The brief autobiography of Rettaimalai Srinivasan – Part 8

கல்வி
Education

தாழ்த்தப்பட்டும் ஏழைகளாகவும் மௌடிகமுள்ளவர்களாகவுமிருக்கும் இச்சமூகத்தாரை உயர்த்த வேண்டுமானால் கல்வியை அவர்களுக்குள் பரவச் செய்யவேண்டுமென கருதி G.O. 68-1893 கவர்ன்மெண்டார் உத்தரவு ஒன்று வெளிப்படுத்தினார்கள். அது ஒரு சிலாசாசனமென்றே சொல்லலாம். குறைந்தது ஏழு பிள்ளைகள் வாசிக்க சேர்ந்தால் அதை ஒரு பள்ளிக்கூடமாக கவர்ண்மென்டார் ஒப்புக்கொண்டு கிறாண்டு கொடுக்கவேண்டும் என்றும் இன்னும் பல அநூகூலமான விதிகளும் அதில் இருந்தன. தீண்டாதாருக்கு போதிக்க ஜாதி இந்துக்கள் முன்வராமலிருந்துவிட்டார்கள். தீண்டாதாருக்கு ஜனசமூகத்தில் உபாத்தியாயர்கள் கிடைக்கவில்லை. சென்னை நகரில் மதமாற்றுதலுக்கென்று அவரவர்கள் ஸ்தாபித்த பள்ளிக் கூடங்களுக்கு கவர்ன்மெண்டார் உத்தரவு அனுகூலமாயிராததால் அந்த விதிகளின்படி இந்த இனத்து பிள்ளைகளை சேர்த்துக்கொள்ள மனமில்லாதவர்களாயிருந்தார்கள். ஆகையால் கவர்ண்மென்டார் உத்திரவு சென்னை நகருக்குள் பலிதப்படாமல் போய் விட்டது. இந்த தௌர்பாக்கியமான நிலையை கவர்ண்மென்டாருக்கு 1898 அக்டோபர் மாதம் 21-ந் தேதி தெரிவித்தேன். நான் தெரிவித்ததின் பயனாக சென்னை முனிசிபாலிட்டியார் பாடசாலைகளை ஸ்தாபிக்க வேண்டி உத்தரவளித்தார்கள். நாளுக்குநாள் உயர்தர கல்வியில் தேர்ந்துவர இவ்வினத்தவர் ஆரம்பித்து விட்டார்கள். சர்க்கார் ரிக்கார்டுகளை பரிசோதித்து பார்த்தால் 1772 வருஷ முதல் சர்க்கார் இவ்வினத்தவர் பொருட்டாய் கவலை எடுத்துவந்ததாக காணப்படுகிறது. அக்காலத்தில் பார்லிமெண்டுக்கும் நமது கவர்ண்மெண்டாருக்கும் கடிதபோக்கு வரவு நடந்து நம்மின குடியானவர்கள் பொருட்டாய் அநேக காரியங்களை நடத்தி இருக்கின்றனர். 1818 வருஷம் ரெவெநியூ போர்டார் கலெக்டர்களை நம்மின குடியானவர்களின் நிலைமையைப் பற்றி விசாரித்திருக்கின்றார்கள். பிறகு எப்படியோ கவனியாதிருந்து 1893 -ம் வருஷம் கல்வி கற்பித்து கொடுக்க சர்க்கார் தலைப்பட்டார்கள். அப்போதும் சர்க்கார் முயற்சி பலிதப்படாமல் போயிற்று. கிராம முனிசீப்பு முதல் ரெவின்யூ இனிஸ்பெக்டர்கள்  தாசில்தார்கள் தேப்ட்டி கலெக்டர்கள், கலெக்டர்கள், ரெவின்யூ போர்டுமட்டுமுள்ள உத்தியோதஸ்தர்கள் ஜாதி-இந்து இன பந்துக்கள். அவர்களுக்குள் நிலபாத்தியமுள்ளவர்கள் அநேகர். இவ்வின குடியானவர்கள் முன்னேராமல் சூட்சமா சூட்சிகளை இச்சாதி இந்துக்கள் செய்துவந்ததே காரணம்.

To uplift this community that is oppressed and poor, the Government decided that education should be spread among them and released an order, G.O. 68-1893. It has to be termed a great achievement. It had several rules that were helpful to our cause such as the one that declared that any place where a minimum of seven children gathered to learn should be declared a school and the Government should give a grant. The caste Hindus did not come forward to teach the untouchables. There were no teachers to be found among this society of people for the untouchable. In Chennai, people of various denominations had set up their own schools for the purpose of conversion. Since the Government’s order was not favourable to them, they did not have the heart to take in children of this community in keeping with the rules. So the Government Order did not have much use in Chennai city. I announced this sad state of affairs to the government on October 21, 1898. As a result of this announcement, the Chennai Municipality members issued orders for the establishment of schools. Day by day, people of this community began to avail quality education. Looking at the Sarkar’s records, it can be seen that they have been concerned about these people from 1772. There had been exchange of letters between the Parliament and our Government, and many things have been done for our people. In 1818, the Revenue Board had enquired with Collectors about the state of citizens of our clan. Then, somehow, after being without attention, in 1893, the Sarkar took the initiative to impart education. Then, too, their efforts were in vain. From the Village Muncif to the Revenue Inspectors, Tahsildars, Deputy Collectors, Collectors and Revenue Board officials, they are all the kith and kin of caste Hindus. Many owned land. The conspiracies of these caste Hindus is the reason why people of this community could not progress.

121 வருஷம் தூண்டுவாரற்று இருந்தது போல இனியுமில்லாமல் நம்மினத்தவர்களுக்குள் கல்வியை பரவச்செய்ய விடாமுயற்சியை இடைவிடாமல் பாடுபட வேண்டுமென அந்த 1893-ம் வருஷத்தில் ‘பறையன்’ பத்திரிக்கை பிரசுரித்தேன் . அது ஒரு தூண்டுகோலாயிற்று. லேபர் கமிஷனர் மூலமாகவும் டைரெக்டர் மூலமாகவும் வருஷா வருஷம் 20, 30 லக்ஷம் ரூபாய் சர்க்கார் செலவு செய்து கல்வி போதித்து வருகிறார்கள். இவ்வினத்தவரின்பேரால் பெற்றதைத் தாங்களும் அனுபவித்து தங்களினத்தவர்களுக்கும் உதவி. இனத்தை விருத்தி செய்ய வேண்டும். முன்னேற்றத்திற்கு கல்வியே முக்கிய காரணமாகும்.

சென்னை சர்வகலா சங்கத்தில் 10 வருடமாக அங்கத்தினராக ஆதி திராவிடர் அபிவிருத்தியை கண்ணும் கருத்துமாய் காத்து வருகிறேன்.

I published the ‘Paraiyan’ journal in 1893, so that we may not lie with none to motivate us as we did those 121 years, that education should spread among our people and that I should labour ceaselessly for this cause. It became a provocation. Through the Labour Commissioner and Director, the Sarkar now spends around 20-30 lakh Rupees a year to impart education. By assisting people of this community, they have also benefited. The community must develop. Education is an important reason for progress.

As a member of the Chennai Sarvakala Sangam, I have been protecting the welfare of the Adi Dravida with great care for the last ten years.

to be contd.

