Written by Angel Sophan
I woke up today to a post on Twitter that was titled ‘Pain of merit’ and just below the title, it was written in bold letters that more than 20,000 SC, ST, and OBC students drop out from IITs, IIMs, and other central universities. My heart sank reading it and I re-shared it to my Instagram story. I got a reply to the story which read, “You should visit a dorm there, the general/dominant caste literally calls the reserved candidates C’s and T’s and makes them work like dogs. They have no name in the hostels. Just C’s and T's” [C for Schedule Castes and T for ScheduleTribes].”
I was too numb to even process it and was taken back to a quote by Yaa Gyasi in her book Homegoing. “You have to understand, H. The day you called me that woman’s name, I thought, Ain’t I been through enough? Ain’t just about everything I ever had been taken away from me? My freedom. My family. My body. And now I can’t even own my name? Ain’t I deserve to be Ethe, to you at least, if nobody else? My mama gave me that name herself. I spent six good years with her before they sold me out to Louisiana to work them sugarcanes. All I had of her then was my name. That was all I had of myself too. And you wouldn’t even give me that.”
This particular passage is a woman’s reply when her man calls her by another name. It continues to stay with me and reminds me of slavery and intense oppression, and how sometimes through all those ordeals, the only possession we have is our name. The words “You wouldn’t even give me that '' continue to echo. Is this how we treat our kids? Is this how we teach our kids to treat other kids? By stripping them of their name, dignity, and respect, and reducing them to letters of the English alphabet? C’s and T’s also reminded me of the holocaust times, when people were reduced to mere numbers. Is this what we, as a society, have become, or have we always been like this?
I received another reply to my Instagram story, where the person wrote, ‘I got admission to IIT’. It was implied it was through reservation. I was so happy for them and wished them all the best, but fear lurked in my mind. Starting college should be exciting and fun for all of us irrespective of our backgrounds. I couldn’t help but be extremely scared, vigilant, and fearful for them. I told them to create a safe space in the university from day one.
Where was all this fear in me stemming from? I did not want them to be reduced to a ‘C’. I did not want them to be yet another victim of stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination from anybody in that university. I did not want that person to ever be questioned about their ‘aukat’. When we fear sending our children to college campuses because we do not know what fate befalls them, how do we measure progress in society?
What is it about caste that won’t just die? It simply persists across time – from the agrarian era to industrialisation, to colonialism, to independence, and to the digital era – it just doesn’t die. The world has seen wars, ethnic cleansing, the holocaust, apartheid, slavery, and much more, and the economy has shifted, revolutions have happened, family systems and dynamics have changed, and love and marriage have been redefined, yet, caste just doesn’t die. Why?
‘Surely, times are changing’, is a statement everyone loves to repeat. Is that supposed to make us feel better, to fill us with hope? Just because we have a few anecdotal examples of people from the Dalit community who own posh cars or a few inter-caste marriages, can we collectively ignore the unfathomable horrors faced by the community at large? Caste is also often reduced to a Dalit problem. Our country has been infested with caste bias and it is not ‘your’ or ‘their’ problem, it is ‘our’ problem.
Let us look at the words we use, ‘protection’ of stigmatised communities. Who left such communities stigmatised? And, protection from what, exactly? Not wild animals or alien forces or calamities of natural origin, but protection from one set of human beings. Do we ever realise how cruel this sounds?
Even if there is one human being out there who is being discriminated against, questioned of their self-worth, made fun of or bullied, served on a different plate, or subjected to any act of subjugation in the endless list of atrocities, the nation is answerable to that one person. To whomsoever it may concern or not concern, the onus is on everyone else for that citizen having felt that way. The onus is also on you and me to make sure another child never feels treated differently, and to make this place habitable for everyone in terms of dignity, respect, equity, and opportunity.
How can one cause the air that keeps them alive to choke someone else to death? How can we, as humans, continue to do that, minute after minute, year after year, century after century, millennia after millennia? How is the air so different for the both of us?
Angel Sophan is a Ph.D. scholar from Christ (Deemed to be University), Bangalore. Her recent publications include ‘Decolonizing Caste in the Indian Context: The psyche of the Oppressor’. You can reach her at angel.sophan@res.christuniversity.in
Views are the author’s own