Thursday, September 01, 2005

Born crooks...and ingrates

As most Mumbaikars might have read, the Phase Pardhi tribe has been (supposedly) quite active on the crime scene in the suburbs lately!

The name of the tribe itself is pretty intriguing, especially the "Phase" bit! I wonder whether Phase was like a stage, or state of matter! Or was it a Marathi word/name!

But what had me chucking was an article in MidDay which said that "Phase Pardhis are one of India’s so-called denotified tribes. In their 1871 Criminal Tribes Act, the British had listed (thus ‘notified’) the Pardhis and 150 other tribes as criminal. That meant that if you were born into a Pardhi family, you were automatically a crook."

Thank God the Nayars/Nairs are a peace-loving gang (relatively atleast!).

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Another article on MidDay says the residents of a "dangerously dilapidated" building in Mohammed Ali Road will not move to BMC-provided (Bombay Municipal Corporation) accomodation in Kandivli. It seems they want to move ONLY to Peddar Road.

What's next????? We might have residents in Dharavi wanting to move into Lokhandwala, Machchi-Maar Nagar into Cuffe Parade, people from the kuppams in Chennai wanting to move into Boat Club Road!

The world's ingrates!!!!!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

If you want to know more about "being born a crook", read Dilip DSouza's book titled "Branded by Law: Looking at India's
Denotified Tribes".

He is also a columnist on Sify.

Sunil said...

Dilip's book is highly recommended....and should be in your univ library.