இந்த புத்தகத்தின் பதிப்புரை இங்கே, எழுத்தாளரின் முகவுரையும, அரசாங்கத்தார் அபிப்பிராயம் என்னும் அத்தியாயம் இங்கே. ஜீவிய சரித்திர சுருக்கம் இங்கே துவங்குகிறது. அதற்கடுத்து வரும் செய்திகள் – பறையன் பத்திரிக்கையைப் பற்றியும், லண்டன் பயணத்தைப் பற்றியும் உள்ள பகுதிகள் இங்கே, அதன் பின் வரும் பகுதியில், சாதி வேறுபாடின் துவக்கமும், காங்கிரஸ்காரர் சிவில் சர்வீஸ் பரிக்ஷை இந்தியாவில் நடத்தவேண்டும் என்ற விண்ணப்பத்திற்கு எதிரே புறப்பட்ட மனுவைப் பற்றியும். இந்த மனு இங்கிலாந்திலும் இந்தியாவிலும் ஏற்பட்ட தாக்கத்தைப் பற்றி இங்கே. அதற்கடுத்த ஆதி திராவிடர் சமூகமேற்பட்டதேப்படி எப்படி அத்தியாயம் இங்கே.

The publisher’s preface to the book is here, the author’s preface and the chapter titled the ‘Government’s Opinion’ is here. The brief autobiography begins here. The next part about the Paraiyan journal and the travel to London is here, which is followed by the section on the origin of caste and the birth of a petition against the Congress demand to hold the Civil Services exam in India and the impact it has in both England and India. The subsequent chapter on how Adi Dravida society was formed is here.

The brief autobiography of Rettaimalai Srinivasan – Part 6

இந்த புத்தகத்தின் பதிப்புரை இங்கே, எழுத்தாளரின் முகவுரையும, அரசாங்கத்தார் அபிப்பிராயம் என்னும் அத்தியாயம் இங்கே. ஜீவிய சரித்திர சுருக்கம் இங்கே துவங்குகிறது. அதற்கடுத்து வரும் செய்திகள் – பறையன் பத்திரிக்கையைப் பற்றியும், லண்டன் பயணத்தைப் பற்றியும் உள்ள பகுதிகள் இங்கே, அதன் பின் வரும் பகுதியில், சாதி வேறுபாடின் துவக்கமும், காங்கிரஸ்காரர் சிவில் சர்வீஸ் பரிக்ஷை இந்தியாவில் நடத்தவேண்டும் என்ற விண்ணப்பத்திற்கு எதிரே புறப்பட்ட மனுவைப் பற்றியும்.

The publisher’s preface to the book is here, the author’s preface and the chapter titled the ‘Government’s Opinion’ is here. The brief autobiography begins here. The next part about the Paraiyan journal and the travel to London is here, which is followed by the section on the origin of caste and the birth of a petition against the Congress demand to hold the Civil Services exam in India.

கிராமங்களில் இவ்வின குடியானவர்கள் நிலைமையை திட்டமாய் குறித்ததோடு சென்னை நகரத்திலுங்கூட மயிலாப்பூரில் ஐகோர்ட்டு ஜட்ஜீயாகவிருந்த ஓர் இந்தியர் வீட்டுக்குச் சமீபமாயுள்ள பிராமணர் தெருவில் ‘பறையர் உள்ளே வரக்கூடாது’ என்ற விளம்பர பலகையொன்று இருப்பதாகவும், ஜாதி இந்துக்கள் ஸ்தாபித்திருக்கும் ‘பச்சையப்பான்’ கலாசாலையில் இவ்வினத்து பிள்ளைகளை சேர்ப்பதில்ல்லை என்றும் மனுவில் கண்டிருந்தது. அந்த பலகை எடுப்பட்டு போகவும், கலாசாலையில் பிள்ளைகளைச் சிலகாலத்திற்கு பிறகு சேர்க்கவும் இம்மனுவே காரணம்.

Besides noting the state of these people in the villages, the petition had mentioned that there was a board saying ‘Paraiyar should not enter’ in a Brahmin street in Mylapore, near the house of an Indian High Court Judge, and that the children of this clan were not admitted to the Pachaiyappan College, established by caste Hindus here in Chennai city. This petition was the reason why that board was removed and these children were admitted a little while later.

லேபர் கமிஷனர் ஸ்தாபிதம்.
மேற்கண்ட மனுவால் ஏற்பட்டது.

The appointment of the Labour Commissioner.
Was due to the above-mentioned petition.

மனு பிரதிகள் பார்லிமெண்டு மெம்பர்கள் ஒவ்வொருவருக்கும் கொடுக்கப்பட்டன. இதனால் ஜாதி இந்துக்கள் குரூரமாய் பல கோடிகணக்கான உழவு தொழில் செய்யும் உழைப்பாளிகளை நடத்துவதைப் பற்றி இங்கிலாந்திலுள்ள எல்லா பத்திரிகைகளும் பிரஸ்தாபம் செய்தன. இவ்வித கொடுமை இந்தியாவில் வியாபித்திருக்க இந்தியா கவர்ன்மெண்டார் எப்படி அதை கவனியாதிருக்ககூடுமென்ற கிளர்ச்சியும் ஏற்பட்டு இந்தியா கவர்ன்மெண்டார் நடவடிக்கை எடுத்துக்கொள்ளவேண்டுமென இந்தியா செக்றேடேரியார் வற்புறுத்தியதின் பயனாக இந்தியா கவர்ன்மெண்டார் சென்னை கவர்ந்மேண்டாரோடு ஆலோசிக்க தொடங்கினார்கள். இப்படி பல வருஷங்கள் சென்றபிறகு ஒடுக்கப்பட்டாரை கல்வியிலும் பொருளாதாரத்திலும் விருத்திக்கு கொண்டுவரும்படி சிவில் சர்வீஸ் உத்தியோகஸ்தர்களில் வயதிலும் உத்தியோகத்திலும் மூத்தவரும் அனுபோகமுள்ளவருமான ஒருவரை இரக்ஷகராக (Protector) நியமித்து அவருக்கு ஒரு ஸ்தாபிதம் கொடுத்து இந்த ஒடுக்கப்பட்டாரை முன்னேற்றம்செய்ய தீர்மானித்தார்கள். அதுமுதல் பள்ளிக்கூடங்கள், குடியிருப்பு மனைகள், விவசாய நிலம் முதலியவைகளை ஒடுக்கப்பட்டார் பெற்று வருகிறார்கள். இவ்வினத்தவர் விருத்திக்காக ஏற்படுத்திய இரக்ஷகரும் அவர் ஸ்தாபிதமும் கைதொழிலாளரையும் கவனிக்கவேண்டுமென ஏற்பட்டபோது லேபர் கமிஷனர் என்று அவர் அழைக்கப்பட்டு வருகிறார்.

Copies of the petition were given to all members of Parliament. All the newspapers of England published how cruelly caste Hindus treated many crores of agricultural labourers. There was a stir about how the Indian government could have not noticed the practice of such cruelties. As the Indian Secretary compelled the Indian Government to take action, Indian government officials began to hold discussions with the Chennai government officials. Many years later, they decided to encourage the advancement of these oppressed people by appointing the most senior by virtue of age and posting from among the Civil Service officers, one who was also compassionate, as Protector. Henceforth, these oppressed people have received schools, houses and agricultural land. When it came to pass that the Protector who was instituted for the welfare of these people also had to look after the artisans, he began to be called the Labour Commissioner.

