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Hi Gilbert Saxe-Coburg Goethe
Your post came as a surprise but a welcome one to Goanet and our ongoing
controversy on caste. Academic reading suggests that the Indian caste system is
rather unique because the taboos associated with caste are not so much based on
religion but on supposed (highly dubious and always unprovable of course)
inborn notions of superiority, inferiority etc. In other words, the supposed
caste pedigree invariably supercedes much higher material and educational worth
of a partner not of the caste group. In contrast, I think the Sunnis, Shias etc
tend to want to marry their own kind for religious/cultural reasons with one
of the most important concerns being the need to bring up the children in the
'approved' faith. However, within the groups you referred to, there are
marriages across Sunnis and Shias but I am unable to comment on the Sufis. I
have to say however that, among many Muslims in the UK, the seriousness and
intensity with which they will maintain the faith is
mind-boggling and in the worst cases, fathers will kill their own daughters in
deference to 'honour killing' if their daughters take any interest in anyone
outside the narrow confines of their family background. This is pure evil, but
strangely, it hardly applies to their sons. I have yet to hear of a son being
killed in defence of honour killing!
The differences between the ethnic groups that now constitute the UK are
quite different but change is taking place much more rapidly than I had
anticipated. Among the Christian Afro Caribbeans, some 50% of males have white
partners and about 30% of Afro Caribbean women have white partners. Among the
Indians, some 25% of either sex have white partners. There is also increasing
cohabitation/marriage across the ethnic minorities.The group integrating most
slowly seem to be the Muslims but even here, change is taking place among the
more educated.
Let me here briefly refer to a fellow Goanetter with whom I have been
sparring rather a lot on Goanet. He emphasises integration strongly in the UK
but I don't see him doing the same with regard to matrimonial adverts in Goa
(eg in the Herald but thankfully not on Goanet) where caste is emphasised ever
so strongly among the supposed Catholic Goan Brahmins! A well known Goan
academic, Olivinho Gomes, has a nice term for this. It is not an illustration
of endogamy but isogamy!
If you have been reading Goanet correspondence I hope you will have noted my
complete abhorrence of Indian/Goan caste. It is especially disgraceful when
many Catholic Goans will happily say they are Catholic but sustain the evil of
caste in their hearts and minds. However, wherever former Hindus have converted
to other faiths, the former caste hierarchical system easily gets carried into
the new faith and has to be rigorously rejected. I would rather that converts
retained their former 'faith' than be hypocritical and pretend to be what they
are not or sometimes even hijack the new faith by casteicising it!
It is all of course a load of bull and humbug! Sorry this is done at speed.
Cornel DaCosta, London, UK.
Gilbert Saxe-Coburg Goethe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote
Hi John,
Catholics or Baptist etc.do not consider each other superior or
inferior to each other they will happily marry any one of them.
In Muslim caste system a Sunni will not marry a Shea, a Shea will not
marry a Sufi etc, is that not a caste system? than what is.
Gilbert
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