When I first heard that Havyaka Brahmins were contemplating bringing brides from amongst the Kashmiri Pandits, I burst out laughing. After I was done mocking them, I realized it was a serious issue. The shortage of girls of marriageable age, due to many reasons, is a story I hear all the time in family gatherings. (Did I mention that I was born a Havyaka Brahmin myself?) When I started to research for the first person account, I was faced again with the supremacy attitude that I am repulsed with. What came out was nothing short of a rant against the prejudices and rigidity of the community. I half-jokingly told ma that I hoped the article would get me ex-communicated!
So Himal Southasian, among my favourite places to read, and to write for, decided to publish the story. Read it here. And because I would like people to also read the original, here below is the complete, unedited rant.
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BRIDESOURCING
So Himal Southasian, among my favourite places to read, and to write for, decided to publish the story. Read it here. And because I would like people to also read the original, here below is the complete, unedited rant.
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BRIDESOURCING
On the day that the
Mayans prophesized the world would end this December, my little
cousin got married. He is 23, going on 24. He still likes sleeping on his mother’s lap and
enjoys being pampered by us older cousins. He is still a kid, even if he is
legally allowed to marry. I could predict the pattern; he will get married and
within two years, be a father.
The family is very
well off, the lineage a respected one in the region. But the urgency
springs from the fact
that he lives with his parents and looks after the vast family estate about 20
kilometers from the nearest big town. Even one of these was enough to keep him
off the eligible bachelors’ list; all combined was a disaster that was
mitigated by a frantic search for a bride high and low. His mother started
looking the day he turned 21. His now wife is two years younger.
This is the latest, albeit
rare, triumph that I am hearing about in my community. Here
is my full disclosure:
I was born into the Havyaka Brahmin community, the coastal
Karnataka wing of a
sub-caste of Brahmins that is, supposedly, perched on the top rung of an
already tall order. The Havyakas have their own dialect, a version of old world
Kannada. The cuisine is distinctive from those from the kitchens of other
sections of Brahmins, with coconut shreds in nearly everything- a regional influence
that- and an array of traditional recipes for jackfruit, raw banana and
breadfruit. Again, cultures are different; the Havyakas of central Karnataka
have another dialect, different cuisines and lesser rigid practices. The
Havyakas are Rama worshippers and owe allegiance to a religious order in
central Karnataka, headed by a portly guru who has his share of corruption
charges and illicit relationships whispered about from the hallowed halls of many
a rumour mill. Ideally, the Havyakas wouldn’t inter-marry with other Brahmins, everyone
else is a “step down”; though the liberals would go as far as to seek, forge alliances
with the Trimathasthas, in which the Havyakas, along with the Shivalli Brahmins
and the Kota
Brahmins, make up the trinity of Brahmin elitedom.
This rigidity, apart
from attitude shifts, is what is giving the community much grief, I observe, perversely,
I have no shame in admitting. My grouse arises from the regressive ideas about
women that the community I was born into has, so rooted that the dialect
assigns only a neuter ‘it’ to the female gender. This from those of the learned
class! I mock the irony every time an uncle or the son he is bringing up to be
just like him makes a flippant comment on women. Sometimes social obligations
stifle my urge to let loose some feministic outcry. I hate that.
So the point is that a
very large number of Havyaka boys and men remained unmarried, for reasons such
as these: not in glamorous enough professions, a skewed sex ratio and if they
still live with their parents, girls these days couldn’t be bothered to put up with
the in-laws, referred to in certain circles as Rahu-Ketu, the inauspicious ones.
Though in keeping with
several Indian communities a son would be the apple of his parents’
eyes, daughters are well loved too. There has never been a known case of female
foeticide or infanticide. So I couldn’t explain the reason for the skewed sex
ratio. Though traditional professions were agriculture, the culinary sector and
priesthood, the silicon valleys of the world are where you would find more
Havyaka people these days. The ones who continued family traditions and became
farmers, chefs and priests and scholars in temples have the hardest time
finding girls willing to marry them. If the prospective groom lives in a
village, then he might as well sign away his dreams of a family. And so a race,
a pure Aryan one at that, is on the verge of extinction, says M G Sathyanarayana.
M G Sathyanarayana is
a man on a mission to almost singlehandedly “save” the community from going the
Parsi way. When I call him, he is in Varanasi ,
sourcing girls to bring back to Sullia, some 4,000 kilometres and 43 hours by
train away, in the coastal district of Dakshina Kannada, Karnataka. I don’t
tell him of my connection with the community, though half way through I sense
that he is desperate to ask me which caste I belong to. He proceeds to give me
an introduction to the Havyakas and I pretend to make notes. The economics of
the trade follow. And I near bristle with indignation and outrage at how matter-of-factly
he explains the whole business of sourcing the brides for the boys back home. Though
I want to smirk at the state of those that were intolerably chauvinistic, who I
grew up watching at every community gathering, as a woman, it offends me to be
made part of the purchase deed.
