[Reader-list] Casteless Academe, Name-calling Dalits? ( an Article by Anu Ramdas at Savari and Round Table India)

[anoop kumar]

 ~ ..during the Ambedkar cartoon controversy we saw academics who claim
pro-dalit, anti-caste and feminist perspectives eloquently describing hurt
sentiments because their caste location was being named by dalitbahujan
debaters. Following this, articles on caste in the mainstream media, social
media and on blogs refer to the dalitbahujans' naming caste locations as an
intellectual tactic used solely to put them on a defensive mode. This is a
ridiculous misreading of the politics of naming caste locations.. ~
 Casteless Academe, Name-calling Dalits?
<http://roundtableindia.co.in/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5800:casteless-academe-name-calling-dalits&catid=119:feature&Itemid=132>
*
Anu Ramdas*

Adivasi, dalit and lower shudra women are more often co-workers in the
fields, kilns, mines, factories and neighborhoods than co-learners and
professionals in institutions and organizations. The reverse is true for
women belonging to upper castes. Majority of women are caught in manual
occupations and only a tiny section of women get to be professionals. This
lends itself to interrogation in many ways and depending on which end it is
proceeding from, solutions will or will not emerge.

To delve into why labor remains rigidly divided among South Asian women,
there must exist a sense of injustice at this division of labor. There has
to be a deeply felt need to flatten this imbalance of opportunities between
castes, occupations and women. Does anyone benefit from prolonging the
status quo? Who is likely to engage with this question with a sense of
urgency? Whose realities are scarred by this state of affairs? Whose
realities will remain undisturbed even as they intellectually engage with
this?

*Names measure distances*

Caste and patriarchy combine efficiently to split occupations along various
filters. A caste society has upper caste men availing the most and the
best, while upper caste women avail more and better opportunities than us,
at all times, at our cost. The increased presence of women in new
professions is welcome but this female empowerment on a mass scale is
restricted only to upper caste women. Further, it massively disguises the
fact that this empowerment has been facilitated by the consumption of
female labor --of lower caste, dalit and adivasi women domestic workers.

Pick any forward caste name. Chatterjees, Menons, Iyers or Joshis and frame
this question: What are the chances of their daughters not having an open
route to obtain a college education, gain skills and jobs that lead to
professional lifestyles? 50% of them? 25%? 1%? It is almost zero percent.

Do the same exercise with caste names from lower shudra, dalit castes, and
tribes' names. The chances of closed routes for daughters from majority of
these castes and tribes can be anywhere from 50 to 99%.

Try another thought experiment: look for women's names that end with
Chatterjees, Menons, Iyers or Joshis in NREGA lists. 1%? 0.5%? 0.005%? It
is most likely zero percent.

Want to scan the NREGA lists for lower shudra, dalit and tribes
names<http://www.ndtv.com/video/player/news/the-caste-factor-in-nrega/94098>
?!

A simple exercise like this gives us the concrete linkages between: caste,
labor and women's empowerment. That is, access to respectful and equal
opportunities for professional capacity building is determined, privileged
and sustained by caste.

Do I want to indulge in analyzing how the locations of Chatterjees, Menons,
Iyers or Joshis and the caste names of women in NREGA lists are reflectors
of class and not caste? That can only be a subsequent line of reasoning.

For now, lets talk women's caste location, labor and liberation. Let's
begin with the politics of naming caste locations.

~~

*Conversations across caste*

Caste as a racist ideology, practiced by individuals, institutions and the
state has been documented, examined and analyzed by members of the
marginalized castes, since ages. Caste permeates and directs the entire
range of human perception in South Asia. It segregates society into
innumerable slots, servicing a dual purpose: inhibit the human potential of
some humans and privilege others.

To maintain the highly complicated grid of caste barriers, language is
deployed as one of the chief guardians against trespassers. In essence, all
conversations are powered by caste; across religions, languages and
regions, both consciously and unconsciously. The denial of its all
pervasive influence in daily life by any South Asian is just that, denial.

