Study charts caste identities In social media

MUMBAI: Tradition and modernity. If only they could be kept in neat little boxes to avoid messy tangles. Rajeev, a youngster from a far-flung Chennai suburb, is trying to balance both worlds by juggling two Facebook profiles. One is for his engineering college buddies, and the other to fraternise with kin from his caste. The twain shall never meet if he has his way . “I don't want my college friends to know that I am so involved in my

caste

,“ says Rajeev.

At the same time, Rajeev wants to avoid his caste brethren from prying into his secular

identity

, where he might have “lower social status people“ friends. This way, he feels that he keeps both parties happy .

Virtual lives remain as intricate as those in the real world. Caste pops up in myriad ways online -from closed groups that celebrate nostalgia and glories of the past to curious double lives of people like Rajeev, who most often come from rapidly urbanising areas.The more brazen users of the lot might proclaim that there is no such thing as honour killing, and deny dalit youth V Sankar's murder, the latest such case in Tamil Nadu. The timid and the confused majority join closed groups and pray that their double life is not found out by both sets of `friends'.

“Many think that this is the right thing to do to avert caste problems.While this sounds like a great strategy to follow, it actually indicates identity confusion,“ says researcher Shriram Venkatraman, who came across many such cases in Rajeev's village and surrounding areas. Caste and family identities have got a boost with rising use of

social media

apps by smartphone users, even in villages. As part of the ethnographic study , “Why We Post“ by anthropologists from University College London, Venkatraman picked an “unusual site“ on Chennai's outskirts that has a cluster of villages and an IT complex, which has more than two lakh employees.

The idea was to study both populations, and also the growing equality of access brought in by smartphone usage. He found that both the IT worker and the farmer remained preoccupied with questions of caste and their south Indian identity online too.“The world that they live in isn't bereft of any of these.They just continue it on social media, which is nothing but a continuing space of actual lives,“ he says.

But it isn't easy if you want to have best of both worlds, like Rajeev. He feels uneasy about advocating a narrow, communal agenda at one place while acting `modern' at the other.“He is stuck between his loyalty to his kinsmen and to his friends. But like many youngsters he knows how to mediate his way through both struc tures with care,“ says Venkatraman.

There are those who go to extremes online. Like the Villupuram based advocate T S Arunkumar, who congratulated Sankar's killers and offered free legal aid to the accused.

“It was an open declaration and was removed only after people complained. This kind of hate speech in the name of free speech has been happening for over the past three years,“ says dalit leader D Ravikumar. Many such groups came into prominence in Tamil Nadu after dalit youth Ilavarasan's murder in 2013 and the violent politicisation of such conflicts by parties, he says.

“We thought new methods of communication will empower; instead they are being abused. There should be laws to deal with such hate speech while sensitising people about social media and internet,“ says Ravikumar.

Online caste groups aren't a new phenomenon. They were there in Yahoogroups in the 1990s, and flourished with Orkut's arrival in 2004. A 2010 analysis shows that there were more than 100 caste-based communities on Orkut. “Six years ago, we found that more than 60% of the group members were highly educated people. Most of them were graduates or engineering students who joined groups like brahmins, dalits, or engineers against reservation,“ recalls Mumbai-based social science researcher Sunil Gangavane.

Digital penetration was still limited to those who could afford broadband or data charges. People had by then warmed up to the idea that they had the opportunity to craft their own virtual identities. “You could do things that are not generally allowed and choose whom to be friends with or to share your photographs with.Young people were discovering taboo topics like caste, which are not discussed in public,“ says Gangavane.

When Facebook became popular, these groups, too, migrated. “A subset of it is there on WhatsApp,“ says Venkatraman. You need to be invited to most such groups, especially on Whatsapp.

The groups come in all shades, from subsets of major religions to clans from a particular area. For instance, there is Trivandrum Nairs and Kongu Nattu Gounder and Goundachi, apart from groups with suffixes such as `international forums' and `protection groups'. Discussions involve history of the caste, the place of origin, rituals, gods, place of origin, rituals, gods, festivals and how to reclaim their identity. Some also discuss the societal changes and their effect on a caste, irritation over youngsters who ignore traditions, and occasional bashing of other groups.

In rural areas, this activity is predominantly driven by men who fear that smartphones in women's hands could lead to `friendship' with those from lower castes. Rajah, a 22-year-old computer science student from the Chennai suburb, is always signed onto FB but not his sister, who studies in the same college as he does.

“His reasons for keeping her out from the `clutches' of social media is related to the discourses on `ideal Tamil women'. He has several women college mates as friends but they all come from the city ,“ says Venkatraman. The popularity of such groups among youngsters means that they are increasingly being shaped by narrow agendas and concerns expressed by fellow members.

Rajeev, for all his deft handling of social media, knows he might have to choose one over the other in the future. When Venkatraman asked him which of the two profiles will last, he said the “secular“ one as he plans to move out of the village for a job. But then again, he might keep both, he adds as an afterthought. One gives him a readymade identity and sense of rootedness, the other gives a wider network of friends and a politically correct image. Who says you can't have it all.

~ Caste groups were in existence since the time of Yahoogroups in the 1990s
~ Social networking site Orkut had at least more than 100 such groups in 2010
~ Facebook now has several groups; some are subsets of religions, while others indicate place origins
~ An ethnographic study in a Chennai suburb found that youngsters use two Facebook accounts, one for talking to caste brethren, the other to interact with ‘secular’ college buddies
~ Most groups are invite-only, especially the ones on Whatsapp
~ Online groups discuss a community’s origins, deities, festivals; sometimes, badmouth other castes and incite violence

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