Casteism Prevails : An Open Statement

 

I hope when you start reading this you don’t go back to check my surname- or maybe you did- right now. Now I’ll be assigned to an assumption and in an instant, your view as a reader might change. Don’t feel attacked if you didn’t mean to, this is not really your fault. This is what I consider the result of decades of well convincing beliefs in the active existence of the caste system that has ingrained in our subconscious the urge to seek its presence around us, that has ingrained in our human nature to turn against anything that is ‘different’ from us.

When I was in school, nobody really told me what a Caste is, let alone My Caste. We’ve always read about it in history books, social studies or in Bengali stories where the little dark girl from the south of a village wasn’t allowed to touch the water of the public pond. It had never really occurred to me if this invisible poisonous layer of hate existed even among us. I would always question, as a child, “Why would people be so inhumane and a bunch of idiots to not TOUCH a dark girl?” These were the same questions that also my friends would ask- good friends, close friends, friends from the same class, the same friends that would also make sure I remembered what my Caste is some 4-5 years later.

I came to know of my own caste and the significance of it in this country quite specifically in 12^th grade. I was first introduced to it in 10^th grade for the first time when I filled in the form for my board examinations. The end of board exams in 12, the quick passing out from school and the uproar of admission in college showed me a riot of unusual behaviour, comments, and social media wars. This was when I faced first-hand casteism for the first time in life. Of course, every admission season, students are seen fussing about reservations, and my time was no different. I have seen countless friends of mine and me myself being pinned down, insulted right on the face and snubbed because of our caste, downright called “cheaters” because “we have taken advantage of reservations”. I have engaged in a number of unnecessary Facebook fights trying to prove my point, but why? WHY?

Why is it so hard to understand that your fingers pointing at us, blaming us for having “taken advantage of reservations” is exactly why we need it! You remind us every day at every step of our life that our academic success, our progress in life, our achievements, our entire existence are what we don’t deserve because of who we are, because of our caste, by blaming us for “taking advantage of reservations”! Had it been the opposite way, that is, our academic failure, our less economic growth, our depletion, our sustaining poverty, you would have been the same people who would sympathize with us, pity us. You would then tell us that it is because of our Caste.

People have always been comfortable sympathizing with what’s absent as long as it benefits them, as long as it doesn’t affect their fragile layer of incompetence, false pride, supremacy to move forward. Bring a little change to the conditions they sympathize over and they will be threatened. This is power. People hate to lose their power. The power of the rich on the poor, of man on woman, of government on its people, and of the upper castes on the lower. People hate to lose their power.

There are unending reasons why your privileged mind should know reservations stopping would mean a massacre. College campuses still have different thalis for lower caste people, lower caste students from rural areas sell their organs to be able to study in a reputed institution, in work places and educational institutions, lower caste students are bullied and even killed, and you blame Us for your inefficiency? Our reservation has snatched nothing from you as much as your hatred for reservation has snatched from us. WE are the first and second generation of educated members in the family unlike most of your grandfathers who passed Metric examinations or served the independence war and are now well educated, eligible, retired people. So, don’t you dare raise your finger if one of us becomes a doctor and use their reservation for their children. Do not raise your voice for the minorities getting killed in a village every day for being a Dalit when your hypocrisy blazes in the way you look at an urban, educated, well-off student forwarding in life. Casteism doesn’t stick to only guns pointed at our heads in villages or rape threats, casteism is also your abuses and shameful public insults in cities and towns of today. Casteism is not just the failure of your upper caste child to enter a reputed college because of seats but so, so much more.

Caste is what you see all around you, every atrocity, every unhinged continuation of casual practices, caste is what is vivid and glaring all around us and yet we remain eyes closed to all of it. India today has above 90% Dalit sanitary workers, increased crime rates against minorities, unsafe educational campuses, and work spaces for minor students as well as professors and teachers, negligible opportunities for people from poor economic backgrounds. Not to mention the incessant rapes of kids to elder women, mysterious missing of journalists and workers, sudden deaths and suicides of students and teachers, brutal police beatings and encounters, and the list shall be never-ending.

In a country where me and my kind lives with varied degrees of literal life threats just for our name, what else do you seek from us? If reservation is not for us, and if we aren’t promised with just this much, what do we live for? Put down your weapons and cheat allegations and rage against the system. If you want to change the system, start from the very root cause. Fetching away the prescribed medicine won't remove the disease. Fight against the disease, not the medicine that works to cure. The medicine is not what makes you sick, the disease does, and it spreads. The medicine only stops the spread. Do not go against us who are born with the title YOU gave and hence, reservation is our birth right. If you want equality, remember that you have it more than us. All that we have today is because of what we were given then- reservation. We are still to achieve and one day, we may be at par with you. Dissent for more space in the plate, for both you and for us, but please do not dissent for the one-third that we have from your full plate.

 #DLM