செங்கல்பட்டு ஜில்லாவில் தற்காஸ்து நிலம் இவ்வினத்தவருக்கு கொடுக்கபடவேண்டுமென கவர்ந்மேண்டாரைக் கோரியிருந்தேன். அந்த ஜில்லாவில் இவர்களுக்கு கொடுக்க ஒரு ஏக்கரா நிலமும் கிடையாதென்று தெரிவித்தார்கள். 1894 ஏப்ரல் 28 கிருஷ்ணா ஜில்லாவில் வேண்டிய நிலமிருப்பதாக கலெக்டர் அட்கின்சந்துரை தெரிவித்தார். பண உதவியில்லாமல் அவ்வளவு தூரம்போய் ஏழைகள் விவசாயம் செய்யக்கூடாமல் போயிற்று. இப்போது ஆயிரக்கணக்கான ஏக்கரா நிலம் கொடுத்துவருவதுமின்றி ஆதி திராவிட ஏழை விவசாயிகள் நேராய் கலெக்டருக்கு தற்காஸ்து கொடுத்து நிலம் பெறுவதை காண்கிறோம். கல்வி விஷயத்திலும் லேபர் கமிஷனர் செய்துவரும் உதவிகள் பல. தற்போது கவர்ன்மெண்டார் இவர்களுக்கு செய்துவரும் அநுக்கிரகங் களானது  சிவில் சர்வீஸ் பரிக்ஷையை பறையர் மகாஜன சபையார் மறுத்ததினால் தீண்டாதார் என்போர் படுங் கடுங்கொடுமை வெளிப்பட்டதனாலன்றோ? நான் இந்தியாவில் இல்லா காலத்திலும் பறையர் மகாஜன சபையார் ஏகொபித்தும் தனிதனி அங்கத்தினர்களாகவும் அரும் பிரயாசம் செய்து வந்திருக்கின்றார்கள். இப்போதும் இனஞ்சேரா  சிலரைக் காண்கிறேன்.

I had petitioned the government to give land that was available on tender for these people in the Chengalpet Zilla. They said that there was not even one acre of land to give in that Zilla. On April 28, 1894, Collector Atkinson announced that there was enough land in the Krishna Zilla. The poor were unable to cultivate that land or travel that distance without monetary assistance. Now, we see poor Adi Dravida farmers taking lands on tender straight from the Collector, besides the many thousands of acres of land that he gives. In the matter of education, too, the Labour Commissioner is helping us in many ways. The assistance that the government is now providing to these people was the result of the opposition of the Paraiyar Mahajana Sabha to the Civil Services exam. Was this not how the terrible cruelty of untouchability was made public? Even in the time when I was not in India, the Paraiyar Mahajana Sabha was, together and as individual members, working very hard. Yet I still see a few people who do not join the clan.

Filming Caste – II

Rupesh Kumar, dalit documentary director, on how he began documentary filmmaking and how he participates ‘both on the screen and from behind the camera, in dalit political debates’. Read the first part here

Some upper-caste parents withdrew their kids from the nursery school of Oothalakandy village in Mancheri taluk of Malappuram district. They gave a strange reason, “Our children will lose their culture by interacting with the SC/ST students.” They sent their kids to other nursery schools where elite castes study. One upper-caste parent, who is a school teacher, said, “My kid is really getting bored while studying there.” What may be the culture of a home that ‘produces’ a kid who is bored while playing with other kids? The teacher of the nursery school, Rejitha, strongly reacted against this nasty custom of thrashing caste system into children. She presented this issue in different venues and added that children from dalit colonies need more attention for their education and other needs. Her pleas were ignored by the political leaders, local government bodies and other authorities. At last, she talked about the issue to her neighbor Soumya, who was a Mass Communication student of mine.

We decided to make a documentary about this and went to the village for the shoot. We took interviews of two Panchayat members who were leaders in the Communist and Congress parties. They said that there is no caste discrimination, but that students were moving from this nursery school to English medium nurseries. Mr. Narendran of Oothalakandy colony cried in front of the camera and said that the people of the dalit colony in Oothalakandy are being ill-treated by society. Rejitha teacher attacked the caste system prevailing in the area and added that political leaders also support this. She said that, as a nursery school teacher, she had contact with almost everybody in the village and she knows what is happening there. They use all sorts of psychological and social tactics to suppress the people of the Colony. Elite castes make remarks against the colony by saying, “They will never develop….we have done so many things for them.” She asks “Who are these people to define the people of colonies? Are these people [who make the remarks] developed? I know what is happening in every elite caste house in the area.” She says English medium is not the reason for upper-castes to withdraw from the nursery, but it is caste. She is a degree-holder and knows very well to teach English. One parent, a school teacher who had withdrawn his child from the nursery school, ‘suggested’ some development schemes for the people of the colony. He told us to build some “cultural centres or libraries.” She says, “People who have culture can talk about cultural centres.”

The documentary was screened before the media in Malappuram at a press conference. The situation there was beyond belief. Soumya, the director of the documentary, and Rejitha teacher were expecting some positive reactions since they were presenting a serious issue. But some of the members present tried to ‘teach’ Soumya how to make a documentary. The documentary (which was ‘standard-less’ according to some of them) grabbed four awards from different realms of society including film festivals. Soumya got the fellowship for the best upcoming director in the VIBGYOR short international film festival of Thrissur. The police interrogated us to check if we had any “dalit terrorist” background or connections with DHRM, the dalit political organization here. We found this interrogation strange.

Watch Twinkle Twinkle Little Caste

Potthan theyyam (dumb deity) is a ritualistic performance by dalit communities in North Malabar and is read as a cultural performance against the caste system in Hindu communities. Shankaracharya, who preached ‘Advaita’ philosophy, the great advocator of caste system and a Brahmin, had a debate with a Pulaya youth. When Shankaracharya asked Alankaran to move out of his way for he would be polluted by seeing or touching him, Alankaran replied, ‘The color of blood in your and my body is the same. Why this discrimination? You eat the grain we cultivate in our fields.’ Shankaracharya can’t answer Alankara and fails in debate. Alankara was killed and burned by Brahmanicals. In memory of Alankara, Pottan theyyam is performed by dalits. Pottan theyyam performs by night and plays with fire with burning embers. There is a Brahmanical hijacking of this myth in Hindu society that says that Alankara was the incarnation of lord Siva.

The documentary “By the side of the river” is a re-reading/question against the hijacking of dalit myths by Hindu Brahmanism. It states that many rituals like Pottan theyyam should be freed from the Hindu platform to create a different political representation. After “Underworld memories of Untouchables”, we went again to my own village and shot by the side of a river. Folklorists and academicians don’t give an independent identity to Pottan theyyam and still tell this ritual as a subordinate story to the Brahmin Shankaracharya. Mr. Anandan, an academician from North Malabar, asked an important question, ‘How come a man who asked a great political question was named Pottan (mentally retarded person)?’ Who named him Pottan? It might be Brahmanicals. Dalits would never name their representative as mentally retarded. “By the side of a river” is an expression of resistance against Brahmanical attacks on the myth, culture, art, food culture, dalit life, psychology of dalits, their life and politics.

Watch By the Side of River

‘Blackboard’ was the first short film video for which I worked with a group of students in Sree Krishna College, Guruvayur. It was the struggle of a dalit girl who tries to survive in a campus controlled by caste and patriarchy. She loses her love because of caste. She can’t study because of poverty. She understands how the feudal, patriarchal, casteist attitude of teachers and the whole campus chains dalit woman students. She – as a daughter of a mason – has to fight economy, caste, colour and patriarchy in her struggle to live a campus life. My friend Anoop Ramesh, a film associate director,  supported us technically in the making of the movie. The film won wide recognition as a student production. Deepthi, who acted the lead, rendered a natural presentation in front of the camera. It has received wide acclaim and was selected as the best campus short-film in the SIGNS short-film festival in 2008. After this, we gained confidence in our film making abilities. I think this is the first campus movie in Kerala which discussed dalit and caste politics from a female angle. The documentary was produced by the department of English in the College, and the college gave great support in the production. This short film was directed by a talented group of active students titled “Les Miserables”. The background music was scored by my friend Arun Siddharth and gave an additional punch to the video.