The question I want to focus on is: can there be debates on caste without
the acknowledgment of the caste location of the debaters?

In recent debates, naming the caste location of upper caste academics and
feminists has seen them being hurt by it, refer to it as name-calling, or
gingerly admit to its political
implications<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7H2_9QI1Ins>.
Their dilemma: how to make this go away from discourses on caste? Ignore it
or shame the dalitbahujan academics and anti-caste activists into believing
that naming caste locations is an illegitimate intellectual practice.

I am mainly writing this for young people who are weighing in this shaming
aspect of how we conduct and participate in caste discourses. To them, I
would like to convey that the 'politics of naming' in the context of caste
has less to do with upper caste people and a lot to do with the internal
political practices of marginalized communities adversely affected by
caste. I will try to use examples wherever possible.

*Savari <http://www.dalitweb.org/?page_id=2%20> *is a space for
conversations between adivasi, dalit and lower shudra women. Members
represent a part of the wafer thin layer of college-educated women from
marginalized castes and tribes. Caste and gender equity struggles for us
involves challenging both men and women situated in graded caste
hierarchies to respect our right to lead lives as full citizens. Of the
many topics that we converse on, exclusion from mainstream knowledge
production processes is one, as I noted here<http://www.dalitweb.org/?p=939>
.

Institutions and classrooms have no place for our history, immediate
concerns or our aspirations. As a consequence, knowledge about ourselves
and about each other remains partitioned and inaccessible. And like
immigrants in our own country, we find ourselves consuming and
regurgitating the dominant brahmanical worldview. In which, indignity and
inequality towards fellow citizens is normal. Which means we have to
participate in upholding the exclusionary principles against our own
communities and others in return for marginal acceptance or existence
within 'modern and secular spaces'? This is a trap for silencing our voices
against caste prejudice, hostility, violence and the willful ignorance of
entire communities.

Institutions are sustained and operated along well oiled networks. One
cannot net-work unless one is within the net. As first generation students
and professionals we exist outside the mammoth caste nets that run
institutions and organizations. This renders us vulnerable to co-option or
disaffection from being alert and agitated about the lack of equal and
respectful opportunities for all the girls and women from our communities.

Naturally we seek out anti-caste literature, and when possible we attempt
to create spaces and groups that keep us connected to our common struggles,
*Savari* is one such example.

*It is not 'what' we know, but 'who' we know (A R)*

*Softskills, networking connections are paraded as merit, how can we even
begin mastering the 'who we know' (G A)*

*There is a constant policing by the mainstream which deliberately keeps
away even those who succeed in networking, and succeeding in the Indian
situation as a dalit, bahujan, adivasi especially as a woman is an almost
impossible task.*

*I strongly feel that we should say to hell with academics and create our
own spaces – but some strongly disagree with this too -and I understand
their point. (J R)*

*Had struggled five years after law school for several reasons with no good
job, no money, one of the reason was there was no dignified space for an
adivasi girl in the private/government sector, I was labeled incompetent,
had no relevant experience etc... now when my voice against prevalence of
caste discrimination in the industry is becoming insurmountable, upper
caste nuts who want me to shut up, call me and say 'we'll find you a great
job in a good law firm, just stop arguing caste is everything, there is no
caste, not atleast in cities, maybe in remote villages'. (X X)*

Nothing is more telling about your community's marginal status than being
the only lawyer, the only PhD, only teacher, only student, only clerk, only
engineer from it inside these 'modern' spaces. When will this alienation
cease? When will our fellow sisters from our communities become our
colleagues, seniors, juniors, teachers and administrators? Next generation?
5th, or 10th generational cycle? Current indicators point to an indefinite
lag before equal opportunities are made available for all the girls and
boys from our castes and tribes.

