The Vedic Village- Shankar Agraharam, was a ‘Brahmin only’ housing project that was planned in the outskirts of Bengaluru in 2013. A township strictly meant for Brahmins , it claimed to revive the “lost traditions” of the Brahmin community. The architecture, the lifestyle and culture were meant to ensure a “Brahmanic way of life.”

The Sanathana Dharma Parirakshana Trust that is funding and developing the project is backed by the Brahmin community.

Their website www.vedicgraham.com clearly says: “Our plots are clearly earmarked for Brahmins only…Our motto, to give the highest to the highest in all respects “, clearly emphasising that it is a township for the ‘superior’.

With the launch of the township, national and international media picked up the story and reported the disturbing trend of ‘segregated housing’ and ‘housing apartheid’ in India. People protested and a group of activist lawyers wrote to the state government and human rights commission to immediately scrap the project because it promoted caste-discrimination. But, sadly 3 years down the line, the project is nearing completion and the project managers boast of having sold 900 units already. Bangalore-based Supreme Court lawyer and activist KV Dhananjay was amongst the first to raise a voice against the discriminatory housing project.

The Ministry of Home Affairs said it had referred the matter to the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment. There have been no further updates in the case.

Since, the time this story has broken out, there have been divided opinions on social media, some of them criticising such a colony while some of them justifying this by saying that many Muslim, Jain or Christian only colonies already exist but such an argument is baseless because two wrongs do not make a right.

The logical Indian community strongly condemns such a move and hopes that it will be stopped in due time and the society will not take encouragement from such incidents.

In today’s world, in a diverse country like India, such colonies are a step backwards. Also, an exclusive Brahmin colony doesn’t save their culture, it, in facts secludes it from the rest of the world.

India is a secular country and incidents like these bring shame to the country’s name.