Watch Blackboard (sorry, no subtitles)

My friend Sreejith Paithalen told me about a homicide of a gay man in Thalasseri of Kannur. He got the news from a newspaper and wrote a script about the psychological conflict of that gay relationship and the killer. He told me about the subject and we decided to shoot a short movie. I could not render the video well except for the scenes of sexuality. We got good actors, but as a director, I couldn’t make them present in a natural manner. This was simply my fault. To this day, I feel I spoiled a great subject. A lot of money was lost on this video. We didn’t try to screen it anywhere. The film was made on fellowship money from the VIBGYOR film festival, Thrissur. They also rejected the project. I wish I could do the movie once more for it is a great script, dealing with the politics of sexuality and of gay relationships. We titled the film “Crime and Punishment” in memory of Dostoevsky. (Dostoevsky wrote the novel “Crime and punishment” after seeing a snippet in a newspaper about a crime.) We had five days of shooting and it was a great social experience.

Watch the promo here

My experience of producing videos as a dalit is political. I read it as such since it is easy to represent ourselves. Some struggle for money  has made our efforts fruitful. We treat our video productions as pay-back to our dalit society which brings us up in political life with education and knowledge. Remya Vallathol, my life-partner, was the producer of the films I directed. Though she is a non-dalit, she empathized with our productions from her own standpoint. We struggle and experience and experiment with our productions and life to lead a dalit political life. We feel we need to fight a lot with our circumstances. I remember here our team, political friends and dalit critics all over the world for supporting our video activities.

***

Filming Caste – I

Rupesh Kumar, dalit documentary director, writes about how he began documentary filmmaking and how he participates ‘both on the screen and from behind the camera, in dalit political debates’…

Like any other film personality, I too had an ambition towards mainstream cinema, but understood that it is hard to get into. Still, I decided to do something with the camera. From that dream and planning resulted my first documentary “Underworld memories of untouchables”.

Peringeel, a dalit colony where my father was born and bought up, has taught me compassion towards humanity and direct experience of agricultural and fishing life, even if I was not involved directly in it. My father told me that in his childhood days, they had to cook even their rice in salt water and walk kilometers to fetch some clean water. My father studied and got first class in SSLC in 1960s and got into a government job. From this platform, I got my English medium and college education and basis for political thinking and film making. The strong urge to move with a camera made me a documentary maker. My mother was also from a dalit colony, Chevidichal – derived from “Thevidichi Chaal”, meaning ‘land of prostitutes’. The name and the colony may be the creations of Savarnas.

In our personal experience, in the Kerala atmosphere, I experienced caste in the psychological realm rather than physically. Caste was experienced in schools and colleges in jokes, nicknames, blackness, body, friendship, language, dialects, etc. It was in questions like, “Are you a reservation student?”, a question asked in classrooms by classmates and teachers. We felt caste, colour and sexuality played a great role in receiving internal marks. And we realized that caste is the main hindrance to love. In campus politics and love affairs, caste played a decisive role. Even when I was working as a lecturer, caste played a great role in the psychological atmosphere of staff rooms and other places.

Though Kerala is archetyped as a casteless society, in different minute and complex realms we experienced caste and debated and tried to theorize it. Out of these complex debates, we reached our documentaries or video productions. After our first production, ‘Underworld memories of Untouchables’ was read as a dalit documentary, we felt it our responsibility to do more dalit video productions. We participate, through our video productions, both on the screen and from behind the camera, in dalit political debates and try to intervene in the critical realm also. It is funny (but also gives us confidence) that the savarna debates purposefully ignore our productions. We still communicate with different political and multicultural societies all over the world through the Internet.

“Underworld memories of untouchables”, our first documentary, was an attempt to politicize and use memory as a tool against the savarna-ist psychological gate-crashing into all dalit histories through their memories, writings and biographies. This documentary is a movement through conversations in which dalits in a village shared memories of caste oppression experienced throughout their life from history to the present. We shot this documentary in my own dalit village, Peringeel, the name which was derived from the term, ‘Perumkeezhil’ meaning extreme lowest.

Earlier, the people of the Pulaya dalit community were brought to this semi-island to work as slaves in agricultural lands. My father and grandparents lived in this village and worked in the fields here. We treat this documentary as a pay-back to a dalit colony where I got my political living as a human being with compassion and positivity. The documentary begins with my own memories of caste experiences in my education and working life that had psychological and structural impact. Our earlier generation had got education, but there was discrimination at the physical, verbal and psychological level in schools and other scenarios. The experiences of those three generations before include a lot of physical abuses as expression of untouchability from different realms. We received some comments from the local Communist leader that caste system has been evacuated and it is not practised in the present. We could not digest that statement, we thought it was funny, given our personal experience as a dalit. Mr. Krishinan, who passed away recently, asked us “What you know about history?” He explained the history of Peringeel and said it was a land of slavery. Mr. Sreejith Paithalen, journalist and my friend, clearly explained how caste is working in new ways in relationships, friendships, and how communists in Kannur play the politics of caste through their ‘love towards dalits’. Mr. Kallen Pokkudan, the environmentalist, spoke about the transformation of the “Communism of Kerala to BJPism”.

Watch Underworld memories of untouchables

“Love stories in Black letters”, our second documentary, was the filming of a travelogue to a tribal organization called Thudi, in Vayanad, to hear a song of love composed by a group of tribal students. We made this journey an enquiry into the politics of inter-caste marriages in India. Caste experiences/inter-caste marriage experiences were brought out through interviews. It was strange to find that dalits blocked inter-caste marriages among themselves. This was a new revelation in our political thinking. There was a clear caste system prevailing among different communities of dalits. Mr. Hanu, who has an inter-caste marriage, opined that there should be an eradication of caste borders within dalits. He strongly believes that there should be inter-caste marriages among different communities of dalits themselves. I – being a dalit married to a Nair girl – admitted in the documentary that I couldn’t perform my marriage in a fully political style. Mr. Ravi, a Professor in Malayalam, said there is a lack of political consciousness even after different inter-caste marriages. Lovers and inter-caste marriage couples mostly take shelter in Hindu life realms and no dalit politics is formatted or developed after their life together and the offspring are brought up in the Hindu style only. Mr. Jayasurya said that in campus life, in politics, in jokes, in love, and in other experiences there is a clear underlying racism, and dalits are the victims. Love affairs are filtered and partners are selected through the norms of the Hindu caste system. Mr. Arun, research scholar in Hyderabad University, explained to us how Ambedkar put forward inter-caste marriage as a tool against the caste system prevailing in Hindu community of India.

Watch Love stories in Black letters

“Caste has been annihilated in Kerala” is the biggest lie that is heard from different social, cultural and political spheres of Kerala. Those who preach that ‘caste has been annihilated’ can’t really understand what caste is. It is the psychological suppression of dalits in various instances, stages and spheres of life and expelling people from power, money and knowledge in the present world. The people who enjoy all the benefits of caste system avoid debates against caste in Kerala and hold the classic idea that “Untouchables are now no longer untouchables”. This has been proved wrong in a Nursery school in Malappuram.

…

To be contd.

