{"id":6459,"date":"2007-12-11T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2007-12-11T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2007\/12\/11\/theatre-production-in-uk-takes-on-the-issue-of-caste\/"},"modified":"2007-12-11T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2007-12-11T12:00:00","slug":"theatre-production-in-uk-takes-on-the-issue-of-caste","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2007\/12\/11\/theatre-production-in-uk-takes-on-the-issue-of-caste\/","title":{"rendered":"Theatre Production in UK Takes on the Issue of Caste"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"source\"><a HREF=\"http:\/\/timesofindia.indiatimes.com\/World\/VIEW_FROM_LONDON_The_shame_of_being_untouchable_in_Britain\/articleshow\/2609590.cms\">timesofindia.indiatimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"summary\">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. &#8220;The Fifth Cup,&#8221; 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.<\/p>\n<p>The play is a debut production from Caste Away Arts, a new Midland&#8217;s-based theatre company. &#8220;The Fifth Cup&#8221; 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 &#8220;completely oblivious to what caste (I was)&#8221; till she turned 13. It was only after Sikh schoolmates repeatedly asked her that she sought clarification from her parents. &#8220;I discovered I was an untouchable&#8230; (I was) called nasty names&#8230;&#8221; For her, it was a devastating revelation.<\/p>\n<p>In Britain, home to 1.3 million Indians, many still look for a caste-appropriate spouse for their sons and daughters. &#8220;Suman-online&#8221; is a point-and-click matrimonial service that proudly claims to be the web-child of &#8220;the pioneers of Asian matchmaking in UK and Europe, namely Suman Marriage Bureau (established 1972)&#8221;. Those who run it admit British Indians still &#8220;don&#8217;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&#8221;. But the fact is Suman&#8217;s estimate that only 25 per cent of British Indian marriages take place across caste barriers.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>timesofindia.indiatimes.com BIRMINGHAN, ENGLAND, December 10, 2007: On Thursday, Britain gets its first play on the caste system still alleged perniciously,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6459\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}