In the past two days, I have read two brilliant pieces of writing, Divya Malhari’s blog post on ‘A God of Small Things’ and Prof Suryakant Waghmore’s essay on Hindu politeness. Despite their dissimilar genres and scope, I felt equally moved as they both touched on a core emotional response to the many atrocities that the caste system inflicts on its victims.
Divya wrote about a very palpable fear that a lot of us carry – of speaking about caste while not rejecting possible allies. This is something I have been thinking about for some time now and reading Divya’s post suddenly put things in perspective for me. We carry the burden that if we bring up caste we might upset other people around us. And this burden is so internalized that often we lose out on questioning even micro-aggressions of caste discrimination.
I vividly recall an incident where I was invited to be part of a tv debate by a local editor. This was the time I was writing a column in an English daily for almost over a year. After the debate was over, my co-panelist said that he enjoys reading my articles. The editor (needless to say upper-caste male) immediately quipped that there are so many new newspapers being launched in the state and they need someone or the other to fill up column spaces. I immediately knew what he wanted to imply. But I just couldn’t shut him up. Another time, this upper-caste girl on Facebook had posted, in response to my column, that people are learning new words from the English dictionary and writing articles around it. I was infuriated but I couldn’t express my anger, partly because I was not directly named but also because the burden of proving my worth or that of my writing was on me somehow. Every time I sense something like this, I think it is a bait I should not take to preserve my mental peace.
When I would tell these incidents to my other upper caste friends, they would sympathize but also tell me how I should focus on my work and not give them attention. That I should not let them get to me and derail my work. It made sense to me then. But lately, I have come to realize a crucial difference. Whenever I have shared such instances with my fellow Dalit Bahujan friends, I have received a more empathetic response and they have shown readiness in countering such filth that came my way. In online spaces, they’ve even gone and fought on my behalf.
Whereas, more often than not, my UC friends have asked me to keep quiet while elevating me on a moral pedestal. They would rather do this instead of asking for accountability from their caste brethren. One wonders why is the onus of a measured response is squarely placed on me? What it ends up doing, intentionally or otherwise, is merely diffusing the tension of the situation but lets the perpetrator of caste violence operate unhinged, such that they are free to repeat this act (perhaps with renewed intensity).
Which brings me to Prof Waghmore’s essay on caste violence and Hindu politeness. He writes based on three instances of atrocities inflicted on Dalits by the dominant caste Marathas and Vanjaris in the Marathawada region of Maharashtra. He writes how caste has adapted newer forms of propagation as India transitioned to a constitutional republic, especially where the practice of caste discrimination is a criminal offense. He develops this concept called the Hindu politeness, which is a form of subversive communication that caste Hindus resort to while engaging with Dalits. He writes that humility is increasingly a Dalit burden for sustaining village peace.
While Divya’s post is from a personal experience of a strained friendship, Prof Waghmore deals with the banal yet brutal forms of caste violence in rural Maharashtra. In no ways I am trying to equate these incidents with each other, or to my experiences. One must be attentive towards the degree of severity in which these incidents manifest. And yet, they emerge from the same code of graded hierarchy that deems some people lower, polluted than others.
The reason that these formulations hit home in their conjunction is that it is something that I was discussing with my mother and a couple of friends just a few days back. On the teacher’s day, people on twitter were recollecting their good and bad experiences of their school. When I tried to recollect, I realize I didn’t feel so connected with my school experience that I had to rave about it. Yes, I had a fairly decent experience and average teachers but in retrospect, I also think the school made a lot of my peers, including me at times, internalize our caste positions and that we should not transgress them. I have seen this operate in two ways – if you were not so great at studying, you would be told that you are good for nothing and there is no point that you should be studying in the first place. If you were indeed good at securing marks, you would be pulled up for behavioral transgressions. For instance, telling you that you are over-confident, arrogant, and most importantly, not humble. One did take these judgments on their behavior to the heart. At least I did. It is only now I realize that these transgressions were routinely afforded by my upper-caste peers without getting pulled up for them. We were rather reduced to average because excellence was reserved for the twice-born.
It is in this context I have come to realize that humility is an emotion weaponized by the oppressor. Men would expect women to be humble in their civil transactions. Similarly, the upper castes would expect those lower than them to be humble because the loss of decorum is somehow a worse state than being peaceful about an act of inhuman treatment.
It is not a coincidence that upper castes, even the so-called progressive ones, would go on about how those from the marginalized castes do not have the decency to speak or conduct themselves. In an environment where openly denying caste could revoke your membership to the woke and progressive club, hating on someone for their lack of behavioral decorum is a low hanging fruit everyone would go for. It is not uncommon to hear UC folks, even epecially those who identify as allies to the anti-caste movements, say I don’t like the way they speak, or that they need to make their point in a better way. I have heard this often on the JNU campus when the left-leaning students and faculty members talk about BAPSA, for instance. Don’t do this. You are not lending your allyship here but are merely reifying the very structure that you claim to fight. The only difference is that in this structure, it is my aspiration and life which are stake, not yours. To me, an ally should be my partner in rage. Not someone who diffuses my angst, and thereby the intensity of the act of violence. If I am opening up about my vulnerable moments of facing oppression to you, what part of your social privilege are you going to risk for what I am facing? That will decide if we can be allies. If not, we can continue to remain friends but certainly not allies.
