Chakravarty

Sun Feb 17 20:47:07 UTC 2002

Am 17 Feb 2002 um 12:21 schrieb Mahadevan, Thennilapuram:

> The noted Gayatri Spivak Chakravarti regrets in a recent New York Times
> profile that she was born a Brahmin: so Chakravartis must be all Brahmins.

This generalisation is not correct. In Bengal and Assam there are many
brahmins named Chakravarti / Chakrabarti / Chakraborti; but on the other
hand there was a famous Jaina scholar from Tamilnadu a few decades ago
named A. Chakravarti, and he belonged to the Nayanar caste, i.e., very 'low'
according to brahmins.

Robert Zydenbos
Universität München