In the next part, Rupesh Kumar writes about how caste in taught to children, how the media can respond to portrayals of caste, of his other productions – both successful and failed, a documentary that took him back, again, to his village, the resistance encoded in rituals (and how these can be hijacked by Brahminical narratives) and the lessons learnt along the way…

Marrying for love – II

Priya* works as domestic help. She washes vessels and clothes, sweeps and swabs floors, chops vegetables and performs other housekeeping chores daily in three houses in Madurai, Tamil Nadu. In conversation, she shares her experience of marrying outside caste. Translated excerpts from an interview dated 15.07.2011. Read the first part here

We moved to the area next to one my parents were in. They would look at me but they wouldn’t talk. After I became pregnant, a year later, my father would come and talk to me. My father-in-law wouldn’t accept us. ‘They filed a complaint in the police station,’ he said, about my parents, and refused to let us into the house. Then I said, ‘I had a reason to write and give that I don’t want my parents, if I hadn’t given in writing, they would have beaten you up. Now when my parents come of their own accord and talk to me, I can’t refuse them. When I said this, he asked ‘Don’t you want your husband?’ Both of them started fighting. I said, ‘I won’t visit them if you don’t want me to but I definitely will talk to my parents.’ After my oldest son was born, they started visiting and talking. My mother-in-law would also talk a little. After a year, these problems were solved.

People appreciated that I had taken a stand at this young age. ‘Others would have been afraid and given up their love,’ people told me and started encouraging me. Friends were good to me. Only my parents’ relatives refused to accept me. They would stand on the road and talk to me but they won’t come into the house, they won’t eat, they won’t even drink water because we were SC. When we went to their house, they would take care of us. But they would never eat in our house.

My mother’s friend’s daughter was also my friend. She fell in love and ran away with her lover. They came and asked me, ‘Where is Manjula? She was your friend. Did she tell you anything?’ I hadn’t even known that she was in love. She had loved within her Parayar  caste only but they didn’t accept it. They said, ‘Why should she choose that boy?’ She refused to come home and married that boy. Her in-laws looked after her well. She started going to work and she is happy now.
…

Please ask all parents to let their children marry whoever they want. Please write that very strongly. If they give their consent, there will be no problems. Most of the problems that happen in love marriages are because the parents don’t consent. Tell parents to stop clinging to caste.

…

Now my oldest son is studying for his degree by correspondence. He is also a photographer in a studio. He is of marriagable age and he is also in love. We know about it. We told him about all the difficulties we faced. We told him to marry the girl we find.

After we married, there was opposition on both sides. My father-in-law chased us away. ‘Let me see how you will survive, I cannot give you food,’ he said. They caused lot of difficulties. My son says, ‘What would you have known at 15? I am 22. I can take my decisions. That girl is also 19.’ I told him, they would face difficulties. The girl is Servar caste (a Thevar sub-caste), we are SC. We cannot face any problems if they should arise. I told the girl this also. She said, ‘I can face any problems that come. I know you are SC. Its not like I  didn’t know when we were in love.’

I have told my children these things, they should know the problems I faced. The other three are in school.

If people should fall in love, they should have parental consent. Running away is difficult. You will only have the clothes on your back. My younger mother-in-law and I were pregnant at the same time. They would not make food in the morning. I would have to starve till evening. I was struggling for a few years. They did not feel that I had come away from home, that they should look after me. They felt that they should give food only when we give money. My husband was plying a rickshaw then. I was 15, working in a school as an aayah.
…

Earlier work used to be divided by caste – people who wash clothes have to come only by the back door. They could not drink water in the same tumbler, employers would ask them to drink water from the tap. Now it’s not like that – people of all castes – Konar, Servar, Nadar, – all come for housework. Employers are also better now. In some places, work is still divided by caste. In the 15-20 years since I started doing housework, people have also started treating us as human beings.
…

The area I lived – Ponnaandi Veethi – was an SC street only. It was supposed to be for the people who burned corpses. There was also a ‘Nadar Compound’ on the same street – the really poor people lived there, mostly SC people like Sakkiliar, Parayar, Kuravar, also Nadar and Muslim were all there – but it was called Nadar Compound only.

When we look for houses for rent, they ask for caste. SC people could only ask SC houseowners. Things are changing now. In the house I am in now, the owner is Kallar. Recently when we went house hunting, I told the house-owner that I was Nadar. That house-owner is Konar. He said ok. He knew my husband, knew he was SC. AFTER we came and set up house there, he made it a caste issue. We had to vacate the house. The older people are like that, middle-aged people like us don’t bother much. The older people cling to caste. My relatives still won’t take food from us.

***

*Name changed on request

Segmented Schooling: Inequalities in Primary Education

A paper[pdf file] by Sonalde Desai, Cecily Darden Adams & Amaresh Dubey

India Human Development Survey, Working Paper No. 6, 2008.

The results reported in this paper are based primarily on India Human Development Survey, 2005. This survey was jointly organized by researchers at University of Maryland and the National Council of Applied Economic Research…Part of the sample represents a resurvey of households initially surveyed by NCAER in 1993-94.

…

Indian society has long been stratified along the axes of caste, ethnicity and religion. A large number of studies report inequalities in various outcomes along the caste, ethnicity and religion. Not surprisingly, this inequality is reflected in educational attainment too. However, the precise mechanisms through which inequality in educational attainments manifests itself remains open to debate with a variety of hypotheses being advanced such as poverty, child labor, lack of access to schools, teacher discrimination and lack of parental interest in education.

Unfortunately, there is little empirical research examining these hypotheses. Nor are the processes through which social disadvantages manifest themselves, clearly articulated. This paper utilizes a newly collected nationally representative survey data from over 41,550 households to examine social inequality in children’s educational outcomes. The focus is on 8 to11 year old children’s reading and mathematical skills.

…

While a variety of affirmative action programs are in place to bridge educational, occupational and income disparities between the dalits (Scheduled Caste), adivasis (Scheduled Tribe) and general populations, substantial educational disparities persist. Table 1, based on our past research (Desai and Kulkarni, forthcoming), shows that the dalits and adivasis as well as Muslims tend to lag behind Hindus and other religious groups. We have also found that a great deal of this inequality emerges in primary school with children from the marginalized groups dropping out before completing primary school. In fact, if these children manage to complete primary school, their likelihood of completing middle school is much closer to that of the other groups (Desai and Kulkarni, forthcoming). This suggests that primary school is an important site for the creation of educational inequality.

…

Tables 5 and 6 show the basic distribution of these skills for urban and rural children and children of various social groups separately. Not surprisingly, reading and mathematical skills are higher for urban than for rural children. Social group differences are also clearly evident in these descriptive statistics. Even among children at the same grade level, children from upper castes and religious groups like Christian, Sikh and Jains do far better in their educational attainment than the four other groups, OBC or the middle castes, dalits, adivasis and Muslims.

…

Females have lower reading levels than males – a finding that contrasts with most of the U.S. literature where girls have slightly higher reading scores than boys. The impact of social stratification on reading level is very large for this model. Other backward castes are about half as likely to attain any given reading level as upper castes, dalits are slightly more than one-third as likely (0.36 times as likely) and adivasis are only .32 times as likely.

Model 2 controls for current enrollment and completed education. As can be expected, the differences between different social groups diminish suggesting that at least some of the achievement differences are mediated through school enrollment and grade promotion between various groups. But surprisingly, this dampens inter-group differences at only a modest level. Muslims are 0.39 times as likely as upper caste Hindus to attain a given reading level in Model 1; after controlling for current enrollment and grade completed Muslim children are only about 0.47 times as likely to attain a reading level as upper caste Hindu children.

Models 3 and 4 add two basic socio-economic factors, urban residence and household economic status measured by the household ownership of consumer durables and housing assets. These two factors, particularly the household assests variable, dampen the relationship between social group and reading achievement substantially. But even so, dalits are only about 0.58 times as likely to achieve a given reading level as upper caste Hindus. Similar differences persist for other social groups.

