Shashi Tharoor spoke about his family's stance on surnames and how he approached his own caste privilege.
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00:00My father had dropped his caste surname in college.
00:02I only even became aware of my caste until much later.
00:06And then I had to ask my parents what caste was,
00:09what, you know, Nair was.
00:11In India, I can afford to employ a cook.
00:13I don't ask him, you know, which community he's from.
00:16As long as he can cook well, I don't care.
00:30I was wondering, how has your own caste and experience with caste relations influenced
00:44your decision to write this book and how you approached writing this book?
00:47Well, you know, I was born to nationalist parents.
00:52My father had dropped his caste surname in college, in school.
00:57He wore it with pride.
00:58I could see his school books with Tharoor Chandrashekhar and Nair, you know, TCS Nair
01:03written on some of his school books.
01:04But he dropped the Nair because Mahatma Gandhi had said that, you know, caste is not a good
01:08thing to preserve in independent India and so on.
01:13And he essentially never mentioned caste in the household, or religion for that matter.
01:18I mean, I went to school in Bombay where we had friends of every religion, every caste
01:24coming home to play.
01:25And never once did our parents ever mention, oh, that so-and-so, that Muslim boy, that
01:29Hindu boy, that Sikh boy, or whatever, that never came up.
01:33The question didn't arise, and that was what that nationalist generation believed in, that
01:36we had to rise above these distinctions that divided us and focus on our unity.
01:41I only even became aware of my caste until much later.
01:45And then I had to ask my parents what caste was, what, you know, Nair was, and so on.
01:51And that was a discovery.
01:52But I never let it influence my life, and nobody in my family chose to consciously to
01:57sort of remain within caste boundary when it came to marrying or anything else.
02:03All three of us, I have two sisters and I, married outside our caste.
02:07So I come from a certain caste that, a certain background, if you like, of being oblivious
02:14to caste issues.
02:15I wrote a piece about this, and was promptly rebuked by an 18-year-old Dalit blogger, saying,
02:22Don't you realize that obliviousness to caste is itself something only available to the
02:27privileged?
02:28And that I, as a Dalit, could never afford to be unaware of my caste.
02:32The second episode of this nature that I had was, in my political career as representative,
02:42as a Member of Parliament from Thiruvananthapuram, I had been similarly inclined in recruiting
02:47people to my office and so on.
02:49I just looked at their merits, their CV, the way they spoke at an interview and so on.
02:52I never ever, ever inquired about their caste.
02:56And then I was accused of having stacked my office with people of a particular caste.
03:01And I had not even thought about it.
03:03So I quickly checked all their castes, and fortunately the rebuke was wrong.
03:06One of them was from an underprivileged caste.
03:09But the fact still was that the majority weren't.
03:11And I then had to very consciously go out of my way.
03:13I mean, I had in fact a Muslim and a Christian on the staff.
03:18But the Hindus apparently were majority from one particular caste, and I had to quickly
03:21undo that.
03:23Not undo that by firing anybody, but by simply redressing the balance.
03:26I wouldn't want people to be fired because of the accident of their birth, either.
03:30Especially if they're doing a good job.
03:31I think today in Indian politics, you have to be caste conscious.
03:35Parties give tickets to candidates with an eye on the caste composition of a particular
03:41constituency.
03:42You know, such and such a place in Kerala, you really need a Christian candidate, or
03:46such and such a place you need a Muslim candidate, or a Dalit candidate, of course, is reserved
03:50seats.
03:51And I never thought that way, and I'm learning that it's impossible.
03:54Even if you don't think that way, others who are important to your political life will
03:56think that way.
03:58So that's the answer.
04:00It's not a satisfactory answer, because it shows that I came into this in some ways unprepared.
04:05But I have learned as I've spent time in this profession.