An Article portraying Plight of Dalit Students in the Indian Universities

When beauty is rendered as a tool to assert and/or negotiate spaces.

by Minakshee Rode

In a place like Pune University, whenever I look around, particularly, at the post graduate students studying English Literature, Caste and gender studies, one question always bothers me: what do we expect our mind-sets to be?

Students are learning just rhetoric and politically correct language specifically in terms of caste. Despite many attempts our educational system is still unable to make them sensitive enough to try to relate the personal with the theory, as students are not ready to unlearn their prejudices and assumptions about the non-Brahmin population.

First generation dalit female students, who have migrated to metropolitan universities from across various  classes;  have  no  touch  of  and  knowledge  about  the casteism disguised in the elitist culture of these universities. This is not very easily visible, but practiced so vehemently in almost each and every classroom of the campus. In this post, I will highlight the negotiations and assertions which dalit girls intentionally and unintentionally have to make in these spaces. These processes sometimes results in higher level of confidence and sometimes it can come across as arrogance of dalit girls. Well, the reception to this change is not pleasant, confidence is treated as arrogance and stigmatized as another instance of negative caste stereotype.

At first if we look at the classroom structure at the Post Graduate level; we can clearly see class based groups are formed irrespective of castes. But slowly caste comes to the fore when the fees have to be paid or the scholarship dates are displayed on the notice board. This period is toughest for dalit girls who don’t have any visible caste identity, most don’t want to disclose their caste identities. Because of  the politically correct atmosphere on the campus, the so-called upper caste female students cannot express the unease and plain disgust for fellow dalit students openly, so they slowly start excluding dalit girls from the group (if there are any at all) and activities. Many of us hear this common phrasing of a sentence addressed to us: “you don’t look like your caste or you are different, you don’t represent your caste as such”, from those who make attempts to speak to dalit girls.

So, some very basic questions: what must a dalit girl look like? More importantly what is the image of a dalit girl in their mind? What makes dalit girls so different from other students? After making several efforts at interacting with the upper caste, elite girl students, from all my years on the campus, here are a few responses that I have gathered:

Dalit girls may not be  getting married so their parents have sent them here.

These girls don’t have a sense of clothing,  have no sense of wearing the right make up, and manners are useless.

They are caught up in the wrong place; and they can never match up to our standards.

They don’t speak politely, and are very direct (rude).

They can speak neither good English nor pure Marathi.

Their eating habits/tastes are gross.

They are not feminine enough.

They don’t belong to our culture.

They are different and so on…

What do these responses reveal then? This is gendered casteism clothed in mainstream, elitist materialistic notions of female beauty. Moreover, this beauty is not just the beauty we usually think about, but beauty which is intricately linked to upper class lifestyles. Dalit girls have to compete or adjust and live with this constant comparison and evaluation. Branded clothes, heavy accessories, where you are expected to know all the non-Indian (international) foods and have regular manicure and pedicure, bleaching for fair and clear skin and you should be in proper shape. How  can  dalit  girls  ever  match  these  metropolitan  elite standards – especially when there is no such financial, cultural and socially privileged opportunities available for most dalit girls. Therefore, when implanted in foreign and elitist settings it requires not just adopting a novel culture but also results in attempts of getting rid of our original dalit identity which is largely viewed as a stigma to carry.

The Fab Indianised culture of the academic intellectual elites of the university campuses is very alien to these girls. I have seen girls who buy fashionable clothes and accessories by doing part-time jobs (when the economic conditions are not sound), or by telling lies to their parents and spending from their pocket-money meant for other uses.  Most of the time, money is spent on the beauty products and parlors. Dalit girls try their level best to match these elitist metropolitan concepts of beauty in the campus. All these are attempts to get a sense of belonging-ness in that space; rather we can say creating their space among elites. But it is certainly futile; it only helps to give you the confidence to be ‘assimilated’ in that space but you still remain with the feeling of failure to achieve a ‘legitimate place’ in that space. Always on edge, you become intolerable in this circle, and all these attempts only seeks to throw you out from the place.

However, dalit girls do resist these attempts and as they aspire to find their own space, it poses a question whether we can call such moves as assertion? Or can we see it as negotiating with the changing situation and demands/requirements of the new spaces?

So beauty is not the very straight forward thing that dalit girls have previously known it to be; it has many layers to it, which are very complex to deal with at various levels.  This brings us to responses of male students who already have prejudices about dalit girls as being ‘loose’. Most importantly even if you surpass visibility of your caste identity; forget about others who never notice your existence, but men from your own community also never acknowledge you. Many try to convince you that it doesn’t suit you, your ‘agency’ is totally denied by labelling the change as a result of stupid strategies to become westernized, all the time by calling you an example of ‘fractured modernity’.