The two variables controlling for adult education in Model 5 further reduce this relationship, although surprisingly this reduction is not very large. The number of years of completed education for the most educated adult in the household, and a dummy variable for literate adult in the household shows that higher level of household education helps diminish the negative impact of caste, ethnicity and religion on children’s reading achievements. However, even after all these controls are added, other backward caste children are 0.87 times as likely as upper caste children to attain higher reading scores and comparable proportions for dalits, adivasi and Muslims are 0.63, 0.79 and 0.64, respectively. It is important to note that even with these controls the negative effect of caste, ethnicity and religion persists.

We note that many of the variables that are included in our final model, Model 5, are themselves affected by caste, ethnicity and religion. Educational attainment in parental generation is also a function of social stratification. Additionally, the same school factors that result lower skill attainment for children may also affect their progression from one grade to another. So controlling for these factors, underestimates the impact of caste, ethnicity and religion on children’s skill attainment. But even so, substantial differences between children from different social backgrounds are obvious in the result we present.

…

This suggests that the differences in educational attainment between people of different social strata are not simply due to difference in enrollment rates nor are they solely due to parental lack of education and resources. Even when children from disadvantaged groups attend school, they fail to learn as much as their peers. Qualitative research and anecdotal evidence provides a variety of explanations for these findings. Teachers typically come from higher castes and have very low expectations for children from marginalized groups. They are also more predisposed to seeing the behavior of these children as being problematic than that of higher caste children. In our survey, we also asked children if the teacher treats them nicely. We found that children were extremely reluctant to say that the teacher did not treat them nicely but even so, while 76 percent of the upper caste children responded that their teacher treated them nicely, only 66 percent of the dalit and 65 percent of the Muslim children felt that way.

***

Read the full paper[pdf file] here.

Pappa’s testimony

In response to the brutal attack on Thalaiyuthu Panchayat President Krishnaveni, this is the tenth of a series of posts about attempts on the lives of dalit panchayat presidents. This attack has hospitalised an award-winning and popular elected leader and underlines the threat that caste poses to democracy. The Arunthathiyar Human Rights Federation’s statement on the issue is here and a poem by SRaj is here. There is also an interview with Panchayat President Krishnaveni, a fact-finding report on discrimination faced by Dalit Panchayat Presidents, a personal narrative from Jayanthi and Chellamma,  a complaint that murdered Dalit Panchayat President Jaggaiyan had written, and testimonies from the wife and son of murdered Panchayat President Servaaran. Ravichandran has written about responses to the attack on Panchayat President Krishnaveni.

***

 

Tamil Nadu Federation of Women Presidents of Panchayat Goverment conducted a Fact – Finding investigation into the murder of Jaggaiyan – Dalit Panchayat President, belonging to the Arundatiyar Community (Sub-Caste among Dalits), Nakkalamuthanpatti Panchayat, Kuruvikulam Panchayat Union, Tirunelveli District on  22.11.2006.

 

…

The Fact finding Team conducted its investigation between 27th November and 1st December 2006. It was headed by Ms.Amudha, Executive Committee Member of the Federation and included representatives from the state Executive committee of Tamil Nadu Federation of Women Presidents of Panchayat Government (TNFWPPG), and NGO leaders.

 

Arumugam alias Pappa, wife of victim P. Jaggaiyan, Nakkalamuthanpatti panchayat.

I am living in Nakkalanmutthan patti, with my husband and family.  I am working as a labourer.  We belong to Sakkiliyan Community.  My husband contested in the Panchayat election held last month He won in the election.  Thirupathi Raja s/o Ramasamy Naicker who belongs to our Panchayat contested and was elected as Vice President.  Thirupathi Raja belongs to Naicker Community. Regina Mary W/o.  Thirupathi Raja was Panchayat President last time.

Since for this election (October 2006) our panchayat is reserved for Scheduled Castes. Thirupathi Raja nominated my husband and spent a large sum of money. His purpose was to rule the panchayat using my husband as he expected my husband to obey him. Thirupathi Raja’s wife Regina Mary was Panchayat President for the past 5 years (2001-2006). On the occasion of taking oath as president, selection of vice president (Thirupathi Raja), Gram Sabha meeting conducted by Thirupathi Raja.

As is normal any new president will ask for the previous terms accounts.  To avoid these questions and to function as a benami, Thirupathi Raja nominated my husband and spent for his election.  When my husband asked to hand over the accounts the problem between them started.  He had a terrible hatred for dalits. Thirupathi Raja use to say “When I am seated on the chair you (my husband) are also sitting on the chair as an equal” which I detest.

In the Gram sabha meeting Thirupathi Raja passed a resolution that my husband should resign from the post and persuaded him to sign their resolution.  Jaggaiyan, my husband refused.  For one week he continued to harass my husband.  Thirupathi Raja with his friend Sedhuraja came to our house twice in the night and threatened us with death. Once I locked my husband in one room and told that he is not in house.   Fearing for our lives we went to our relative house in Velayudhapuram. We came back to my house the next day. My husband wrote a complaint about Thirupathi Raja but he didn’t give it to the police.

After election was over.  Thirupati compelled my husband, to obey him.  On 18.11.06 morning 9 A.M when I, my husband, Paramasivan S/o Perumal was talking in front of Panchayat Office, Thirupathi Raja and Regina Mary came and threatened my husband,  “You sakkiliya, have to run the panchayat according to my wish.  If not we will beat and kill you.  Nobody will support you”.  We became frightened. Again on 20.11.06 evening 6 P.M when I and my husband were in our house. Thirupathi raj and Regina Mary came and said “don’t ask about last term accounts we will give you (Rs.10,000) Ten thousand Rupees”.  We didn’t accept that.  Today on 22.11.06 Morning around 6.30 am I, my husband, my husband’s brother Srinivasan  and Moorthy S/o Perumal were talking infront of Panchayat Office. My husband went on a bicycle to Chippiparai to drink tea.  When my husband was going on his way, Vice President Thirupathi with a wooden log in his had and his wife Regina Mary came and stopped him and said “you are not listening to our words”.  Saying this Thirupathi beat my husband again and again with the wooden log on my husband’s head.  Blood came from my husbands head both from the right and left turn side.   My husband tried to protect himself the wooden log with his left hand but Thirupathi continued beating him brutally. Again he beat my husband on the left side of my husband head and he fell down saying “I am dead”.

When we shouted in shock, Thirupathi and Regina Mary saw us and threatened “If you go against us this will happen to you all”.  Then they dropped the wooden log and went west side.  When we went and saw my husband, he was dead.

Paramasivam, S/o.Perumal came there after hearing about the incident.  I went with him to Thiruvengadam Police Station and gave a complaint to Inspector, to take necessary actions for my husband’s death.  During Post Mortem sub inspector of Sankaran Koil interrogated me.

At 5.30 pm they handed over my husband’s body to me after Post Mortem.   During his burial ceremony no naicker people came.  I remember that besides myself, police, my mother in law, Srinivasan, were present.  Police helped us.  I was not given a copy of the Post Mortem report.  In my complaint I named Thirupathi Raja, Regina Mary and Sedhuraja as the three responsible for murder of my husband. But police didn’t take Sedhuraja’s name.  Since I do not know to write, what I said, the police wrote.  They also did not give me an FIR Copy.   My village people all supported us.  I received Rupees 1,50,000 from the collector’s office. The collector informed me that I will get the remaining 50,000 after the case was over.

Caste in children’s literature

Excerpts from the Himal Southasian Magazine May 2010 issue with a focus on children’s literature.

