What is your caste?

[Guest guest]

What is your caste?

 

This incident happened a few weeks ago. We live in a North American city and my

son is a teenager attending his freshman in High School. As a part of his world

culture class, his teacher wanted to have a class demonstration of marriage

system in India. My son along with another girl student participated in the

class room demo and my son returned from the school that day and narrated his

experience to me. He asked me what caste did he belong to and what his religion

was.

 

The classroom demo apparently went like this:

The student: what is your name? My son answered what his name was.

The student: What is your caste? My son: I don't know.

The student: What is your religion? My son: I am not sure. We go to Baba, I

guess that is my religion!

 

What happened after the above conversation is beyond the context of this

write-up. It was a happy revelation for me that as the one who " goes " to Baba, I

have done something good without my knowledge. That is, not to teach my children

their caste and religion in the name of their heritage. I observed that in the

name of our culture and heritage, there is a tendency to instill our identity as

one belonging to a certain caste or a religion, belonging to a certain region or

speaking a certain language. As Sai children what is more fulfilling than having

Baba has one's own and only identity. Only with that identity, one would be able

to achieve the harmony so needed for our times and our children's.