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.

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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.

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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…

Caste and the Syrian Christians

An excerpt from a post by Thomas Joseph, a blogger based in the United States. Read the full post here

Christianity is believed to have come to Kerala in the first century AD when the Apostle Thomas, like other disciples, ventured near and far to spread the gospel in accordance with Christ’s command. There has been some speculation that the reason why St Thomas came to Kerala had less to do with converting the “locals” and was more to do with trying to convert the sizable Jewish population who lived in Kerala especially in Cochin.

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I write about this because there was a communication on a Yahoo group to which I belong consisting of mainly Asians who lived or live in East Africa. Apparently there is a debate going on in the UK about outlawing caste discrimination in Britain – yes, the old-fashioned discrimination against Dalits that is associated with India. There is opposition among some Hindu groups in Britain, to this legislation – in effect arguing that caste discrimination in the UK should not be addressed! This entire issue of seeking to achieve a “protected” status for casteism in the UK by certain Hindu groups is a whole different discussion.

But, in this context another member of the Yahoo group cited an email he received from someone known to me and several other family members which essentially said that such casteism is not just confined to Hindus and that even Christians in Kerala are guilty of the same thing.

A part of his email stated:

“But do you know Hindus are not the only ones to be blamed for this accursed practice. Even the so called upper class Christians in Kerala are guilty of this though they had given up Hinduism centuries ago claiming to have been converted by the Apostle St. Thomas!”

He went on to cite a Goan he knew from many years ago when he was a student in England who apparently asked him what caste he was. He (the Goan) claimed he was of the Brahmin caste. He goes on to say: “Wow! I was confused. My parents had never told me what caste we belonged to, not that it would have interested me in the least.”

Now, I am a Syrian Christian by birth but because of my upbringing in Mombasa, Kenya where there were only a handful of other Syrian Christian families, my involvement in the Syrian Christian faith has been minimal. However, I felt that a response was warranted to address the statements made in that email. Here is the thrust of my response:

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“I presume that by “upper class Christians” he is referring to Syrian Christians – being the descendants of those who were supposedly converted by the Apostle Thomas . In all my years, I have NEVER ONCE heard a Kerala Christian – Syrian or otherwise – referring to him/herself as belonging to so and so caste – as S—– pointed out, it would be incongruous to do so. What does happen is that the older generation talks about their antecedents and how they are descended from Brahmins, etc – incidentally such claims are not provable and are based on anecdotal information at best. Many of these claims of Brahmin antecedents are predicated on the belief that St Thomas converted several prominent Brahmin families in the first century. Some of these families are named in these anecdotes and today, if you check out the family websites of some Syrian Christian families, they claim to have descended from these converted Brahmin families. In fact, references to having come from an “ancient (Syrian Christian) family” are found so often that one wonders if there are any families left that are not ancient:)”

“What Syrian Christian families frequently do is to refer to their antecedents in the context of their family names. This is pretty much the norm in conversations among them – especially the older generation – where one of the first questions asked is where one is from within Kerala and then a query as to one’s family name. The younger generation who were brought up elsewhere in India or abroad, are quite oblivious of this sort of information and often view it as being rather superfluous and inconsequential.”

“My father used to say that the biggest change that had taken place in the social structure in Kerala during his years in Kenya was the diminished importance of family antecedents among Syrian Christians. It has been replaced with affluence – ie how well off is the family! He used to say it with a mixture of regret and pride – those who knew him can relate to his attitude. He was affected to his detriment by its diminished influence but he was intellectually detached enough to recognize that it meant true social progress and he used to say that it was a good thing that a form of meritocracy had taken the place of family antecedents.”

…

“Where I do agree with S—- is that there is a pecking order here in terms of how Christians view other Christians – yes, very unchristian but it is a reality. Syrian Christians – perhaps because of their assertion and belief that they were converted by St Thomas – view themselves as a cut above other Kerala Christians. They tend to view other Kerala Christians who were either converted by the Portuguese or the missionaries with diffidence bordering on mild unspoken derision – again, quite contrary to Christian teachings. In fact, even among Syrian Christians, there is a certain amount of denominational rivalry which occasionally gets quite antagonistic. However, when it comes to marriage, denomination invariably ceases to be a factor if an eligible young man or woman appears on the scene! So, pragmatism rules when it comes to self-interest!!”

