A Cancer called Casteism

I just finished watching Ayushmann Khurrana’s hard hitting film “Article 15” and could not resist even a minute writing this post. The movie didn’t show anything we don’t know. It’s about abject caste discrimination, prejudice, untouchability etc which we read, hear and watch often and forget conveniently. 

There’s a dialogue in the movie which loosely translates into saying that more manual scavengers die on duty than soldiers at border. There’s also a scene where a manual scavenger is shown rising from filth in a gutter with lumps of sewage on his naked body only to dive back into the same gutter to complete his job. I honestly felt my stomach churned and guts blown. Been long time when some scenes in a movie made me personally guilty and shameful.

I hope everybody who reads this article, for a moment imagine themselves cleaning filth from the gutters under toilets of others or working on funeral grounds cleaning up after dead are cremated. Imagine others washing their hands after you shook their hands or others throwing the food you prepared in garbage just because you do menial job which they can’t and don’t do for themselves.

For us urban, educated, well-settled, well-informed people, our ego will be terribly hurt when our group of friends exclude us from their weekend gatherings. We feel upset when we don’t earn or dress or show-off like our neighbors or friends. Just think, there are 16% of Indian population who are untouchables just because they are born into a certain caste and hence forced to do a job which you don’t want to do. And if you think this happens only in rural pockets of India and caste discrimination doesn’t happen among ‘progressive and thinking’ Indians (or diaspora), you are either naive or living in denial or both.

I’m born in a supposedly upper caste associated with priesthood but never associated with any lifestyle that comes with that tag. The first time I ever contemplated about caste was during engineering college admissions where caste equations played a major role. And I hated caste-based reservations which denied me admission in any college in my city because I was put in a privileged category despite hailing from a working-class family. I had been a strong opponent of such reservations and also wrote earlier blog posts advocating merit-based admission against caste-based reservations.

But with age comes wisdom and with information change opinions. As I saw the world more, I started realizing that meritocracy (priority to merit or skill) would mean that only those with merit, skill, knowledge would be given all opportunities and only they can lead a happy life. And those lesser mortals who couldn’t develop skills for any reason (socio-economic, learning abilities or demographic) would be denied a happy life, which I believe, is gross injustice. 

A kid born to a manual scavenger who struggles for 2 meals a day for his family wouldn’t be in a same mental state of mind to compete with a privileged convent educated kid for some college admission because skill-development is dependent on various factors. If discrimination was done on the basis of caste, reservation too should be on the same parameter. So giving more opportunities to the lesser privileged is the obvious solution and reservations should remain. I know people from my community would lynch me for saying this, but this is how I have evolved today.

I know there are many people from scheduled castes who progressed, thanks to reservation and there should be a mechanism to take such people out of the reservations system and lesser privileged people from the same community should be offered such opportunities instead. But that’s easier said than done because vote banks and political equations mean more than social justice.

The irony of this era is that most of those who complain against caste-based reservations themselves aren’t oblivious of their own caste affiliations. That applies equally to rural parts of India to diaspora in US or Canada etc. NRI’s may not practice blatant untouchability because they are “modern and progressive” but most of them want to be friends with only those belonging to their own caste. They want only their caste people to occupy positions of recognition whether it’s at their workplace, community events, civic elections or even beauty pageants. The kind of unity they display and heavy lobbying they resort to for their caste is amusing and loathsome at the same time.

When I spoke about this sometime back, a wise man questioned me that when we get together with others belonging to our country, culture, language etc what’s wrong in grouping within our caste? Huh, there’s an inherent flaw in this logic. We associate with our fellow countrymen because we have a commonality whether in terms of culture, heritage, way of life but even that doesn’t warrant discrimination against others or nepotism towards our own. When we group with people who speak the same language, there’s a commonality, which is easy communication. In case of country, ethnicity, language, there is a group identity we associate for our own convenience, lifestyle or communication. WHAT THE HELL IS COMMON AMONG TWO PEOPLE OF THE SAME CASTE WHICH THEY DON’T SEE IN OTHERS?  

What’s a Reddy or a Yadav or a Brahmin / Kapu / Goud / Chowdary do within their own community which they can’t do with person from another caste ? N.O.T.H.I.N.G. It’s not group identity. It’s the way they were raised, they were told how important their own community was, how inferior or bad others were. When NRI’s too resort to such school of thought and inculcate the same in their kids too, it’s a travesty and a mockery of all their education and knowledge. It's cancer.

As long as the fake pride in caste identity remains, bigotry against other castes will remain too. As long as some castes live in superiority complex, there will be some others who will be discriminated against and their generations will live waging a war for self-respect and identity.

PS: For those who think I’m being self-righteous or sanctimonious, not even 5% of my friends belong to my caste. I never attend my caste-based events. I don’t follow or even acknowledge the existence of such events. I hope my kids never ask or know what caste they belong to because they don’t belong to any. And I’m not taking any pride in this because I believe this is how normal human beings should behave.

Signing off !