Indian campuses remain averse to conversations on caste: An anti-caste activist writes

A few months ago, in a somewhat gloomy south Indian city, a fellow anti-caste worker and I were gearing up to conduct caste sensitisation sessions for the incoming students of a premier public university. These sessions were designed to sensitise dominant caste students and ensure a space to confide for lowered caste students on campuses. 

As we entered our first session, we found to our dismay a completely empty classroom. Not having much else to do, we patiently waited for the next set of students. The next session was to be attended by 40-50 students as per the coordinators; but in reality, only 10-15 students turned up. 

Saddened, yet curious to understand the absence of more than half the class, we inquired about it to those present. “This class is scheduled too early on an off day,” one student instantly responded. “A few of our peers were uninterested in attending a session that would stir up a conversation on caste,” said another, air-quoting ‘caste’. But the most alarming response came from a student who said that their classmate had fled the session saying, “I know my caste. I know I am higher and everyone else is lower to me.”

Such was the response to starting a dialogue on caste. My colleague and I took mental notes on the responses and commenced the session. 

Our discussions included the prevalence of nuanced caste discrimination in urban spaces, understanding caste privilege, the psychological consequences of caste discrimination, deciphering the idea of meritocracy, addressing the responsibilities of the caste privileged in tackling caste discrimination and building a powerful allyship, and finally, discussing how a safe space for the caste oppressed can be built on campus.

We chose to examine the act of refusing to inter-dine with non-vegetarians as a subtle form of caste discrimination. A few minutes into this discussion, some students assertively opposed the said acts’ correlation to caste. One student said, “My landlord is a Brahmin but I am a non-vegetarian. He is extremely friendly but won’t tolerate meat, which is why I sit at a different table if we inter-dine. That is just me being respectful.” 

In India, academic institutions foster a milieu conducive only to the non-meat-eating population. Not only is any kind of meat absent from most Indian lunch boxes, but its consumers are compelled to feel awful about their food practices. While educators/adults discourage non-vegetarianism, learners/children acquire that tradition and exercise it on their peers. This learned behaviour is further carried everywhere to treat the oppressed castes differently, hence making food a heavily politicised socio-economic-cultural object in this country. 

As the session furthered, we listened to opinions from dominant caste students on the lived realities of the lowered castes. For many dominant caste students, their food habits were disconnected from caste, just like their caste identity is from their privileges. Reservations, for them, creates an unjust environment that abandons the meritorious. But the most commonly  observed was the presumption that the lowered castes abuse affirmative actions.

Most students engaging in debates on the rights and dignity of the lowered castes demonstrate the nature of classrooms in Indian educational institutions. Entitlement to one’s opinion is masked as a right to vocalise their privileged and discriminatory perspectives. But these limited, incorrect understandings of oppressed castes systematically ostracise Dalit-Bahujan-Adivasi (DBA) students on campus. 

As we were about to conclude our session, we noticed a student tearing up. We approached them with compassion, only to understand that they were triggered by the statements made in class. While reassuring one student, another confessed to having experienced similar emotions. In fact, that student would later message us about deciding to drop out of the institution due to the display of hostility by their classmates and the institution. These feelings were reported frequently from students as we administered more sessions. By the end of another session, a trembling and sobbing student told us that they were “a first-generation tribal woman who has worked hard to reach so far and my best friend, who walked out of this session, harassed me for benefiting from reservations.” 

All these circumstances unfolded at an institution that has over the years scrupulously assembled a safe space run by and for the oppressed castes. My colleague and I decided to take action in our capacity and formed a safe online space for oppressed caste students.

These incidents provoked me to think about how an individual or a social group is constrained to feel according to dominant caste social representations, rather than how they feel about themselves. 

In my Masters’ thesis, I had examined the impact of dominant caste social representations on the construction of Dalit identity. For social psychologists Serge Moscovici and Robert Farr, social representations are created by individuals and groups in a context of communication and cooperation, and are aimed at ‘representing’ others. Hence, social representations as a theory centers around how humans make sense of the world and how knowledge is formed and represented. The sources of the ‘constructed self’ for the oppressed castes are thus reinforced by dominant castes.

In a pool of multicultural identities, accentuating the everyday of the dominant castes has ramifications on the Dalit self-esteem. For the oppressed, who are forced to concede to the representations that they are “lower” than their counterparts, everything that they think and execute could be made to feel like a lowly act. The dominance of the 'who' over the 'what' of representations occurs when they have more to do with the one representing than with the thing being represented. With the awareness of one’s dominance, it makes it simpler for dominant castes to distance the lowered castes on campus and elsewhere. 

bell hooks asserts that “the practice of self-love is difficult in a society that is more concerned with profit than well-being, but it is even more difficult for black folks, as we must constantly resist the negative perceptions of blackness we are encouraged to embrace by the dominant culture”. 

When an environment fosters negative representations of the Avarna livelihood, it makes it difficult for Dalit self-love and self-esteem to emerge. A dominant caste individual’s cultural capital then becomes a major cause for the injured self-esteem of the lowered castes. 

Oppressed castes have identified countless ways to escape conversations of caste and the revelation of their caste identity in universities and society in general due to the dominant caste representations. A constant state of powerlessness is enforced on oppressed caste students, which curbs not only their creative or intellectual freedom, but also their serenity. Universities then become a space where DBA students constantly battle with themselves. This begs the question, how far has the collective come in building a space for the oppressed castes to thrive while feeling secure on campus?  

Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o asserts in Decolonising the Mind that colonial education desolates the colonised people. He argues that the process “annihilate[s] people’s belief in their names, in their languages, in their environment, in their heritage of struggle, in their unity, in their capacities and ultimately in themselves. It makes them see their past as one wasteland of non-achievement and it makes them want to distance themselves from that wasteland. It makes them want to identify with that which is furthest removed from themselves.” 

In India, colonial-Brahmanical education as a system sets up individuals from varied social groups to compete for superiority over each other. This competitive nature forces the lowered castes to view their identities and culture as a wasteland, as Ngũgĩ says. It is designed to compare, overpower, contend, and triumph, thus impeding empathy. The victims in this rigid system are always the lowered castes and minorities. 

Charumathi Mohan has a Master's from the London School of Economics and is committed to exploring ways to reinforce the self-esteem of the oppressed castes under conditions of systemic oppression.