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Read the full post here

Reading, writing and living caste

- A S Ajithkumar

I am trying to write about reading, which is in a way, my major problem with writing itself – the challenges I have to face when confronting some dominant habits of reading. When I am set to write about my experiences with caste, I suddenly feel something is ‘expected’ from me and this disturbs me. Yes, I do agree there are many possibilities of reading a particular text. But some patterns of reading which surround or endorse Dalit autobiographies are certainly problematic.

Writing caste is a very difficult task for a dalit. I feel most of the time that we are caught between two types of readership. One set of readers, who look for a real narration of pain or suffering, and the latter, who look for an essentialist, politically-correct narration of dalit experience.

Non-dalits eagerly wait to read the ‘real’ pain and suffering which only dalits can supply because dalits are the ‘true sufferers’ or ‘victims’ of caste system. Here, reading becomes a comfortable act, or the reader enjoys a comfortable position, enjoying the ‘realistic depiction of caste discrimination.’ This conveniently allows him/her to curse a system or some cruel people who haven’t changed and believe he/she is not involved in the processes – for them, caste is elsewhere.

On the other side, we have to face pressure from some dalit intellectuals. They scan our writing to check if it is dalit enough. I have written some articles on popular culture and music, trying to understand its caste and gender dimensions. But this hasn’t generated much interest among dalit intellectuals themselves. Maybe, this writing was not about what they perceive as the “real problems” of dalits. This demand for pure dalit-ness fixes us in an essentialist identity. This is also a real challenge I face when writing.

I have written about my caste experiences on Facebook and on a web journal at http://thefishpond.in/

Initially I got comments that said it was ‘touching’. Why should I write to make them say ‘touching’? Why does reading become such an irresponsible act? When I talk about caste experiences in music field or the field of writing or other public spaces, am I not trying to engage with the political discourses concerned with these fields? Yes, I know I don’t have the right to advice someone on how to read what I have written but I am concerned with what they talk back or the way they treat my writing. I am not looking for some unconditional or patronizing compliments like ‘it was touching’.

Caste is always associated with the ‘lower’ castes and it becomes our burden to speak about caste, as we are seen as the ‘carriers of caste’. Anand Navayana’s note was interesting because he tried to place himself within the caste mechanism, an approach we usually don’t find in upper caste narratives.  Living through urban spaces as a dalit, I would say that modern caste experiences are different and do not offer touching stories of the others’ pain from the past in a simple way. These experiences are not just pain but also confusions, pressures, humiliation, patronizing and denial of agency.

To hide or not

I remember a news item in Hindustan Times about a program which was held in Delhi on DR Ambedkar  Jayanthi this year. Some upper castes came together to give up their caste surnames, most of them being anti-reservationists. It is not a surprise that they were anti-reservationists because we know that this disowning of caste has been their strategy to fight dalit assertion by blaming dalits as the promoters of caste. How easy it is for them to ‘give up caste’ without giving up their caste prejudices. But dalits, without even having a surname or caste tag have to carry their caste mark all along. This invisible caste tag itself creates lot of pressure.

At different places, we are forced to play with our caste identity in different ways. In some places, we realize that it’s hard to hide our identity because they know who we are. In some other places, we are forced to hide it. How does one identify one as a dalit in a public place by looks or body language? I have experienced stereotypical conceptions of looks and body language. Some would say, ‘By looks, your colour, I identified you as a dalit.’

Years ago, when there was new interest growing in Kerala for ‘folk’ songs after organizations like Dynamic Action from Thiruvalla released ‘folk’ songs, I used to listen to this music. My mother would warn me to reduce the volume of the tape recorder. Her problem was that others would hear. We were sure that people knew who we were but, the problem was, they would understand our listening to folk songs as part of our identity. When we came and settled in Peroorkada in Trivandrum, the only house to have a telephone in the small locality was ours. The few Nair and Ezhava families in the neighborhood depended on our phone. My father was respected by the people living around because he was a senior officer in the telecom department. But caste does the job. We were warned by our parents not to exhibit the “real features of dalits”. I remember an incident which would tell how the people saw our ‘privileged’ position. When my sister got a government job, she distributed sweets in our locality. An Ezhava lady congratulating her said, “How sad our S…(a Nair woman) didn’t get a job yet! It is not easy for them, like it is for you. Isn’t it?”

