In India, the institutions of marriage and caste go hand in hand, but caste is like the left hand, which is vital but lives under the scrutiny and silence of pollution and apparent castelessness. The "Big-Fat Indian Weddings" paradoxically bring visibility to issues of caste, class, and consumption in the institution of marriage. The paper examines some of these linkages in the context of a collective wedding. A mass wedding or samuhik vivah is a ceremonial marriage of several couples at the same time and place. This paper presents an ethnographic study on a Samuhik vivah for gareeb kanya held in Madipur, New Delhi. Madipur is an urban village and a clustered neighbourhood in West Delhi. Dilli Pradesh Aadarsh Dharmarth Samuhik Vivah Samiti organised the 16th collective-wedding event. Several caste groups participated in the mass wedding by installing stalls with flexes and banners naming their caste groups as communities or samaj, such as the Sonkars, Dhusia, Banjara, Valmikis, Sindhi Regar, Jatavs and Muslim and Sikh samaj too. This paper attempts to study the sources through which caste is made visible and invisible in the process of mass-wedding as a collective event. The culturalization of caste as samaj and their participation is significant in the collective event that provides instances of the performativity of caste identity among the marginalized groups in contrast to hegemonic narratives that often silence the experience of the margins. Furthermore, it examines the paradox of visibility of caste as communities on the street of Madipur and blindness towards caste as the identity of the brides becomes vital for documentation with a dedicated column for the caste identity of the bride enlisted for the collective-wedding. This engagement entails the everyday sociality of caste, where the caste identity is prevalent symbolically but denied its prevalence in hegemonic narratives.
