The premeditated murder of Kevin Joseph, a Dalit Christian youth in Kerala for marrying an upper caste Christian girl, by her kin illustrated how deeply caste is embedded in the Indian psyche, irrespective of faith. A deliberate attempt is now being made to deny the caste angle to the killing by attributing it to financial disparity. The mere fact of a boy being poor does not provoke a girl’s family to snuff out his life. Caste is the defining feature of Indian social reality. It involves social status and counts more than anything when it comes to marriages. Co-religionists cannot marry if they are not of the same caste, whereas members of a caste can marry even if they follow different faiths. Kevin’s murder manifested man’s humanity to man. It is incomprehensible how prayers and piety blend with hiring a ‘quotation gang’ to abduct and kill a young man. In India, caste exists in Christianity almost as much as in Hinduism despite the fact that the former theoretically does not approve of discrimination on the basis of the accident of birth.
The heinous killing evoked memories of Tamil Nadu’s V Shankar and Ilavarasan who paid with their lives for love and shattered the illusions of caste integration and freedom of choice for youngsters in the ‘progressive’ State of Kerala. The killers’ suspected links with CPI (M)’s youth wing DYFI and the alleged failure of the police to make a timely intervention to protect Kevin, despite his wife’s complaint, has put the ruling party on the back foot. That Kevin’s family supported CPI(M) and that his wife’s parents are an inter-faith couple, made no difference.