Amji,
Welcome back to the forum.
Yes we beat up the same subjects with different actors, or sometimes the same actors in different role.
In Hare Krishna group all members get gothram at the time of conversion. In the north even some Brahmins do not know their gothram, the priest assigns them a gothram.
GOTHRAM is derived from noun GO + rootverb TRA of Sanskrit which
means -> Cow + Protect. Earlier, 'Gothram' used to be a place
where cattle were protected and reared, usually in hermiatge premises
or AASHRAMAs, since dairy products were much useful for YAJNA or
fire sacrifice. In simple meaning, A GOTRA is a cattle rearing group,
identified with the head of the group, obviously a sage.
Naturally, the same group had parents, brothers, sisters, blood
relatives and were much similar in activities and culture or customs.
Due to scarcity of pasture or climatic abnormalities, the GOTRAs went
nomadic, spreading out to different river valleys and other
fertile lands where they set up their own GOTRAs, of course named
after their leader, a sage. For example, the first known GOTRA,
KASHYAPA gotra, split into VASISHTHA, ATRI, JAMADAGNI, BHARADWAJA,
VISHWAMITRA, GOUTAMA and so on. Since they were Vedic groups,
they excelled in different fields of knowledge and maintained
their 'specialization', which came to symbolize the respective GOTRA.
On marriage, Gotra of wife and cows she carried with her would change
to Gotra of the husband.
From Wiki:
Khap panchayats in Haryana have been making a huge fuss over banning "same gotra marriages." Kadyan Khap International convener Naresh Kadyan had moved a petition seeking amendment to the Hindu Marriage Act (HMA) to legally prohibit marriages in the same gotra. However, the petition was dismissed as withdrawn after a vacation. Bench of Justices S N Dhingra and A K Pathak of the Delhi High Court warned that a heavy cost would be imposed on the petitioner for wasting the time of the court.
In course of the proceedings, the bench observed,
“You don’t know what is a gotra. Which Hindu text prescribes banning of sagotra (same clan) marriage? Why are you wasting the time of the court? If you are not able to substantiate your words, then you should not have come before the court.”
In the court case "Madhavrao vs Raghavendrarao" which involved a Deshastha Brahmin couple, the German scholar Max Mueller's definition of gotra as descending from eight sages and then branching out to several families was thrown out by reputed judges of a Bombay High Court. The court called the idea of Brahmin families descending from an unbroken line of common ancestors as indicated by the names of their respective gotras "impossible to accept." The court consulted relevant Hindu texts and stressed the need for Hindu society and law to keep up with the times, emphasizing that notions of good social behavior and the general ideology of the Hindu society had changed. The court also said that the mass of material in the Hindu texts is so vast and full of contradictions that it is almost an impossible task to reduce it to order and coherence.