BehanVox: The Curious Tale of Central Government’s Intercaste Marriage Scheme
This week in BehanVox: India's gender gap widens, Umar Khalid writes about hope and captivity from Tihar Jail, and more
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As the week wound up, we were left grappling with the horrific, multiple tragedies of the Air India crash in Ahmedabad. Saturday brought us news of Israel’s widespread attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities and across Tehran and a foreboding of what this conflict portends for peace in the region and rest of the world. The days are fraught and the news rarely good but we at BehanBox believe that the best way to cope with the turmoil of our times is to keep at what we are good at – report, investigate and write stories that touch everyone’s lives.
This week, we brought you a fantastic investigation into why the central scheme to support and encourage intercaste marriage is floundering. A lot of readers loved the story and if you have not read it, we bring you a sliver of it so you can dive into it over the weekend.
Story So Far
In the early decades after Independence when we were buoyed by the notions of equality that were enshrined in our newly-minted Constitution, Bimal Roy had made a lovely little film, Sujata. It told the story of Sujata, a Dalit woman found orphaned and raised by an upper caste family with care but also within visible us-them boundaries. Played by the astoundingly talented Nutan, Sujata falls in love with a Brahmin youngster (Sunil Dutt) and the rest of the film tells the story how they battle caste, ostracism and disapproving parents to come together. And who can forget Dutt wooing a reluctant Sujata to the tune of Jalte hain jiske liye over the phone?g
Some six decades down the road, that idealism seems like a sepia-tinted dream. We are swamped every day by stories of honour killings based on caste pride. And young men and women thrown out from families, communities, villages and cities for daring to defy caste in marriage and love. It is hardly surprising then that the government had instituted a scheme in Ambedkar’s name to extend monetary support to intercaste couples to encourage more social integration and help couples start their new lives amidst violent hostility.
But, as our reporter Priyanka Tupe found out lately, the central scheme has been quietly buried, merged with other schemes to combat caste atrocities. This has left intercaste couples, such as Megha Kshrisagar and her partner Divyang Potdar, flailing to find a foothold. Worse, the merger of the scheme has yet to be announced publicly though applicants are being turned away and directed towards a less generous state scheme.
The merger has left anti caste activists stumped. “Schemes under the atrocity act are meant for supporting and rehabilitating victims of caste-based violence. Why is the government clubbing an inter caste marriage support scheme under SC/ST Act? Inter-caste marriage support scheme is preventive in nature and meant to create a more liberal society.” says Dhammasangini Ramagorakh, an anti caste activist and scholar. “This merger is a victimisation of the scheme and shows the BJP government’s attitude towards anti caste movements and society.”
As activists point out, the central scheme was functioning poorly and needed to be fixed for its many flaws…not shut down.
Read the story here.
Talking Point
Out Of Syllabus: Manusmriti, the authoritative Hindu code on all things moral and legal, has for long been seen as an obsolete text for sanctioning social, economic and gender inequalities. It was briefly introduced by Delhi University as one of the primary texts in the syllabus for a course titled ‘Dharmashastra Studies’ in the Undergraduate Curriculum Framework, Indian Express reported. Following reports on this, vice-chancellor Yogesh Singh said on Thursday that the text will not be taught at the institution “in any form”. “We will not teach any part of Manusmriti in any form in the University of Delhi. This direction has been issued even earlier by the vice-chancellor’s office, and departments should adhere to it,” Singh told The Indian Express.
Widening Gap: India now ranks 131 of 148 countries in the 2025 World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2025. This is a loss of two places since last year. The index measures gender parity across four key dimensions: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment.
Femicide Alarm: South Africa has one of the highest rates of femicide in the world: In the year to 31 March 2024, more than 27,600 people were murdered, 5,578 of them women and 1,656 children, according to South African police data, reports Guardian. The latest victim is 30-year-old former journalist, Olorato Mongale, who was murdered allegedly by a man she went on a date with. Her death has sparked outrage in the country where ideas of hypermasculinism are widespread.
BehanVox Recommends
Notes from prison: Nearly five years since his incarceration at Delhi’s Tihar jail began, Umar Khalid pens his insights on hope, despair, and captivity’s lessons, drawing from writer Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The House of the Dead.
Database: This crowdsourcing-based initiative, Forced To Quit, maps female public figures in politics, activism, and journalism who had to leave the public sphere due to gendered disinformation, hate speech, misogyny, and threats.
On love and friendships: In this long read, historian Tiffany Watt Smith revisits evidence of romantic friendships between men, maps the rules of society, and changes in the course of this “platonic” love.
Verses on grief: In this poetry collection titled ‘Sing, Slivered Tongue’, 68 women from various south Asian communities explore trauma, loss and grief through a gendered lens. This volume was edited by Lopamudra Basu and Feroza Jussawalla.
Want to explore more newsletters? In Postcards, we send you missives on the places, people and ideas that brought Team BehanBox joy. Our monthly offering Postscript invites you, the reader, into our newsroom to understand how the stories you read came to be – from ideation to execution. Subscribe for more.
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