When a close relative came of marriageable age, his parents signed him up on a marriage phone app to arrange a suitable match (read: same caste), using technology to follow an ancient Indian tradition of arranged marriages to maintain endogamy. Indian society has seen a plethora of different types of matchmakers – from marriage agencies set up by certain castes to neighborhood aunts who match families before matching partners.
In India, marriage mobile apps are designed to appeal to certain communities, regions, religions, degrees, incomes and castes. In many cases, the bride and groom often saw each other on the wedding day. Family compatibility may become more important than partner compatibility.
In recent years, these dating apps have borrowed “swipe right” and chat features from dating apps like Tinder and Bumble.
For all intents and purposes, marriage apps are evolving to encourage more open communication between potential partners by reducing “family” barriers. Despite this, the applications prompt to download their “kundali” – a natal chart in Hindu astrology that deterministically predicts an individual’s behavior and future based on a variety of elements, including caste. Interestingly, a common feature across all apps is a caste filter that allows your profile to be visible to certain castes and invisible to others, ensuring endogamy in the digital age.
So how do we make sense of this intriguing paradox? Marriage apps have evolved to accommodate the “modern” culture, in which the interests and compatibility of the partner are of central importance in marriages. Thomas Misa, a historian who studies the intersections between technology and society, suggests that one should consider the “progress and development” of technology within society by examining it as a “co-construction”. Likewise, these mobile applications are not isolated entities but rather represent a particular trend already existing in social reality. The persistence of caste in these “manifestations of modernity” challenges claims about the death of caste. It demonstrates the mechanism of exclusion in the caste system practiced by endogamy as pointed out by Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar in his 1936 book The annihilation of castes. Ambedkar was an accomplished scholar-turned-politician, whose thoughts and books provided a foundation for the anti-caste movement. THE caste annihilation was originally prepared for a speech at the Jat-Pat Todak Mandal (an anti-caste reformist group whose name translates to “The Breaking of the Caste System” in Hindi/Urdu). However, members of the group felt that the speech was too controversial and inflammatory and could lead to violent retaliation from the conservative Hindu community, as Ambedkar had attributed the inequalities and lower status of women to Hinduism and called to the destruction of religious scriptures. . The conference was eventually canceled as Ambedkar refused to edit parts of the speech, per members’ request. He published the speech in the form of this book; this seminal work took on a life of its own and informed many critical debates and scholarship on caste and spearheaded the anti-caste movement.
In India, caste is a dominant social institution, based on ideologies of purity and pollution, which has influenced the economic and material realms. It is a rigid system of social classification which divides the population into “upper castes” – brahmins (priests and intellectuals), Kshatriyas (warriors) and Vaishyas (merchants) — and “lower castes” — Shudras And Avarnas, who practice manual work considered polluted. This link between occupation, status and pollution excluded the lower castes from access to public spaces such as wells, transport, education, temples, etc. Regional variations notwithstanding, caste was and continues to be a reality in the subcontinent. Historically, there have been times when caste boundaries have shown fluidity. However, the situation of the caste oppressed never really changed. This ritualized and historical system of inclusion and exclusion has led to the persistence of disadvantages for the “lower castes” because they have not been able to access the paths of their development.
Many scholars believed that industrialization and modernization would ultimately lead to the destruction of the caste system, but the evidence proves otherwise. Caste has modernized in many ways. Recent developments in science, technology, and especially the internet, have enabled the technological manifestation of caste even in matchmaking matters.
Ambedkar’s scholarship exposed the insidious nature of the caste system. The presence of caste filters in matrimonial apps points to her modernized avatar. So, as Dr. Murali Shanmugavelan suggests, it is useful to think about caste in “Non-essentialist” terms to observe how it influences various fields. While marriage apps illustrate a reproduction of reality without really challenging the status quo, social media websites like Twitter and Instagram have been taken down by journalists, academics and activists for their obvious caste biases. For example, Hansraj Meenathe founder of Tribal Army, raised a on line petition chastising Twitter for providing blue checkmarks to those who subscribe to Twitter Blue while withholding the same for Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST), and Other Backward Castes (OBC) activist accounts, recognized as being marginalized due to caste by the Constitution of India. Meena and other activists have alleged that Twitter’s bias towards account verification involves caste bias because anti-caste activists, from marginalized communities, take a long time to receive Blue Ticks or don’t receive them. no way. Since Blue-Tick accounts are “adequately” verified, they have greater visibility and wider reach compared to other accounts that may have a substantial following, but no official tag. This system hampers the diversity of perspectives and turns these platforms into echo chambers.
Digital India has also seen several instances of caste bias. For example, Instagram user Big Fat Bao reported that a self-proclaimed poster read ‘Annihilation of Caste’ has been removed by Instagram for ‘violating community standards’.
caste annihilation is one of the most famous tracts in which Ambedkar draws the connection between caste and Hinduism, highlighting how the agency of women is reduced to maintain the system. The anti-caste and Dalit movements used this tract as a fundamental ideology to resist the caste system. The book has been published in multiple languages by state governments, independent publishers and international publishers. So, legally, there’s nothing offensive about the title or tagline (as it’s often used).
In a article discussing newsroom representation of the DBA (Dalit-Bahujan-Adivasi) community in newsrooms, Dilip Mandal laments the death of the optimistic belief that the internet could provide democratized access to diverse discourse by amplifying marginalized perspectives and experiences. Journalists from the dominant castes who occupy prominent positions in mainstream media organizations have simply reproduced the ideologies associated with the caste system on the platform. While cheap internet fare, free video editing services and public Wi-Fi have enabled the proliferation of Dalit-Bahujan-centric media, Mandal adds the caveat that “freedom of expression does not mean not necessarily that there will be equality of expression”.
Technologies are not born in a social vacuum, but often adapt to and reflect society. Robert Young, a stalwart in the field of the history of science, offers a framework that helps explain this interplay between ideology, science, and society. In an article published in 1977, Young notes that the direction of “scientific” progress and facts reflects the ideology of the day: Think of the large-scale institutionalization of environmental education degrees in the wake of climate change. In the article“Science East Social Relations” (1977), he states succinctly:
“An anthropology of knowledge invites us to see our teaching and research institutions as social systems. The three elements – social system, socialization, and belief system – concur with, mediate, and reinforce (both directly and indirectly) the existing framework of order, power, and ideology…The social relations of these institutions are the social relations of society. ”
Young’s conceptualization helps us understand how existing caste inequalities fit into technologies in the form of creation And Implementation. Ambedkar had pointed out that “caste is a state of mind”, an abstract and arbitrary thought which manifests itself in behaviors, social structures and systems. In India, the “upper castes” shape modernity from their ideas and their beliefs, by virtue of their high social positions. Research studies on the stories of engineering and science education in India reveal the Brahmanization of these disciplines: the emphasis on rote learning, the progressive reduction of practical or technical skills and the hard work shaping the pursuit of knowledge as a Brahminical vocation.
However, all is not gloomy. Many Dalits and anti-caste activists have open dialogues about the intersection of caste and technology, which has launched sustained pressure on multinationals and big tech companies to consider the consequences of discriminatory design and practices. These incidents reveal the insidious nature of caste and its tangible impact in different areas in different ways. Ambedkar said caste would become an issue wherever Hindus travel. He has now cyber traveled!