From Kashmir
to Karnataka
A body of ‘social
service’ people, called Kashyap Yuva Brahmin Vedike in Sullia, led by Sathyanarayana,
arrived at this idea that since both Havyakas and the Kashmir Pandits were
“pure races”, what better way to “save them from their refugee plight” than to
buy the fair, beautiful Kashmiri Pandit girls as brides for the boys and men
back home! The idea was mooted in March but took off only a few months later. Families
that had unmarried boys could register with the association and they would
bring in Kashmiri girls to match with the boys. The association was in for a
surprise. Sathyanarayana tells me that they discovered some 3000 men between
the ages of 22 and 45 who wanted to get married. There are many others who
wouldn’t openly admit their inability to find wives. Where the association
expected up to 50 registrations, there were 300 that attended the meeting and 180
who registered. “As of now we have 384 men ready to get married to any girl as
long as she is a vegetarian. We have stopped taking on more names now until we
finish a trial round of marriages,” Sathyanarayana tells me, proudly. In an
instant, he manages to objectify women and trivialize marriages, reducing the whole
thing to something that reeks of condescension and chauvinism coated with the arrogance
of being a superior race that is making great sacrifices to uplift and protect other
pure blood.
There is something
fundamentally wrong when you approach the act of marriage as a business
transaction. And trade it is, when I hear of the economics at play here.
The numbers game
There are
approximately 4.5-5 lakh Havyaka families out there, Sathyanarayana tells me. They
live primarily along the Konkan coast, from Karwar to Kannur in Kerala, apart from
in parts of central Karnataka. He vehemently denies that the sex ratio is
skewed, claiming that there are 93 girls for every 100 boys. I cannot prove
either ways, the census figures don’t account for this sub-caste. He blames
attitude shifts, holding girls responsible for being educated and making their
own decisions and thus leaving the cooks and the priests unmarried. I am
reminded of a girl who, amidst the theatrics of meeting boys in an arranged
alliance, refused to marry my cousin and was condemned far and wide for doing
so – imagine a girl saying no!
The Jammu and Kashmir government is promising to
rehabilitate Kashmiri Pandits and give them their land and houses back. So now
they are a little hesitant to take up our offer, says Sathyanarayana. “But when
has the government ever done anything it has promised? We are still hopeful,”
he adds, not willing to let go of the Aryans just yet.
Meanwhile he is in Varanasi , getting the
papers ready to bring down ten families to meet boys. The train charges for a
girl and her parents plus other expenses will come up to Rs 45,000. Each girl
will meet at least three boys. Once the match is fixed, the boy’s family has to
pay all the expenses.. The other two need not despair, “they will get another
chance to see a girl,” Sathyanarayana says, rather benevolently. The idea is to
get more than a few girls to marry local boys, so that they wouldn’t miss their
hometowns all too much.
But isn’t culture, food
habits, language, wholly different? I ask. Sathyanarayana, I imagine, is
shaking his head vigorously as he tells me to look at history. “Over 600 years
ago, we all came from the same Sindhu
Valley , the Kashmiri
Pandits and us
Havyakas. We came down
to the south with Shankaracharya. We all have the same religious beliefs and
customs,” he insists. And the girls will learn and adjust, is the obvious
assumption, regardless of lifestyles so different they might as well be from another
country. It isn’t that women over the years haven’t adjusted drastically in marriages,
but the natural assumption that these women ought to be grateful for getting the
chance to do so is what angers me.
His view and that of
several, several others in the community is the same. They believe that
integration with the other pure Aryan races will help develop the communities
and preserve purity. “Brahmins are known for cleanliness, for discipline and
intelligence. We have to ensure that the community does not disappear,” he
tells me.
Though a Havyaka
Brahmin by default of birth, I have no sympathy for the perils that my community
perceives itself to be facing. For the slights I have seen passed around by the
male elders, for every time I have been referred to as an ‘it’, I want to feel vindictive.
But more than that, at a fundamental level, as a woman, I hate the way these
dealings are conducted. The buying of brides isn’t uncommon in other parts of
the country, the world. It has been happening for generations, in one form or
the other. But when you hear the stories from inside the house, listen in on
the business dealings and hear of the furtive attempts at clever matchmaking, you
cannot help but feel the blow. Of being the perpetrator, and the victim, of the
derision of womankind.
Ends/