Olympian Manu Bhaker’s Caste Dominates Google Search

By now, we all know who Manu Bhaker is — the 22-year-old olympian from Haryana’s Jhajjar town who won two medals in a single Olympic Games and the first Indian to achieve this feat. Her first bronze medal came in 10m air pistol individual event and the second bronze medal in the mixed team event alongside Sarbjot Singh. 

It is obvious that the people search about the newsmakers and their names continue to trend on social media platforms. Strangely, people were more interested in Manu Bhaker’s caste than her spectacular achievements. 

The latest Google Trends data revealed that more people were searching for “Manu Bhaker Caste” or “Manu Bhaker Cast (misspelled)”  in its Google Search product. Other keywords in Search include Bhaker Caste, Bhakar Caste, Manu Bhaker surname, Bhaker Jat Caste etc. 

It is not clear exactly how many searches were made to know about the athlete’s caste, however, the surge and interest among the people was can be determined using various time frequencies. 

You can compare the keywords used in Google Search for “Manu Bhaker Caste” or “Manu Bhaker Cast” in the last 12 months and this week and you’ll see a huge spike in user searches for her caste. Most of the searches originated from Bhaker’s state Haryana and Delhi. This show how the society is fixated on caste hierarchy and conveniently ignores the achievements of an individual. 

The caste obsession is all pervasive in the country. This is not the first time people started bombarding Google Search with caste related queries. Similar trends were observed when ace badminton player PV Sindhu brought laurels to India in 2016 and 2021 Olympic Games. 

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