I am sick and tired of Pseudo secularist and now even the Pseudo Brahmins.

ATLEAST YOU CAN ENSURE THAT SHE GETS PUBLICITY AS SHE HAS BEEN CRAVING FOR IT FROM LONG AND YOUR WRITES WOULD HELP

@Solana: I think that social networking sites attract a certain type of community, as a result of their design/ features. For instance, in the US, MySpace allows for high creativity/ customization and attracts an edgy/ artistic crowd while Facebook focuses on privacy/ community and attracts a more preppy/ professional crowd. In India, too, Orkut’s feature of allowing users to browse through other users’ profiles attracts a different kind of community than Facebook. In fact, many Indian users who have moved from Orkut to Facebook (almost) look down on Orkut.

@Anil: Yes, Anil, it’s natural to form groups around shared identities, for the many reasons you have highlighted. I am a little wary of narrow identities that we inherit by birth. For instance, I prefer to define myself in terms of what I do (marketer, writer, activist) and what I believe in (liberal, atheist), instead of what I was born as. I am OK with defining myself as an Indian, but certainly not as a North Indian (region), or a Bihari (state), or a Brahmin (caste), or (God forbid!) a Gaur Brahmin (sub-caste). I understand that other people need to define themselves more narrowly than I do, and I might be able to respect them in spite of it, but I certainly can’t identify with that sort of thinking.

The dynamics can be intriguing to say the least.

Diversity ensures that one cannot follow every more and tradition that exists, gravitating people to those who share similar contexts, be it language, race, city, caste, culture, region, ideology and the like.

All grouping is competitive in nature, a galvanisation to exploit, to avoid exploitation, to protect, to gain protection, to bargain collectively, to resist collectively and the like.

The identity of the individual becomes the identiy of the group.

Every grouping, be it of any kind, is held together by a culture, whatever that may be, which in turns ensures cohesiveness of the group, invariably gaining an exclusivity that becomes its defining factor to either \distinguish itself\ from the rest or \help retain\ its identity \in the face of the rest.

At a subtle level it is a play of ‘survival’ and ‘propagation’.

Birds of the same feather will always want to flock together :-)

In the context of caste in India, I would argue that it’s bad and backward-looking, perhaps even pernicious, even in its most benign forms (marrying within the same caste etc). It is also obvious to even the most sympathetic observer that discussions around caste in India are far from benign. Discrimination and exclusion is an issue; the mobilization of caste based identities as political vote banks is another.

@Preetam/ @Solana: Yes, such identities are still entrenched in many societies, not only in India, but that doesn’t mean it’s not dysfunctional.

@Preetam: I would say that any Indian online community with more than a few thousand members is unusual, given how few of these there are. It’s perhaps interesting to think about why we are more likely to get an invite for a caste-based community on Orkut than on Facebook, and why the likelihood for a community like The Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women is the opposite.

Such differences between social networking sites are common. danah boyd has done some great research on the differences between MySpace and Facebook users in the US. Perhaps, someone should do a similar deep dive into Orkut and Facebook in India.

As you say, this kind of group behavior mirrors real life interaction in Indian society. I would agree with you that caste discrimination is wrong, but is it necessarily so different from other kinds of tribal/national/group/affiliation behavior on social networks? I guess it all depends on the tone in which it happens.

I don’t think anyone I know has joined any “Caucasian” networks, but I’ve heard of a group for “African-American men who like Asian women”, and some crazy people called the Danish-Puerto Rican Society. On Orkut, I’ve joined “People named Solana or Solano”.

Aren’t we all encouraged to self-define our identities online?