The big question before dalit girls then is: how to do well academically in such circumstances as most of their time is spent in trying to get some space of their own in the classroom and in friend circles (if they have any). Dalit girl students who were toppers at the college level become almost zero at the university level because of these complex structures, continuous demoralization and so much energy diverted away from academic activity simply to gain acceptance of peers. However, one cannot deny the possibilities of some democratic spaces being created as a result of the conscious efforts on university campuses where such mainstream ideas of beauty can be contested but there are very few. (Published at Savari)

Read this article at Savari, worth sharing

Confessions of a confused Dalit Woman!
by Jyotsna Siddharth

 Today’s status quo bites me. The upper-caste, upper class, elitism in feminism, the hypocritical pretension about issues and a bit of everything is disturbing. I would not have come up with this piece if  I did not have the opportunity to attend an event recently in Delhi and would like to thank Zubaan for such a thought provoking event that gave me a push to reflect on contemporary feminist politics and where it’s heading.

The event was part of a series called Zubaan Talkies, the specific instalment ‘Take 5: Why did the Feminist Cross the road?’ held at The Attic in Connaught Place. I went there for two reasons: a) firstly I wanted to talk about the cartoon that was imprinted on their invite which I found anti-feminist and trivialising a serious issue b) and secondly for the simple fact that it was a Zubaan event and I wanted to see what happens there. I also wanted to know why the feminist crossed the road, as there were many old flavours of the feminist movement still present with some new emerging feminists trying to build their space in the movement. Not expecting to have received a fixed, final response, I was disappointed that it failed to provide any thought-provoking responses.