It is through restrictions and pressures inside our home that we came to know that we belong to a ‘different’ community. But it took years to realize that these restrictions were the reflection of the pressures my parents faced in urban spaces such as residential colonies and offices. My father had transfers nearly every four years and we stayed at different places in Kerala and once in Chennai. So we didn’t experience a ‘traditional’ form of caste but caste was everywhere we traveled. Caste didn’t exist in dichotomies like slave and master, land lord and tenant. I have been experiencing caste within friends’ circle, in schools, college, in public places and in field of music and writing.

“Do you receive stipend?”
My music college days were torturous. Basically, it was teaching a carnatic classical music, even if it claimed to be a MUSIC COLLEGE in general. Right from the college building to the curriculum, the teaching system of Sree Swathi Thirunaal College of music, I could sense CASTE. The text books just talked about the greatness of ‘classical’ music constructing folk music as simple and pre-classical. The historical narratives about classical music irritated me. The upper caste teachers thought we were in the music college only because of reservation.

Once in my class, our teacher who was a Tamil Brahmin asked me to play some Mridangam lessons. My performance was poor. He asked me, “Do you receive stipend?” I got the message. I nodded my head. He now knew why my performance was poor. He said “NO WONDER”.

“I will call you if there is any folk style song”
One of my friends, who was active in film making, said he was going to direct a movie soon. I joked, “You have any songs in the movie? Don’t forget to call me, I would like to compose them”. He said he would surely call me if there was any ‘folk style’ song. This reply irritated me. For some years as a musician, I have been trying a lot to engage with the new possibilities of music that new technologies have opened up, which would break the stereotypical understanding of musical styles. Was he telling me ‘You are a dalit, we only expect folk music from you’?

“Ajith, how is your music school running?”
For some years now, I have been into writing. Because I am a musician, I had tried to theorize my personal experiences in the field. Having a comparatively better knowledge in this than in other fields has helped me do this. But when I stepped into writing, I didn’t confine my writing to just music. I tried to write about other topics like caste and popular culture. The patronizing efforts in the intellectual field were disgusting.

Intellectuals would talk seriously about different social issues and would turn to me with a patronizing smile and ask, “Ajith…how is your music school running?’’ This approach troubled me a lot. I could have treated it as an enquiry that respects my profession or as a friendly question. But I think that context gives a different meaning to the question. I know that my presence in that circle is not because of my music. And I don’t even think this is a serious question about my profession.

A dalit intellectual once invited me for a function at which they were going to discuss serious social issues faced by Kerala. Asking me to perform some songs related to the issue, he said that he would provide travel fare. I just asked myself if would they behave this way to an upper caste intellectual or musician.

We, our people, our place
I have used ‘we’ throughout my personal narration. I am not generalizing dalit experiences but it is a feeling I have got through sharing similar experiences with my dalit friends. Sometimes I have felt worried about falling into a sort of essentialism of dalit experience. I am confused about this experience – I am talking about the emotional spaces of shared experiences we marginalized people inhabit at different times or the emotional power we gather when finding us inside this secret spaces? When I meet with my dalit friends, we say ‘Hey, he/she is our man/woman’. We feel happy to identify someone as dalit. I also feel this attachment with people on Facebook. I have had this feeling when I have visited PRDS head quarters at Eraviperoor on Poykayil Appachan’s birth anniversary celebrations. Dalits from different parts of Kerala come together to participate in this function. Many things go through our shared mind. Is it spiritual, political or both?  I can’t explain. Will a modern progressive reader be comfortable with this feeling?

Yes, dalits have different stories to tell about our lives than those that are expected from us. But, I am not comfortable with telling my stories from a position of constructed difference.

- The author works with and writes about music and popular culture and is based in Trivandrum. Some of his writing is online here.

