Wake up and check your upper caste privilege, please
“I am a Dalit. I won the Cannes film award for our country. Also the Cannes advertising award. I won the National award and the Filmfare award. All without using my Dalit identity. And yes, I fly business class now and I will offer you my seat next time you’re on the same plane.”
This crisp tweet was a retort from filmmaker Neeraj Ghaywan (of Masaan fame) to Vivek Agnihotri, a savarna filmmaker, when he tweeted recently: “Sometime ago, I saw a great Dalit leader’s grandson sitting on 1A, business class and I wrote this in notes. Just found. ‘Flying behind a Lower caste leader. But who is the upper caste in today’s scenario? The one who sits in the business class 1A being attended by ground staff or the ones who are trying to find half inch space for their elbows on the armrest. I was born a Brahmin and this leader a Dalit. But today as he sits on 1A and me on 26B the pyramid is inverted.’”
Agnihotri is not the first to echo such a view. Interestingly, his tweet won support from others, who rushed in to portray the caste system in India as prevalent purely in terms of economic mobility, not recognising it as a means of exclusion employed by savarnas for centuries.
The filmmaker's caste agnostic remark comes in the wake of a Dalit agitation that erupted in Maharashtra, which the "savarna-entrenched" mainstream media has dubbed as “caste clash” and “Dalit violence”.
On January 1, 2018, when metropolitan India was recovering from its New Year’s Eve hangover, Dalits were paying respects to martyrs from the community who had died in the 200-year-old Battle of Bhima Koregaon, more commonly known as the Second Anglo-Maratha War: fought between a group of 834 (some claim 500) Mahar soldiers – an untouchable caste in Maharashtra – under the British Army and the Peshwa Army of 30,000.
According to Dalit queer feminist writer Sanjeev Gumpenapalli, “For the Mahar soldiers who fought the battle all alone, it was nothing more than a battle against Peshwa’s upper-caste supremacy. For them, it was the fight for self-respect and dignity against sustained discrimination and violence under the Peshwa rule.”
The Dalit Bahujans gathered at Bhima Koregaon, 40 kilometres from Pune, to celebrate “Vijay Diwas”, got a rude shock when they were confronted by men waving saffron flags, who reportedly pelted stones at cars headed to the memorial.
In the clashes that ensued, violence was reported across the state of Maharashtra, resulting in the death of 28-year-old Rahul Phatangale.
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Limited in variations, the notions of a post-caste India — as espoused by Agnihotri — are manifold and continue to have currency among the majority.
Despite the fact that caste-based reservations are intended as affirmative action, to create a level-playing field — a way to correct thousands of years of oppression — a sizeable number of privileged Indians continue to view them as an "easy crutch" used by "rich" members of the lower castes.
Affirmative action is seen as an “unfair” speed bump by the upper castes who, in their deluded worldview, have — in no way — contributed to the subjugation of the lower castes.
Christina Thomas Dhanraj, co-founder of the Dalit history month collective, in her essay on the modern savarna, notes that by denying the current impact of caste on "the Dalit’s access to resources", people from upper castes use their privilege to compete for the same set of resources, at the same time justifying their resentment for affirmative action like caste-based reservations.
Virulent post-caste myopia also comes in the form of those who only chose to see caste, straight from the Vedic ages to the present, as nothing more than simple division of labour. Proclaiming one’s lack of caste by attributing different castes to different daily chores/activities is almost as bad as believing there exists no oppression.
Dalit poet, feminist and activist Meena Kandasamy, in a series of tweets, tears into this pick-and-choose caste buffet employed by the upper castes, highlighting its inherent dangers.
All the worms are coming out of the woodwork. Inner Brahmin, inner Shudra, this part of me is Kshatriya, that part is Baniya--no, dear Savarna folks--trying to divide yourself up into various castes as some kind of charity-act & over-all representation is like the Purusha Sukta
— meena kandasamy (@meenakandasamy) January 4, 2018
It is not any different from the myth of simultaneous creation in the Rig Veda: the Brahmin born of the head/mouth, the Kshatriya of the shoulder/ the Shudra of the feet, the Baniya of the thighs, and the Panchama out of real parents. It doesn't make you progressive.
— meena kandasamy (@meenakandasamy) January 4, 2018
This bifurcation/trifurcation/multi-division you seem to claim as some kind of holistic, spiritual division of labour within your identity--no it only gives away the layer of caste-conditioning that has impregnated your thinking, corrupted your minds, and enslaved you. Break free
— meena kandasamy (@meenakandasamy) January 4, 2018
Caste is precisely conceived on this regimentation, this division, this delegation. Don't replicate it--replication and duplication, cannot fight and annihilate this system. Challenge it. Step outside it. Spit on it. Don't go searching for an inner Brahmin, an inner this-or-that
— meena kandasamy (@meenakandasamy) January 4, 2018
When you say the intellectual part of me is Brahmin, the fighter part is Kshatriya--it means that you are going to see a Brahmin when you see an intellectual. She may well be Dalit. You will see a Kshatriya when you see a fighter, she may well be something else. Smash this system
— meena kandasamy (@meenakandasamy) January 4, 2018
Let us reclaim what it is to be human--undivided wholes, vulnerable & fierce at once, capable of infinite love, wrath, care, compassion. Caste pushes us into a social schizophrenic existence, your internalisation only reflects how deeply it has seeped inside you. Reject it. NOW.
— meena kandasamy (@meenakandasamy) January 4, 2018
Danger in this "seeing" is that you follow caste. You invariably see an intellectual when you see a Brahmin, not realising that perhaps better suited might belong to another caste. You are going to see a cleaner when you see a Shudra, & not read his poetry. You deprive yourself.
— meena kandasamy (@meenakandasamy) January 4, 2018
And this is only the tip of the iceberg when one takes into account the number of hate crimes commited in India against the marginalised, the lower castes. Data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) for 2015 and 2016 shows that the number of crimes reported against Dalits rose from 38,670 to 40,801.
It’s easy to misconstrue blindness towards caste privilege, or the portrayal of caste as an option, as foolishness. But is this really Hanlon’s Razor at play?
Every time the question of exclusion is in spotlight, attempts are made to steer the discourse away from the fact that caste is a machinery that institutionalises oppression. These attempts should indeed be only seen as malice.
For, in the absence of this discourse, privileged upper castes only seem to thrive.
As columnist Bhanuj Kappal wrote in a DailyO piece on the controversy over a Delhi band called "Bhungee Jumping" playing at a popular jazz club: "In this age of information, ignorance is no longer an excuse but an expression of caste privilege."