So, I have had the privilege of growing up oblivious to people deciding their behaviour towards you based on your caste and community, as judged from your surname. And then, I made the mistake of asking a classmate in college her surname simply because there were three girls with the same name in class, and I couldn’t think of how else to differentiate their contacts on my phone. To the 18-year-old-first-time-away-from-home me, her refusal to share her surname was as appalling to me as my question was to her.

Fast-forward a few more years, and for the very similar reason of namesake prison inmates, I once again made the same mistake of asking them their surname. It was one of our first prison visits, and I was not only oblivious to the severity of this mindset in civil society, but I was also completely ignorant of how caste influences the prison ecology.

Neither experience was easy or pleasant, but my moral-high-naive self rationalised that I did not do anything wrong simply because I still can’t decipher people’s caste and community from their surname, and because I behave with them the same.

Until recently, a post by Dr. Itisha Nagar changed my mind. I was wrong. It’s not about my inclusivity or equal behaviour towards them. It’s about acknowledging their lifetime of lived experience. To whoever needs to hear this today: Think of it this way: If you are sharing an experience of gender-based discrimination only to be told “Oh, but that can happen to anyone.” or “That doesn’t happen to all women.” or “That happens to so few men.” Irrespective of the truth of these statements, they are insensitive and not exactly compassionate, nor helpful. The same goes for casteism, and all other -isms dividing the human community.

Lesson Learnt: When we know we’ll behave with them the same, we might as well let them decide when, and if ever, they are comfortable sharing their surnames with us. Or, for that matter, understand that not everyone can take being addressed by their surnames playfully. Not in a country culturally divided by caste, anyway.

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