Given the difficult terrain and topics, conversations at *Savari* follow
certain dynamics, some of it natural, some structured. We work at
productive conversations by recognizing our varied, sometimes overlapping,
sometimes conflicting histories, ambitions, anxieties and realities. In our
struggle for equality and dignity in a caste society, we have to actively
listen, critique and process criticism from within and across adivasi,
dalit and bahujan communities.

*Naming our own caste locations*

As a group of individuals whose personal and community histories' have been
anointed with shame for our very birth in a particular caste or tribe, the
act of voluntarily acknowledging our caste location openly to each other is
a painful process, and only gradually empowering. This is natural given
that each one of us spends enormous amount of mental energy hoping to
deflect situations where our caste might further alienate, inhibit and
debilitate us. In solitary journeys we have charted our way to confront
this hostile society. A society that prides itself in the lineages of some
castes and shames others deserves to be atomized into nothingness. That is
the kind of fury each of us carries. If we have managed to channel that
energy into constructive paths, it is solely due to our singular faith in
Ambedkar, Phule and Savitribai's vision of a caste annihilated and gender
just society.

At *Savari*, one of the explicit first practices while conversing among
ourselves is to locate oneself as clearly as possible. We do this because
we are training ourselves to be alert to not allow a situation where
intellectual authority gets tilted unfairly or settles itself into a
gradation. Caste, religion, political affiliations and even age as
identifying axes are laid out, as each of these may carry with them
inherent privileges and vulnerabilities. Power, however miniscule cannot be
neutralized by keeping it hidden. We name and interrogate everything.

Nothing that I have said so far should be new to scholars and feminists
familiar with colored women's assertions, intersectionality and the Black
women's work on critical race theory. But during the Ambedkar cartoon
controversy we saw academics who claim pro-dalit, anti-caste and feminist
perspectives eloquently describing hurt sentiments because their caste
location was being named by dalitbahujan debaters. Following this, articles
on caste in the mainstream media, social media and on blogs refer to the
dalitbahujans' naming caste locations as an intellectual tactic used solely
to put them on a defensive mode. This is a ridiculous misreading of the
politics of naming caste locations.

Names of entities carry meanings, messages and associations, as do the
names of castes. The taxonomy of caste names is an ontology of hierarchical
associations. Each and every caste name can be relationally connected to
any other caste. This living taxonomy has one of the largest user
communities. As a piece of data, each caste name carries loads of complex
information that is immediately perceived and processed by users. It
simultaneously speaks of power and powerlessness. It throbs with shame and
racist pride. It reveals the history of oppression and the history of
resistance. In simple terms, caste names locate the graded inequalities of
this society.

So, how can we debate caste without naming the caste location of the
debaters?

Let us consider the possibility that the bearers of the words and actions
of caste exclusion, humiliation and indignity towards fellow humans are
sometimes unaware of the extent to which caste animates their being. They
are genuinely puzzled by the sharp reactions from assertive members of the
lower castes and outcastes. And therefore are very hurt by the politics of
the marginalized communities. My sympathies to them.

But, is it our burden to educate them towards obtaining the skills of civil
conversations with fellow citizens? Is it our responsibility to educate
them to become aware of the elemental truth about human equality, and that
it ought to reflect in their language and actions? The marginalized has to
also play a parental role?

*Casteless Academe*

When academics, who in my book are professionals paid by the people via the
state to pursue truth, deny their participatory role in maintaining caste
barriers, what is one to do? Accept without proof that they have magically
stepped outside this reality while they address caste, objectively? In
other words, we are to see academics studying Indian society as casteless
people! This, when we are faced with universities and institutes boasting
95% of faculty belonging to a handful of castes. Are we to assume that
these academics played no role in excluding the rest of the Indians from
participating in publicly funded knowledge production processes? How is
this reality different from the situation in media and corporate houses as
well as the bureaucracy, which have zero diversity at the decision-making
levels?

An academe that is so completely overrepresented by higher caste names
wants immunity from scrutiny about their caste locations? How dismally out
of sync with the pursuit of truth!

~~~

*To be continued.
*