In a rare instance where television news scored over social media, Bharat Adhikari, a young Indian politician, after hours of persistent searching on social media, had to resort to watching a TV news channel to determine what caste he was from.
(Image via IndiaToday.com)
“It was insane. I met my girlfriend’s family and her grandfather asked me what caste I am from. I was stumped by the question. I took out my phone, opened Gmail, ran over my soft copies of all the application forms I had filled in for any possible mention, but there was none. Frantically, I began to search online, but couldn’t find any information about my social origins,” Adhikari told The UnReal Times.
“I made an urgent phone call to Nitish Kumar, but he said that even he didn’t know. ‘I know I’m casteist, Bharatwa, but not this much also – I don’t keep track of castes of every single person on earth, sasura!’ he chuckled and told me. I had then got an SMS alert that a news channel was airing a report on my rumored engagement ceremony. I quickly switched the TV on at her place and saw the anchor. There it was – he reported the rumor and enlisted not just my religion, but caste, but sub-caste, community, what deity we worship, what festivals we observe, which communities we are hostile against and so on and so forth,” Adhikari added. “They even went to the extent of predicting the guest list for our wedding and various caste and sub-caste representations of the probable attendees.”
“It was a very weird situation, because I always regarded myself as an Indian. Thankfully, these TV news journalists provided me this information in the nick of time – details that weren’t available or talked about even on social media,” said Adhikari. “Her grandfather was overjoyed on learning an entire encyclopedia about my social background that he wanted us to get engaged right then. So here I am – Engaged! I owe these journalists big time, yaar!” a gleaming Adhikari flaunted his engagement ring.
When asked if the media described any more information on him, Adhikari replied, “Oh yeah! They also said that I was a non-Jat bridgegroom-to-be!”