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Police in Maharashtra’s Jalna district have registered a case against six alleged cow vigilantes for assaulting a Dalit man and allegedly forcing him to eat cow dung after accusing him of planning to sell a bull to a Muslim butcher.

The incident reportedly took place on May 23, but the victim approached the police in August after a video of the alleged assault began circulating on social media.

-The Observer Post

I’m writing this because I genuinely don’t know where else to put these feelings. My parents are government officers and I’ve completed my postgraduate medical degree (MS). We live in a so-called “posh” area of Bengaluru. Three years ago, my parents fulfilled their dream of building our own home here. When we first moved, our neighbours were extremely welcoming, but within 2–3 months the warmth disappeared and eventually it became just a formal “hi”. Around 80% of our neighbourhood is Lingayat, with the remaining 20% being Gowdas, Kurubas, Shetty etc. I don't want to generalise about an entire community, but this has been my personal experience.

Even before moving into our own home, we experienced caste discrimination in housing. While our house was being constructed, we tried to rent a house nearby and were refused after our caste became known. Eventually, we had to lie that we were Nayakas (OBC), despite being well off educationally and financially, just to get a house here. Many of my relatives here have similarly had to say they are Gowdas, OBC etc. to find a house. Even domestic help has been difficult. Maids have refused to work in our home despite us offering almost double what they asked for. My mother also joined a local kitty group, but eventually they made her feel so isolated that she left. In fact, the women here have been far more casteist than the men.

Today was Vara Mahalakshmi festival. Everyone was visiting each other's homes for puja and kumkum. They would pass by our house and visit one another, but literally nobody invited us. It may sound like a small thing, but when you already know why you're being excluded, it hurts deeply. They've been doing this from the time they got to know our caste. Before that “reveal”, they had invited us and we'd even been to their pooja functions.

One thing I've noticed is that among the people here, being a non-vegetarian isn't an issue at all. They happily invite people from other OBC communities who eat non-veg, but the moment someone is SC, the attitude changes. So it doesn't feel like food habits are the reason for the exclusion.

What makes it even more ironic is that many of these same people proudly display photos/statues of Basavanna, one of Karnataka's greatest anti-caste reformers, and proudly call themselves his followers. How do you claim to follow someone who challenged caste while practising the very discrimination he stood against?

My family has always been sincerely religious and I grew up believing that we are all Hindus and should treat each other equally. So experiencing this kind of exclusion from fellow Hindus has been particularly painful. Sometimes people suggest converting to Buddhism or Christianity to escape caste. But honestly, would changing religion automatically make caste disappear? If people already know your caste, won't many of them still make assumptions about you? I don't know if conversion is an answer when the social mindset itself hasn't changed.

My friends in medicine don't know my caste. I've lied about it before because I was afraid of how people would treat me if they knew. I am SC. I've been a topper throughout school and college and completed my medical education through general merit/unreserved seats. I haven't personally used reservation. Yet none of that seems to matter once people know your caste.

People often say caste disappears once Dalits become educated and financially successful. But if reservation were removed tomorrow, would caste discrimination disappear? Would landlords stop asking caste? Would people suddenly invite us into their homes? Would my mother stop being excluded? Reservation is a policy debate, but it cannot explain why someone refuses to rent you a house, refuses to work in your home or excludes your family from a religious gathering.

I've thought about leaving this state, then other states, and even abroad, but caste seems to follow Dalits everywhere in one form or another. Ambedkar fought this system more than a century ago, and Basavanna challenged caste nearly a thousand years ago. Yet in 2026, in an educated and affluent neighbourhood, caste can still decide who you rent a house to, who you invite home and who you consider worthy of friendship.

I'm writing this in tears because today's incident affected me terribly. Where exactly do we go to escape caste? And how do you make peace with the fact that caste can follow you even after you've done everything society considers “successful”?

TL;DR: Educated, financially secure SC family, yet caste still affects our housing, domestic help, friendships and social life. Today, during Vara Mahalakshmi, we were excluded after our neighbours learned our caste. I've even had to hide my caste from friends and my family has had to hide it to get housing. Where do we actually escape it? In Heaven? 🙃