This from the DNA:

An enterprising NRI doctor from East Godavari district has come up with a novel idea of an all purpose and inclusive housing colony for members of the Brahmin community near Hyderabad.

Resurrecting the traditional and conservationist ambience of the Agraharam from the Brahmin predominant East Godavari district, the colony will be spread over 1,200 acres on the city’s outskirts.

Branded Dhanwatari Agraharam, the proposed site is located 90km from Hyderabad on the Nagpur highway. All its 1,000 members are, well, Brahmins bound by the sale agreement with the promoters.

This includes observing the appropriate rituals and cultural ethos while they live in the independent homes being built for them. Smoking, consumption of alcohol and meat are forbidden in the colony.

The members should also not rear cats and dogs as these animals, true to their nature, hunt for flesh around the colonies.

Apart from sounding like a singularly boring place, it is possibly also one where most of the Hindu Pantheon will not gain acceptance, as many of them have vahans (vehicles) that are not only animals but also meat eating animals…….. the irony of it…..

I wonder whether, like in olden times, those who claim to be Brahmins will go from house to house and beseech – “Bhavati, Biksham Dehi ” – those who controlled knowledge (the Brahmins) were supposed to beg for their daily meal, so that the ugly world of commerce did not interfere with their “tapas” (endeavors).

There are whole localities in Mumbai that are ghettoized – there are zones that are exclusively Gujarati Hindu and vegetarian. Friends of mine in Bangur Nagar have to go and ask surreptitiously ask the grocer for Ram Phal — at which point of time he stealthily packs up eggs for them….. there are societies that are exclusively Muslim, go to Orlem and you will find it exclusively Goan Catholic … and so on…..ghettoizing always struck me as stupid – given our propensity for violence against a community or a set of ‘different people’… and it still strikes me that way……

Of course people have the right to choice, and to live the way that they want…. but i would assume that at a very basic level it is governed by the law of the land…..and this case,  more than others, where the exclusion is not explicit but implicit ( they will simply not sell you property) — seems to be very, very, on the borderline in terms of legality….

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Technorati Tags: Brahmin, Hyderabad, Gujarati Hindu, Muslim, Goan Catholic

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