To begin with, the cartoon depicts a naked woman sitting on top of a naked man who is lying, uninterested in her, on the bed and reading a newspaper. One can see two thought bubbles around the woman saying “All right I am on top” and another one says “Now what”! What the hell does the cartoon signify? The woman on top looks quite exasperated while her partner is least concerned, engrossed in a newspaper. What does it tell us about feminist politics? One reading of the cartoon could be that women only care to be on top and it doesn’t matter what follows, which is far from being a feminist reading. Another reading could be that now that she has conquered the top position she does not know what to do, which is silly. And finally, it trivialises a certain moment in the history of Western feminism when women were making a claim on their bodies and on sexual pleasure and on demanding sexual positions different from the missionary one which this cartoon was mocking.
Nevertheless significant number of people turned up and none of them appeared to have a problem with the cartoon. The talkies began with an advertisement of Fair and Lovely where it was shown that a priest with his dark-skinned daughter enters a modern beauty company thinking it to be a temple. Once they figure they are at the wrong place, they start to move out and at that moment the woman at the reception says, “Aise Ladkiyon ko sundar banana hai to Vedo ke zamane mein nahi reh sakte.” The father being hurt, goes back to his house and digs into his treasure box of herbs. He finally comes up with a solution that transforms his daughter into a “fairy” (who is obviously white, have you ever seen a dark fairy!!). They discussed the hierarchy within complexions and that ‘white’ is the ultimate desired skin colour. Aren’t we already aware that India is a racist, sexist, casteist, classist, homophobic country? So why are we so surprised at the ridiculousness of Fair and Lovely? The point here is not the advertisement that most of us have grown watching since childhood. The point is: how long are we going to base our discussions on old schools? Have we run out of issues to ponder on? Are we clueless about which direction to head?
This is not to say we do not need critical analysis of media texts. There is a serious need to be critical about everything we watch on television from news to movies, commercials to songs, cartoons to reality shows. However, one observes a lack of conviction to place it in the contexts of marginalised. Why are caste concerns not pictured in these fancy events? Why does talking about caste make us so uncomfortable, especially in these glamorous, elite events where no one wants to bring up any insight remotely linked to caste? It seems like we are already living in a dream world where you leave caste at the doorstep the moment you step into an air-conditioned mall, a fancy restaurant or elite discussion tables!
In fact, caste, class and gender privilege do not only get reflected in the kind of clothes we wear but the ones we don’t, not only in the vocabulary we use but the vocabulary we don’t or the food we will not eat due to our position in a particular caste. Thus, it looks cool to appear a certain kind, speak a certain kind of language, and live in the ‘ideal’ world where caste is non-existent. We talk about all issues from poverty to special economic zones, history to geography — why not caste, class, privilege? Why have we repeatedly failed to talk about caste complexities? It definitely says something about our position with respect to the existing caste system in India. As the gravity of caste affects all of us in different ways, why its eradication is considered the “liability” of the marginalised alone? After all, the push needs to be from both ends to mitigate the disease that has corrupted our society for many generations. I wonder whether it is ever going to happen if the “resourceful, educated and political mass” fails to prioritise the issues of caste, class and gender privilege.
Zubaan’s feminist conception and practice is highly problematic where it is glamorous to talk about only body and sex without understanding the nuances and its intertwined nature with other significant issues of caste discrimination, homelessness, violence, poverty and conflict situations. Zubaan clearly targets only the upper class and upper caste in Delhi and that is shameful for a so-called feminist press.
Zubaan being the oldest feminist publication house has published several interesting books on women’s issues in the past and continues to do so. It is a platform which caters to and is quite popular amongst the intelligentsia from all over the country and abroad. It is a publication house people look up to and regularly follow. It is, therefore, disturbing to see that such a feminist publication house which has a significant fan following and supports an ideology fails to bring in caste, class and gender privilege into their regular discussions.
The stand ups done by Anita Roy and Gautam Bhan were flat and uninteresting except to a highly privileged and South Delhi in-crowd. The stand up by Anita Roy gets ten on ten on confidence, choice of words and style of performance. However, I could not relate with the “humour.” To be able to talk about one’s orgasm, favourite position in bed, and what would one prefer in bed is elitist. This is from the position of a large section of women, where I hail from, who fail to exercise “choice” in terms of whom they want to have sex with and do not. Along with being overworked, having persistently high levels of daily stresses and anxiety, sex is an additional source of stress. Orgasm is a failed reality for them, as most Dalit women are never asked if they are satisfied. Where they lie cold and wait for it to be finished. Repeatedly upper-caste men and their Dalit male counterparts have treated them as sex machines and it is but obvious that a machine does not have a say in how it will be used. Dalit men are as insensitive in bed as any other men, if not worse.
Official Indian crime statistics, averaged over the period 2001-2005, recorded: 27 atrocities against Dalits every day, 13 Dalits murdered every week, 5 Dalits’ homes or possessions burnt every week, 6 Dalits kidnapped or abducted every week, 3 Dalit women raped every day, 11 Dalits beaten every day, a crime committed against a Dalit every 18 minutes. It makes me extremely uncomfortable and helpless to feel that a Dalit women might be getting raped in some part of the country while we are talking orgasms.
As a dark-skinned, Dalit woman, I found some jokes to be not funny at all and some highly objectionable. The joke about people living in West Delhi, for example, played on the stereotype which immediately put South Delhi on a higher plane than the rest of the city. I had a problem because a) calling people from a certain part of the city inferior than South Delhites is not funny b) I find it difficult that anyone finds humour in such stereotypes which only lay bare class and caste biases.
The danger of today’s urban world and its so-called feminism is its complete shamelessness about its own class, caste and gender privilege. It is easier, rather convenient, to fall into a trap of conformism and conservatism. There is a need for constant self-interrogation. It is important to be conscious of one’s politics drawn from serious empirical engagement and strong theoretical grounding and Zubaan’s politics has neither. Politics coming from the air without an active engagement with either field or theory only obfuscates issues and dissolves in mindless upper class and upper caste titter.
The host thanked everyone for coming to the event and for laughing.  Nevertheless, the event concluded with laughs! Were we laughing at ourselves or at others, I went home wondering as Zubaan, fittingly, did not leave any time for discussions or questions!

The article was also published at Round Table India

Who Says Castism Does Not Exist?

The Caste issue has become so prominent in Indian politics, history, culture and even religion that we cannot ignore it. But on the other hand, you can find many people saying that castism does not exist anymore and nowaday people do not believe in caste. S/he will say, "You see! I am not a castist!

But do you think it is true. Yes, I agree, nowadays dalits are allowed to share food, water, living place, schools, and workplace but are they actually accepted by the castists, is the real question. That hidden hatred never died, it is still there in the minds of the castists. They will discriminate with the dalits on one score or the other for just one reason of their "being a dalit". We can find many examples when we see the so called upper caste people talking about the causes of the dalits but in reality there is no such thing as equality in their lives.

My motive of writing this post today is to inform just that I will be exploring this issue further which seems quite simple at the surface level which it is not. The history of dalits in India is very complex and sensitive and I would try and research in this direction so that I can reach at some conclusion.

I will posting on critical dalit centred issues in future. Those who are interested and working in the same direction can join. I would like to add that motive of this blog is not to spread hatred among various communities but to simply discuss and explore the Dalit Questions.