Bangalore:
About 100 kilometres from Bangalore, a new township offers plots of land starting at two lakhs.
The neighbourhood is being developed for the elderly, so the main occupant of each house will have to be a senior citizen. The gated community will host a hospital.
But if you want in, you need to be a Brahmin.
That far-from-fine print is made clear by a trust funded and backed by the Brahmin community in the area which bought the land from a farmer.
"The Trust belongs to a Brahmin community. I do not deny that," said Dr PV Rao, Chairman of the Sanatana Dharma Parirakshana Trust that expends its energy and attention on developing projects to help the elderly. "If we are doing anything wrong in this endeavour... we will certainly follow the rules and regulations of the Constitution," he said, adding that the hospital that's being constructed will be open to the public and not just to residents of this township.
Construction of temples at the site have started and bookings for the residential units have begun.
KV Dhananjay, a Supreme Court advocate, says the project encourages casteism. He has written to the union and state governments, asking them to intervene. In June, he received a letter from the Ministry of Home Affairs in Delhi, which said it had referred the matter to the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment. After that, there has been no update.
"When a government knowingly backs a project which it knows will end up discriminating against members of many castes, now that discrimination will fall foul of Article 15 of our Constitution which says no caste discrimination would be permissible by the government at all except for certain purposes... now this would not be that purpose - upliftment of members of scheduled castes or scheduled tribes, which is positive discrimination," he said.
Officials from the trust say the project is not being designed for profit.