From Beyond the ‘national child’ by Deepa Srinivas and Deeptha Achar

Any intervention into the field of children’s reading in India must take into account the new investment in childhood that came following Independence. This included a major overhaul of the colonial education system, alongside initiatives such as the Children’s Book Trust, National Book Trust, Nehru Bal Pustakalayas and Bal Bhavans. Several key literary figures and artists were part of this endeavour, and a substantial number of remarkable children’s books were published. Popular initiatives such as the Amar Chitra Katha comics series also participated in this enterprise. Yet more than 50 years later, it comes as a shock to find, in book after book that came out of these projects, both protagonist and audience so obviously elite and upper caste.
…
In India, children’s reading materials were long (and continue to be) addressed to an urban, middle- and upper-caste child in ways that reflected his or her economic resources, family relationships, beliefs, school experiences, food habits and language. They recorded and endorsed the world, the sensibility and the authority of this child, resulting in a self-assured hold over the world that was later a key enabling factor in such children’s success. Other children, however, were not provided with such psychic support. In such books we hardly ever found a child who had come to school hungry and sits there dreaming about food, for instance, or one who had to scheme in order to acquire books for class. Children from different contexts sometimes did find a place in these stories, but were generally forced to establish their ‘smartness’. A tribal boy, for instance, needed to establish that his knowledge of the forest can be valuable for his urban, middle-class classmates; a disabled girl must excel as a craftsperson. Even in the case of middle-class children, only a restricted set of situations were generally admissible, thus glossing over the fact that children often lead complex lives. We rarely encountered a child whose mother was depressed or one who was coping with a death in the family – such children lived with the knowledge that they must anxiously guard such secrets.

Recently, the Andhra Pradesh-based Anveshi Research Centre for Women’s Studies did a study in a few government schools in and around Hyderabad, and found a disabling gap between children’s home life and the assumptions on which school culture was built. Most of the children who attended these schools shouldered responsibilities in their families, and contributed towards their economic survival; these children’s sense of worth was positively constituted through the role they played. Yet such lives had no legitimate space in the education system. In fact, set against this dominant culture, these childhoods could only appear as deficient, deprived of play, pleasure and parental guidance. Children often dropped out because the school remained a forbidding place, identified not only with abuse from upper-caste teachers but also with the absence of recognition and endorsement of themselves or their home lives.
…

Deeptha Achar teaches English at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda and Deepa Sreenivas is with Anveshi, the Research Centre for Women’s Studies in Hyderabad.

Read the full article here

 
From Between Literacy and Reading by V. Geetha

In post-Independence India…Books that featured ‘modern’ situations, however, remained rare; when works did so it was only in a generic way, without attempting to recreate a lifelike world that might delight a child. In their anxiety to avoid the indecencies of caste and the tensions of faith-related issues, those few ‘modern’ tales courted a decorous artifice, and created happy nuclear or extended households that abounded in moral stereotypes: the good father, the indulgent grandmother, the naughty younger brother and so on. Names of characters were self-consciously Tamil, as if this took care of caste and other identities. While poverty, labour and the natural world were part of these fictional universes, they were present as mere rhetorical tropes rather than as descriptions of existing situations.
…
Also during the era immediately following Independence, Tamil publishing gained from an unexpected quarter. As happened in other languages of the region, the publishing scene was enlivened by books from the Soviet Union. Though the translations were often literal and even tendentious, these works made available to young readers far and wide wonderfully visual worlds that were novel. Furthermore, the brilliantly sure plots, the magic of poetic-sounding places and names, and the diverse universes that came alive in these books sustained several generations of young readers. Through all of this, however, avid young readers were – and remain – a small group, often restricted to those from the middle and lower-middle classes, with only a smattering of children from peasant and working-class households. Family reading habits, the openness or otherwise of local librarians, and the interest that the occasional teacher might show in a child’s linguistic development were crucial factors in creating and sustaining a child’s love for books.

…

V Geetha is editorial director of the Chennai-based publisher Tara Books.
Read the full article here

On Caste Privilege

- Namit Arora

Excerpts from this post on Shunya.net

…

Walk into a relatively nice neighborhood in, say, Ahmedabad, Pune, or Jaipur, perhaps one of the burgeoning gated communities of flats owned by professionals, public sector officials, and businessmen. This demographic will usually speak English, represent under 10% of the population but command far greater power. Notice that nearly all mailboxes have upper-caste names. The average man here might profess to be modern and secular, but don’t be fooled. His is an incipient modernity, without deep roots—more about clothes, gadgets, nuclear family, educating girls, and fewer food taboos. His idea of the individual, each with an equal human dignity, is terribly weak. Nor does he subscribe to the dignity of labor. Indeed, he would recoil at the idea of inviting his sweeper to sit on his sofa to have a chai and samosa as a fellow human. Worse, he would never have wondered why none among his servants, maids, and sweepers share his last name, or what role his caste played in getting him where he is today. What prevents such ideas from crossing his mind is a deeply internalized hierarchy—and therefore entitlement—evident in the way he makes demands on those in his employ, and the deference he expects from them and their kind.

In this social class, middle-aged members might casually observe, ‘I saw no casteism while growing up.’ Of course, it’s harder to see such things from above, analogous to the legions of men who internalize their sexism so well they don’t notice it at all. This is the class that is prone to reminisce the ‘unity’ and ‘harmony’ of the olden days. Now it feels cheated by reservations. Not surprisingly, a good many have come to champion the ‘merit-only’ line (that is, only test scores should be considered) and profess to be ‘caste-blind’. The ‘caste-blind’ stance, which perpetuates caste privilege, has wide currency with those who somehow see it as totally fair and impartial.

Explain the premise of positive discrimination and see eyes roll. ‘We don’t treat them badly anymore,’ one aunty told me, ‘what are they agitating about?’ Mention the benefits of diversity and question narrow ideas of ‘merit’, only to see hateful fear mongering spew out. ‘Oye, what if a scheddu civil engineer built a bridge that collapsed?’ (‘Scheddu’ is a derogatory reduction of Scheduled Caste, the administrative term for Dalits, formerly ‘untouchables’.) ‘What if a scheddu doctor killed a patient?’ The instinct is to associate low-caste with congenital stupidity. It doesn’t occur to them that the beneficiaries of reservation have to pass the same coursework and training as all others. Besides, they have no empirical data on how many fallen bridges were built by scheddus, nor do they know that Dalit children routinely die due to discriminatory practices by ‘merit’ doctors.[3] What, if not prejudice, makes them assume that scheddus build bridges that fall, rather than corrupt upper-caste engineers who steal public funds and use inferior materials? Nor do they hesitate in sending their own under-performing kids to shady engineering and medical institutes that have proliferated—the so-called ‘capitation fee’ colleges—where the sole criteria for admission is money, not ‘merit’, including obscure colleges in the former Soviet block countries cashing-in on the obsession this class has for ‘foreign degrees’.

Awed by the pop culture that trickles down from the West, this class knows little about the rest of India, nor has anything but disdain for its tribal and folk music, dance, and drama.[4] Of much greater concern is India’s image in the West, the health of the IT sector, new consumer goods, the peril from Pakistan, emulating China. Utterly materialistic in its values, it equates education with technical training, success with money, and sneers at the arts, social sciences, and the humanities. Its nationalistic pride is now yoked to its pride in Hinduism. Members of this class may feel irked by Dalits decamping to Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam, but they know ‘the problem’ Dalits have: their problem is one of underdevelopment, to be fixed by more aggressive ‘inclusive development’. Pieties and slogans aside, the members of this class make absolutely no demands on themselves. They never look at the mirror and see that they are squarely at the heart of ‘the problem’.

