Repost This Article
Photo: Jazz Defo
I’ll often join a group on Facebook, without much thought, when a friend requests me to do so. I wanna share the love, and don’t necessarily take the time to delve deeper into the meanings of of groups like, “Hot Chocolate” “F-ck Gluten, I’ll Punch Gluten In the Face” and “Those Who Enjoy + Partake In the Distribution and Acquisition of High Fives” (yes, all groups I am a part of).
But it is certainly interesting to check out some of the groups on Orkut, India’s Facebook equivalent, as did a recent Global Post article. That’s because it is a place where “young, urban” Indians can meet people in their caste, as part of groups such as Brahmins of India, The Great Marathas and i love intercaste marriage.
Oh, right, the caste system. Something we sometimes forget (or maybe assume has changed in the youthful, urbanized centers of the country?) about India, what will all of the yoga this and spiritual that, and even with the well-publicized slums that we consider somewhat comparable to our homeless in the West.
Seems the caste system, according to social media expert Gaurav Mishra, has failed to shift much at all:
Surprisingly with urbanization, with education, with more people traveling and getting exposed to other cultures, these divisions have not really gone away. Caste even now — even in urban, educated India — is still an extremely big issue.
Caste Vs. Class
It really should come as no surprise that the caste system ended up playing a role in social media. From the more simple voting in polls about the shyness factor of Brahmin (one of the highest castes) girls to the more complex socio-political ramifications of discrimination, programs similar to affirmative actions, and empowerment or disempowerment within tribes, social sites are simply a microcosm of culture the same way they are in the West.
Hearing about this setup made me ponder our own social networking ways. Then I remembered an article I read about the caste…ahem, class divisions popping up between MySpace and Facebook users, beginning in 2007. As Facebook initially was an “invite only” platform for college students developed by a couple of Harvard minds, it quickly became the “cool clique” to get into.
Even though it opened to high school kids in 2005, their beginnings, and the negative media coverage that MySpace was beginning to get about being “sketchy”, made the divisions between Facebook and MySpace clear: one was for college students, the other was for musicians and those who didn’t quite make the cut. And to some extent, although Facebook has grown by leaps and bounds since then, the socio-economic breakdowns have remained the same.
So, I can’t help but wonder – are our social networking habits really that different from India’s? They may not be quite as well-defined, but there certainly seems to be a similar flavor.
What do you think of India’s caste system showing up in their social media, and the class system showing up in ours? Share your thoughts below.
Christine Garvin
Christine Garvin is a certified Nutrition Educator and holds a MA in Holistic Health Education. She is the founder/editor of Living Holistically...with a sense of humor and co-founder of Confronting Love. When she is not out traveling the world, she is busy writing, doing yoga, and performing hip-hop and bhangra. She also likes to pretend living in her hippie town of Fairfax, CA is like being on vacation.
Connect with Facebook
Great comparison between Myspace and Facebook. I’ve got more thinking to do around this….I feel a blog post response coming on.
Great post. Never even thought about this. Really interesting.
I never thought about that connection between Myspace and Facebook, but sounds dead on. Myspace is dead to me, anyway.
Christine,
Orkut is not India’s Facebook equivalent. It might have been five years ago, but there are far more Facebook users today.
For the first time, and very reluctantly, I find myself disagreeing with something that has been published on this website…the caste system, and Indian culture overall are much too complex to be discussed in this way. Also, like Reeti says, Orkut is not the Facebook equivalent for India. I don’t think it is true that the caste system is as intrinsically relevant to divisions in Indian society as it used to be, at least in the urban context. I am Indian, born and brought up and educated in India, and I am pretty sure I can speak for myself and other urban friends about the increased flexibility of these divisions that would have been rigid some time ago.
Shreya, thank you for disagreeing! You’re right, the caste system is entirely too complex for someone like me, who has never been a part of it, to write about. The article that I referenced was an intriguing find to me, but even as I related what it said, I knew that there was certainly deeper implications underneath it AND that the media often likes to play up to old prejudices. So I apologize, and am glad that you shared your obviously much more embedded point-of-view.
Mostly, I wanted to bring forth the idea that Americans in general don’t like to believe that divisions still exist for us that would be comparable to the caste system, even though that might be the case.
Christine, Orkut has been dead a long time back in India.
Caste system in India is very real and some times it can get really ugly too. Even in an urban, educated society, prevalence of caste system is widespread. But, it can vary from region to region and culture to culture. e.g. In the northern parts of India, especially the states of Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan & Punjab, an inter caste marriage may actually mean a death sentence for the couple, while in the east – in the states of West Bengal, Orissa, Assam & the North East – it may be tolerated to a large extent as long as both of them are from the same religion.
With continued urbanization and increase in the purchasing power, nowadays a new division is fast emerging. That between the affluent Indian and his not so lucky counterpart.
But the assertions on Dalits are factually wrong to a large extent. In India, there’s a reservation system in place, one that ensures that in education institutions as well as in Govt. jobs, there is a fair share of people from all the castes. Of the total, 15% is reserved for Scheduled Castes (SC), 7.5% for Scheduled Tribes (ST), 27.5% for the Other Backward Castes (OBC) and the rest are open to all.