Why did we choose this topic?
Why did we choose this topic?
PUKAR gave an opportunity to graduated youth Fellows of Youth Fellowship Program to take an advanced level research in order to study their one year project at much deeper, scientific and precise manner. We could not help miss this Opportunity. Sunil had already done one year research on “Understanding and behavior of youth towards caste”, but he was not satisfied with the way it was carried out, he wanted to conduct this research in more systematic manner. So, we started reading articles, news letters, books related to caste in order to make our concepts of caste and caste system clear. We were thinking how we can relate these materials to our day to day life.
While we were reading materials, we noticed that the majority studies were related to villages and many news were giving evidence of how untouchability is still prevalent in rural India (Like one recent news in Times of India, dated, 27th July). This was the time when we were unclear about how the caste matters to people of urban cities like Mumbai? How it affects me and youth in particular? Why cannot we live in India without caste and religion? And many questions like these provoked us to start an endeavoring journey of searching “Caste” in urban life style…
When we were trying to understand how caste issues are different in urban and rural life, we prepared a gist of points on how caste imprints itself on people of different mentalities of different locations….we noticed that in rural areas, caste is openly spoken of and thus it is visible whereas, in urban cities most of the youth have the belief that they do not believe in caste discrimination. Indeed they avoid speaking on “Caste” and “Religion” issues. They feel that if they don’t believe in Caste, Caste System abolishes its own existence.
People say that, Caste is a very traditional and old custom and it has no place in modern world. But if we consider computers, website, blogs as a representation of modern lifestyle, we can easily see that they are filled with ‘Casteism’. If you go on any search engine and type your caste, you will get up-to-date information on caste, sub caste, varna, gotra, etc. Not only this, we can also find various organizations and institutions which are working for different castes. You are welcomed to this website or organization if your surname is so and so….You will get several email IDs to discuss, debate, respond and to connect with your own caste members. You will also get lessons to be proud and to be aware of history and culture of your own caste. People say that “Kabhi nahi jati woh jaati”. (Caste never abolishes its existence).Thus, best example of elasticity is “Caste”. With time, caste moves, it changes, it bends, it transforms and therefore it persists. (Dr. Suhas Kulkarni, 2006)
We decided to search something interesting about caste: where and when does it show its existence in urban life style. We came across virtual social networking sites of which we already were part of. We used these social networking groups for communicating with friends; we were totally unaware about communities which are purely dedicated towards caste and religious issues. We noticed there are hundreds of communities talking about caste, reservations, Inter-caste marriages, politics and caste, gender and caste…and so on and so forth. It is only when we started relating our topic to these communities we actually found out that there are lot of heated discussions going on these issues by urban youth and we felt that it is a need of hour that some one should document these discussions which is reflecting the youth of the nation….
What is our topic?
We wanted to document how youth utilizes the space of Internet to discuss, debate, criticize, interrogate and introspecting the opinions of themselves and others about caste and caste related issues…..
We are interested in exploring how the modern technology like Internet is strengthening or weakening the issue of caste.
Why is it imp?
It is here that we realize that youth feels free to express them self. As it is virtual space, every one has an equal opportunity to share their views and at the same time raise questions which is rarely possible in a so called “modern society”.
We are documenting how the caste is transforming, changing, bending and mutating its own existence through the virtual social networking sites.
Casteonweb's Blog 
Hi,
I’m a student from Israel.
I have to analyze how much time someone spend on internet.
There are websites which are a guilty pleasure, but there are websites which only have a visits duration of 40 seconds.
I would like to know how much time do you spend on internet (day/week/month).
Thanks for your help!
Jeff
Since our research project is Net based, we spend too much time on Networking sites.