Surname doesn't indicate caste: HC

MUMBAI: What’s in a surname? The Bombay high court has recently observed that a person’s surname can’t always be the deciding factor in determining his or her caste. A bench of Justice Ranjana Desai and Justice Roshan Dalvi set aside the reasoning given by a caste scrutiny committee for rejecting a student’s claim of belonging to a Scheduled Tribe because a similar claim by 29 other people who shared the same surname had been rejected earlier. The petitioner, Deepika Nandanwar, claimed that she was a Halbi tribe member. The high court came to her aid because it had not been proved that the other Nandanwars were not her blood relatives. "Hence, their caste has no relevance in determining her caste," the court said. Nandanwar, currently an MBBS student of G S Seth Medical College, was given the certificate of being a Halbi while she was in school. She had sought the validation of her caste certificate in November 2005, before her HSC examination. The committee launched an inquiry into her claim in February 2006. Senior inspector Mahesh Joshi, who conducted the inquiry, reported that her claim was genuine. But the committee ordered another inquiry, which said that there were 29 people in Amravati, all with the surname Nandanwar, whose claims of belonging to Halbi tribe had been dismissed by the Amravati scrutiny committee. As a result, in January 2007, the committee invalidated Nandanwar’s certificate. She moved the high court to challenge the rejection, arguing that none of the other Nandanwars was her blood relation. The court, accepting her arguments, said, "Surname by itself is not indicative of the caste," but warned that if in future, her claim that those 29 others were not her blood relatives was proved to be false, she would lose her degree.
21 Apr 2008, 0143 hrs IST , TNN
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