Caste-ing names

Shruthi Padmanabhan writes about community certificates and classrooms, the castes of names and food and how her family’s history impacts her present.

My name has been a big factor in people assuming that I’m a tam-Brahm. Apparently, no one sent them the memo that Shruthi and Padmanabhan are Hindu names, not specific Brahmin names.

My parents, actually my mother because my father was in the army and away, spent more time trying to convince my brother and me to not beat the nonsense out of each other than telling us about caste. I knew more about the INA than I did about being an Ezhava.

The last thing you’re thinking of, at least when you’re a student, is caste. You like to be a generic individual. One amongst the many. The un-classified person. But no, the prissy man sitting in the department does not have to be nice about your lofty aspirations. He only says, “where is your community certificate ma? You got admission in the BC quota”, and for some reason, you find yourself back on terra firma with a nice, firm thud and you’re wondering how acing a test stopped having a relationship with getting admission.

Getting that certificate in class 10 meant fulfilling some CBSE regulation, when I was getting my MA admission, I didn’t think it even counted, but it mattered plenty to the prissy man documenting my certificates and me.

The professors in the department got a little crazy about this detail as well. A senior professor in the department calls me and my friend aside after class and says, “you are English-speaking girls who are in this position despite being from your respective communities [both of us BC], so please teach the class and help them upgrade to your level”.

This was when I realized that I had forgotten the lessons taught to us in our Malayalee school in Chennai. We were children of Sree Narayana Guru’s movement of One Caste, One Religion, One God for man. My maternal and paternal ancestors were not allowed to cover the upper parts of their bodies. These people were also not allowed into the Guruvayoor Temple. The Nairs liked it like that! Despite being part of one of the largest communities in the state, we were treated like we didn’t matter by the upper-caste Hindus.

When my greatgrandfather moved out of Kerala and went to Singapore during the British rule, he left behind a lot of baggage. When my maternal grandfather chose to settle in Chennai after his time in the INA, he also left behind a lot of baggage. My maternal family was removed from the nonsense that Kerala mostly is. And growing up in a home with a freedom fighter, the values my brother and I were instilled with had more to do with patriotism than they did with caste.

However, after school and college, the more people I met were surprised by the fact that I’m not Tam-Brahm. Their first reaction? “You’re mal? But your name…” [I would like to substantiate this - as recently as April 24, 2011, someone asked me how in the hell my Iyengar-toned name ended up on a Malayali girl! This coming from a half-Malayali. Again, did no one get the memo?]

The plot thickens! My father is from Palakkad and he went to an all-Brahmin school. My paternal grandfather’s colleagues didn’t approve, or didn’t like the sound of I’m not sure which, of my father’s original name (Nirmalan) and had it Brahminised to Padmanabhan. More than my caste, my name has caused immense confusion amongst the twice-borns. My being vegetarian (meat allergies), make this confusion even more interesting for me.

I’ve grown up in Chennai, so my story is once and maybe even twice-removed from the realities of a lot of people. Truth be told some of my very good friends are Nairs and Tam-Brahm, and caste is not the first topic of conversation or any topic of conversation. I only tell the twice-borns one thing – my life is less complicated because it’s free from worrying about who touched my food and where and how it was cooked!

I just want to reiterate one fact, I’ve never had a problem per se. I’m amused by most of the “I won’t eat in a restaurant that serves non-vegetarian food because their cooking methods are not as per our personal standards” variety. I’m irritated with the type that thinks people can’t be fair and have a certain last name because certain names are the prerogatives of certain castes.

I have it way better than the people who have suffered so much indignity in the name of upper-caste Hindus, but that doesn’t mean I’m removed from the narrative.

Shruti has written more on her blog.
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However, despite this being 2010, I have a profile listed in a matrimonial website that specifies that the boys or boys’ families asking for my hand in marriage should be the same caste as me…It’s a hard subject to articulate and debate, especially for me. I don’t know enough jargon to pull this off. Nor am I going to justify my usage of a word, in whatever spirit, in my posts. Suffice to say, it is what it is and it exists. I read the papers and sometimes there are stories of how an innocent, consenting, adult couple had to deal with the consequences of disapproval.

Read the full post on her blog.