skyfall wrote:In Sri lanka its really easy to change your cast. Sometimes I feel for the original family members of some surnames.
You can move up few levels of the cast system without any issues. But its not easy to change your cast in India.
Yes skyfall , studying about cast system is interesting but people may think you value it and treat others by cast.
In Sri Lanka , past few decades, many have changed their names to avoid bad treatment from others. Our previous generation was able to identify casts by anybody's name.
At the same time, I have seen the next generations of those who change the cast humiliating other in their original form without knowing history.
Nowadays, it is very rarely you see someone consider cast when dealing with others at your workplace . But few decades ago in 1940-60s even in Government offices they used it openly to insult and demoralise good performing low cast people to block them going up in post. ..... kule ekata Sir kiyanna puluvan da ? .. and most of the times promotions were not given.
In 1890s british rulers supported a cast of farmers called Govigama and asked others to join it to make them more powerful in numbers. People who had links to Malaya and Dutch too joined this cast. After 1897 the British allowed only Govigama people to enter government jobs.
DNA testing has disclosed that Sinhalese have fair links to people living in Bengal area in East India. Archaeology reveal people lived here 30-40,000 years ago. Those original people lived here (yaksha, naga, deva) may have mixed with bengalis arrived 2500-3000 years ago. Later, people from some parts of India migrated here from time to time.
People from Burma, Java and South India also came and mixed with Sinhalese. Some groups maintain their identity by marrying within group.
Scholars think 3 casts in South of the Island formed from 3 groups arrived from India time to time.
Karawa - Kuru Rata near Pakistan and secondarily from Kerala, Durawa - Orissa , Salagama -Saliya gama.
We can see a similar or parallel system in Jaffna.
Many other casts in smaller numbers has joined Govigama , the biggest in numbers, during colonial periods.
Somehow, present day Sri Lankans, Sinhala, Tamil, Muslim , Javanese or any other show different behavior patterns to present day Indians. You can read many comments in internet from tourists visited India and then came here.
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