BIRMINGHAN, ENGLAND, December 10, 2007: On Thursday, Britain gets its first play on the caste system still alleged perniciously to operate within the local Sikh community. “The Fifth Cup,” which gets its first outing in Birmingham, is about 15-year-old Amrit Singh whose family moves home from one British city to another, in order to make a fresh start. But the Singhs find themselves relentlessly pursued by their low-caste origins. They are shunned by the local Sikh community, which presumably counts itself too high-born to consort with dalits. The family unit comes under intolerable strain. Amrit struggles to understand the unfairness of inherited alleged unworthiness, despite living in a 21st-century meritocracy where class distinctions may still matter but certainly not caste.
The play is a debut production from Caste Away Arts, a new Midland’s-based theatre company. “The Fifth Cup” is written by Rena Dipti Annobil and Reena Bhatoa, both of whom claim to have been at the sharp end of casteist discrimination here in Britain. Bhatoa says she was “completely oblivious to what caste (I was)” till she turned 13. It was only after Sikh schoolmates repeatedly asked her that she sought clarification from her parents. “I discovered I was an untouchable… (I was) called nasty names…” For her, it was a devastating revelation.
In Britain, home to 1.3 million Indians, many still look for a caste-appropriate spouse for their sons and daughters. “Suman-online” is a point-and-click matrimonial service that proudly claims to be the web-child of “the pioneers of Asian matchmaking in UK and Europe, namely Suman Marriage Bureau (established 1972)”. Those who run it admit British Indians still “don’t want to marry into a lower caste. We also find that those who originate from a lower caste prefer to meet someone of the same background because they know that they may be victimized because they are of a lower caste”. But the fact is Suman’s estimate that only 25 per cent of British Indian marriages take place across caste barriers.