The Times of India, today, quotes a report which claims that Rahul Gandhi said that he was a Brahmin.

While it can be argued that since he enjoys a special kind of family based reservation that is dependent on birth not merit, and that birth accords him privelages and power – what he says could be right, theoretically it is not so.

The last Brahmin in that family was Nehru. His daughter broke the caste rules, she married an ‘outsider’. We are a patriarchal system, and you inherit caste and all stuff associated with it from the father . In a way that also explains the Gandhi Nehru family’s sway across the decades. they are not restricted by region or by caste or even by religion. It is as misal paav as it gets.

Manu’s codes are very clear on what happens to people who broke caste laws – they are made ‘out caste’  or Jaati prashta. Caste no longer applies to them or their progeny or their progeny’s progeny. And, in the modern era that is a curiously liberating feeling, you can be what you are without bothering about caste and what caste has to say

How do i know ? my parents broke the caste laws, way way back 😀