In January 2021, the Karnataka State Brahmin Development Board, set up by the BS Yediyurappa-led Karnataka government, announced two schemes to provide monetary benefits to poor Brahmin women marrying within their community. The first scheme Arundathi, will provide Rs 25,000 to Brahmin brides, and the second scheme Maitreyi, will assure a bond of Rs 3 lakh to Brahmin women who marry priests in the state.
With these schemes, the state is officially promoting the caste system and controlling women’s sexuality, say activists and legal experts. Neither is desirable for a society that has widespread caste and gender discrimination, they add. Plus, the Brahmin board’s actions are in direct contradiction to the state’s other policies to promote inter-caste marriages and widow re-marriage.
The Brahmin board is similar to boards of around 20 other castes in Karnataka formed to appease particular communities. It was set up after the Union government introduced reservations for economically weaker upper castes in 2019. These boards have a variety of schemes to give financial assistance to the economically weaker sections in their community. For example, one scheme under the Thanda Development Board set up for the Banjara community provides financial aid to women self-help groups. There are other schemes to aid people to purchase land, gain employment and set up businesses.
But unlike other boards, the Brahmin board announced two schemes that encourage marriage within the community. Even the Arya Vysya board, another one set up for an upper caste, does not have a scheme incentivising marriage. “It is only the Brahmin board that incentivises marrying within the community. If you look at the schemes under other boards, they do not discuss marriage,” says R Siddaraju, a Dalit rights activist working with National Dalit Movement for Justice.
TNM contacted officials in at least five boards including the Maharshi Valmiki Scheduled Tribe Development Corporation; D Devaraj Urs Backward Classes Development Corporation; and the Dr BR Ambedkar Development Corporation. The officials stated that there are no schemes under their purview that give financial aid for couples of the same caste.
In most cases, the officials pointed to the Karnataka government’s own Social Welfare Department which incentivises inter-caste marriage. Couples who marry outside their caste bracket and earn less than Rs 5 lakh annually will be able to apply for the inter-caste marriage scheme. “Inter-caste marriage incentive is given to SC individuals residing in the state to reduce casteism and promote a more accepting society,” reads a statement on the Social Welfare Department’s official website.
It also has a scheme for intra-caste marriage among couples belonging to different sub castes and whose annual family income is below Rs 2 lakh. Those who wish to apply can go to the taluk office or even apply online.
However, the Brahmin development board’s scheme to incentivise marriage within the same caste has come under criticism. “If the caste system is a virus we are trying to get rid of, then how is it fair that there are schemes by the Brahmin development board that incentivise marrying within the same caste?” asks Dalit rights activist Siddaraju.
His words are echoed by Priyank Kharge, a Congress leader and former Social Welfare Minister in Karnataka. “If you read the Basava philosophy or Dr Ambedkar’s philosophy, you will see that if you really want to do away with the caste system, the one way to do that is inter-caste marriages. This in turn leads to social empowerment,” Priyank Kharge tells TNM. “Is the idea behind the schemes by the Brahmin board tied to self preservation? This question should be posed to the Brahmin board. This is tied to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s (RSS) ideology,” he added.
Ambedkar in his book Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development establishes endogamy or enforcing marriages within one’s caste as the chief characteristic of caste and traces the origin of endogamy to the origin of caste. He saw inter-caste marriages as one of the means for annihilation of caste.
But among the boards set up in Karnataka, the Brahmin development board seems to be the only one that encourages women in particular to marry within their own caste. The scheme also has conditions stating that it should be the bride’s first marriage and stipulates an undertaking that the couple will remain married for a specific period of time — in essence, batting for caste and patriarchy, say critics.
According to HS Sachidananda Murthy, chairman of the board, around 550 women have been identified for the Arundhati scheme. "We will be making calls for applications from February 15. Even among priests, we want to ensure priests who are performing rituals and from economically weaker sections benefit from this," Sachidananda Murthy tells TNM.
The conditions were met with criticism from a section of lawyers. “What we're seeing is the efforts of the state to control the sexuality of women and to strengthen the caste system. The biggest threats to the caste-system and the Hindutva agenda is love as the premise for marriage and the choices articulated by women over their own sexualities, and this is what they are aiming to control and curb,” explains advocate Maitreyi Krishnan based in Bengaluru.
She argues that the scheme is trying to attack the idea of love as the premise for marriage. “The scheme does not even recognise love as the premise for marriage, and in fact mandates that the couple has to mandatorily be married for a specific period of time. How can the state determine how long people should stay in a relationship for and when they can separate? We need to see this scheme, along with other efforts being made by the state to curtail love,“ says advocate Maitreyi Krishnan.
A few boards in Karnataka including the D Devaraj Urs Backward Class Development Corporation, the Dr B R Ambedkar Development Corporation and the Minority Development Corporation were created decades ago for implementing welfare schemes, but in the last decade, dozens of boards and corporations have come up specifically catering to small communities.
For instance, the BJP notified the creation of the Kadu Golla Development Board just before the bye-elections to the Sira constituency in Tumakuru in November 2020. The Kadu Golla community is the second largest vote bank in the constituency after the dominant Vokkaliga community and according to poll observers, it contributed to BJP’s surprise win in this constituency. Previously, the former Chief Minister Siddaramaiah had deployed similar tactics, creating the Bhovi Development Corporation and the Thanda Development Corporation for the tribal Banjara group among others.
It was another former Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy of the Janata Dal (Secular) who mooted the creation of the Brahmin Development Board during his tenure before the BJP finally established it when they came to power.
But the politics of creating caste based boards has given rise to new power centres — the respective boards for each caste — that influence the daily lives of people, whether it is on matters of finance or on social matters like marriage.