exist, among Catholics too. You just need to enter the marriage market, for instance, to know that. (This is one reason we refuse to accept caste labels in the Cybermatrimonials column. But that is just a token step, and doesn't wish caste out of existence.) More importantly, there is this tendency to equate the 'caste problem' with the woes of the Dalit population. Agreed, the Dalits are at the very lowest end of the caste hierarchy and face the full fire of bigotry. But there are a whole range of caste issues in between. Even among the Catholics -- from infighting among the supposedly 'elite' castes (Brahmins and Chardos), to the aspirations and politics of the intermediary-castes, the continued neglect of the significantly large aboriginal Gawada section of Goa's population (quite a few of them Catholics), the resurgence in the one-man-one-vote times of the numerically larger caste groups, strange alliances on caste bases in Salcete politics, the dominance of political parties (or even groups like the RSS) among caste networks and much more.... Just thought of sharing these few thoughts, though I'm not sure if I've added anything new. FN ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Frederick Noronha 784 Near Convent, Sonarbhat SALIGAO GOA India Freelance Journalist TEL: +91-832-2409490 MOBILE: 9822122436 http://fn.swiki.net http://www.livejournal.com/users/goalinks fred at bytesforall.org http://www.bytesforall.org