 

§

At a recent dinner party, a Brahmin friend, a graduate of the elite IIT system, criticized reservations on the grounds that they are socially divisive and instigate disharmony. I had to laugh. Isn’t the caste system all about social division, using graded notions of superior and inferior blood? Caste identities have been strong for ages; even today over 90% marry their own. If caste now also shapes political consciousness, it’s because, in part, its members share the experience of discrimination and inherited disadvantage. If the decibels have gone up, it’s because the lower-castes no longer tolerate the oppressive ‘harmony’ of the past. They want a piece of the pie, and they are seeking it via the ballot box. In another country, with the kind of inequities India has, the masses might have resorted to violent revolution long ago.

Why pursue reservations, he argued, when urbanization and industrial development are doing far better at defeating the inequities of caste. This is true up to a point, and a myth beyond. It is true that cities offer greater anonymity and a diversity of jobs unrelated to traditional caste occupations, thereby weakening many, perhaps even the worst, forms of rural casteism. An office-going Brahmin is unlikely to worry about being polluted if he brushes against a Dalit in a crowded bus, or object to eating out lest a Dalit prepared the meal. But even as many old caste abuses have vanished or weakened in the face of urbanization, others have arisen or evolved into malignant forms. Industrialization is a turbulent force working upon the caste system, but it is not in itself a socially progressive force. Introduced in a society with entrenched inequities, capital and industry build on preexisting social privileges and discrimination, as in India.[5]

As many historians of caste have noted, caste in the urban milieu has morphed to behave more like an ethnic community, whose members not only harbor notions of ‘ethnic’ distinctiveness but also a strong consciousness of rank vs. other caste communities. This continuing lack of egalitarianism then poisons urban civic life. It impacts hiring decisions; access to rental housing, health care, and public services; response from law enforcement; judicial verdicts; etc.[6] In our age of economic liberalization, even the Indian private sector oozes discrimination from all its pores. A recent and extensive study, Blocked by Caste, decisively dispels the belief that the private sector is mostly caste-blind and hires based on ‘merit’.[7] It shows that equally qualified Dalit and Muslim résumés are much less likely to get selected than upper-caste ones, and exposes other ‘hidden nuances of caste prejudice in the language of globalisation that contemporary India speaks.’[8] The obvious question this study raises is: why shouldn’t affirmative action be part of the strategy for equalizing opportunity in the private sector? It also shows that the beneficiaries of reservation can travel only so far in the presence of entrenched discrimination in public life. (Read this excellent survey of the reservations debate by Jayati Ghosh. [9])

Notably, my friend supported income- and gender-based reservations. A votary of a technocratic idea of ‘merit’, he was nevertheless willing to trade some ‘merit’ for other social goods, except when it came to caste. He saw the disability of poverty and gender, but minimized the disability of caste, refusing to see how common it is even in urban life, let alone in rural India, where most Indians live. I wondered if he had ever really pondered the sting of casteism, or what Indian society might look like from Dalit perspectives, urban and rural. He seemed to embody all the ignorance, doublethink, and moral myopia of the social class we both belonged to. I saw in him the same empathy deficit that I had been ashamed to discover within myself.

…

Read the full post here.

Footnotes:

3. Sanghmitra S. Acharya, ‘Access to Health Care and Patterns of Discrimination: A Study of Dalit Children in Selected villages of Gujarat and Rajasthan’, 2010 (download).
4. An example comes from Professor Subramanium, Chennai Academy of Music, who said the following during a classical music recital: ‘There is folk music and classical music. Carnatic music is scientificallv organized, folk music is not so … people who are not properly trained just sing out of emotion, enthusiasm. Folk music can be sung by any child. Quacks! Carnatic is not like this, you need a talent.’ (source)
5. Amy Chua, ‘World on Fire’, a very good study of many Asian, African, and Latin American countries (not India but lessons apply) that shows how neoliberal economics can worsen ethnic strife. Here is a review.
6. Such crippling negative discrimination can stymie most positive discrimination policies. But even for the blacks in the US, whose situation today is much better than that of Dalits, a ‘results gap’ continues to exist. This article by Orlando Patterson in the Nation explains why.
7. Madhura Swaminathan, ‘Caste & the labour market’, The Hindu, Mar 9, 2010. Among older studies is one by MN Panini, who showed that during the ‘permit raj’ era, the private sector was far from caste neutral or ‘merit based’ and routinely tapped into its caste networks.
8. Latha Jishnu, ‘The economics of caste inequity’, Business Standard, Dec 18, 2009.
9. Jayati Ghosh, ‘Case for Caste Based Quotas in Higher Education’, EPW, June 17, 2006.

Discrimination against Adivasis in Orissa

Edited excerpts from this blog post titled ‘Oriya Vs Adivasi – Discrimination of tribal population in Orissa State of India‘ by Kartik Ekka on the Adivasis.com site

The adivasis of Sundergarh districts have been tormented and subjected to all sorts of discrimination by the same people whom they have welcomed openly into their sacred places.

…

1) The first of the racial discrimination is : In many homes of Oriyas even today the Adivasis are subjected to untouchability and they are discouraged to visit their houses. They are looked down and treated as outcaste. Even today the non-christian tribals who do not practice the sarna dharam are subjected to discrimination and they are discouraged – not prevented – to visit the temples of Oriyas (of coure this is another way of preventing)

…

4) The Oriyas have refused to recognise the tribal languages as the official language of Orissa, except the language Santhali (ol chicki). Even though most of the tribal languages are written in devnagiri script, instead they have pressed Oriya language maximum to the hilt. Some rogue organisations like the Nila Chakra are quite offensive to the tribal language and are hard core in pressing Oriya language.

5) One can clearly see the difference in ratios of tribals versus non-tribals in industries, which are in Rourkela as well as near Rourkela. Take the case of Rourkela steel plant – the majority of Oriyas have got jobs, nobody knows how. Majority of tribals here work as contract labours. Nobody cares what may happen if any accident happens, no trade union of whatever affliction, do not bother as majority have been dominated by the Oriyas. This trade unions oppose any sort of tribal recruitment in the executive / non-executive posts. Permanent employees also face discrimination in the times of promotion, with the majority of Oriyas getting preferences. This is the case in all sectors .

6) Tribals are discriminated in the times of job recruitment, there are many cases that the oriyas have teared off the list of employments where the tribals get recruitment. They fiercely oppose the tribals who are getting /or about to join their jobs. They even destroy their letter of joining.

7) There is also discrimination going on in schools where the schools are dominated by the Oriya teachers . The students have faced daring statements of “you quota people” or “adivasi students” which is clearly a violation of SC/ST atrocity act, but unfortunately the young students do not understand. The internal marks given to students are enjoyed by certain section of students only, after matric (ssc) many students have opted out of C.H.S.E (board of orissa 10+2) due to discriminatory marks given to students .

8 ) Atrocity cases filed against non tribals are minimum, one has to check the police records to see the truth. Many cases have come of refusal of lodging an F.I.R by the police. Tribals who are jailed stay and hope to get out miraculously as they have no means to fight the cases with no money. The judges, the police mechanisms, administrative officers all are handpicked and brought here to carry out their goals.

9) Planned displacement of Adivasis by Oriyas and pre-planned greater Rourkela development plan to settle Oriyas, plan to deschedule Rourkela and to make it a district, so that the rights of tribals can be suppressed.

10) The tribal lands have been taken by the govt to make and set up industries. How many people (tribals ) have got jobs in this private industries? Not even 5%. Instead the tribals who protest the pollution are severely dealt with by the police, even the childrens are not spared. Pre-planned crackdowns term them as M.C.C sympathisers and put them behind bars.

…

Read the full post here