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The use of the term “caste apartheid” is a political choice, intentional and apt. It was first used by Dalits who had visited Durban in South Africa from the World Conference against Racism in 2001. In India the British colonizers had learned how effective the caste system was in governing people. After all, if you are attempting to govern a conquered population, would you want them to be a unified group that vastly outnumbers you, or would it be easier if they were already divided among themselves? Obviously the latter.
Having learned how caste can be weaponized effectively to rule, the British created similar structures in other colonies as their empire racialized millions of Black and brown bodies. The British implementation of their version of a racial caste system in South African apartheid appears as a direct homage to Brahminism. As Cecil Rhodes, a key architect of South African apartheid, stated in a speech in Capetown, “The native is to be treated as a child and denied the franchise. We must adopt a system of despotism, such as works in India, in our relations with the barbarism of South Africa. We shall be thankful to have the natives with us in their proper position.” Rhodes’s policies disenfranchised Black South Africans, while indentured people from other colonies were racialized as the “coloureds” and were granted a more privileged position. At the top, whites benefited from competition and skirmishes between the lower tiers.
Some people believe that if they aren’t Brahmin, they can’t be casteist. The reality is quite different. It doesn’t take a Brahmin to uphold the structure and benefit from the caste system. In fact, much of the violence in our home countries is often exacted by non-Brahmin dominant castes eager to maintain their hegemony of power and resources through a climate of terror. Brahminism set up Brahmins to be the top beneficiaries of caste but further divided all of society and pitted each level against another on the basis of caste privilege, what the great Dalit leader and theorist Dr. B. R. Ambedkar called “graded inequality.” Caste originated with the Brahmins, but now everyone attempts to protect their place in the pyramid.
Brahminical forces, if they acknowledge caste at all, often choose the term “caste system,” which helps neutralize and legitimize it. By calling it a “system,” they claim there are aspects that are actually valuable and useful about it. “Let’s not throw out the baby with the bath water,” they often say when the “system” is challenged. What is the baby in a scenario of mass atrocity and dehumanization, exactly? “Caste apartheid” is a more accurate description of the horrors of caste that break our minds and our hearts through punishing systemic exclusion and violence.
We reject this heinous system and call ourselves Dalits, people who are broken by a system yet maintain the resilience to fight for our dignity and freedom. Dalits have to develop a very deep existential strength, because we have to challenge spiritual dogma, the very firmament of the divine, to forge our dignity and chart a pathway to ourselves and to our freedom. It requires great will to take on the gravity of who you are in the face of a society that insists you are not equal and therefore not human. That’s a muscle that many oppressed peoples develop, because it is untenable to accept your extinguishment. It’s untenable to accept that there is no possibility. We must find a way to our humanity or perish.
I remember a dear Tlingit friend, Gail, who was telling me about the power of language. Her grandfather grew up in the Indigenous boarding schools. These schools, often operated by Christian missionaries throughout North America, were rife with religious and racial violence and abuse; their primary objective was to erase Indigenous children’s connection to their culture and language. In this context Gail’s grandfather was told that any time he was on the grounds, he would be punished if he said a Tlingit word. In response he would jump in the air and, while aloft, say Tlingit words. He was punished for that rebelliousness, yet the story speaks to the ingenuity and the resilience of the oppressed.
Indigenous children in residential schools were also made to renounce their names and given new ones that suited settlers. This is why a crucial strategy for decolonization by Indigenous people is the reclamation of names and the revitalization of Indigenous languages. It is a reminder of why the names of oppressed people matter. They are badges that remind us of past wounds and platforms for the reclamation of our self-determination. This is true also for Dalits. We may have been branded “untouchable,” but we choose to be Dalit. That name and that identity are very personal. Not all Dalits want to be known as Dalits. Some people want to be known by their faith designation, identifying only as Christians or Buddhists or Ravidassias. Others prefer the political term Bahujan, which is a Pali word frequently found in Buddhist texts and literally means “the many” or “the majority,” and which Ambedkar used to refer to the majority who were caste-oppressed from Shudra castes, Dalits, and Indigenous communities. It is a term similar to “people of color” in that it allows for material solidarity across all these caste lines.
Finally, some prefer to be known by their subcaste like Chamar, which is a leather-working caste. Others, like members of my caste, the Paraiyars, hate any identification with their caste name, as the name itself is a slur. In fact, “Paraiyar” is the origin of the English word “pariah.” When the English saw how miserably we were treated, and learned the word for our caste, they in turn used “pariah” when they wanted to indicate someone was an outcast.
There are also some people who feel like using the word “caste” is itself reinscribing the caste system. They might choose instead the term “Ambedkarite” instead of “Dalit” to honor Dr. Ambedkar’s commitment to caste abolition by not reinscribing themselves with a caste location. I use this term interchangeably with Dalit for myself as I feel so connected to Ambedkar’s vision for the freedom of our people. But most important to consider is that whatever an individual Dalit chooses is absolutely right for them, because the choice itself is what heals. What harms us is when we prescribe for other caste-oppressed people what they should call themselves.
I try to keep a very existential approach to my own identity. I’m clear that no matter whatever internal conversation we’re having as a community, the Brahminical strategy is to continue to try to erase us. They think that by controlling the language we will not fight for our freedom, but that is ludicrous. As long as one of our people is enslaved, we will fight for freedom. No one is free until all are free.
As soon as I named myself Dalit—I was publicly out as an undergraduate in college—my life became very difficult. I got rape threats. I got death threats. People sent me hate mail because of that name.
But I also gained community because when I came out, people came out to me. After I give public talks, I always leave time at the end, even after the Q&A, because Dalits often won’t ask questions from the audience. Instead they are usually the last person to approach me, the one who has waited after everyone else has gone, who will say something with such tenderness like: I’m like you, but I can’t be out, but it means everything that you’re out because then I know in some way I am. And that’s really what this whole thing is about: the return of the self. We are not atomized individuals. We are an interconnected species who in turn are connected to other species and then to our Mother Earth.
One of the harms propagated by Darwin’s theory of evolution was this idea that the natural order was solely defined by competition. But I believe that the natural order is also about interconnectedness and collaboration. The eternal lesson I’ve learned as a Dalit person is that the burden of Dalitness is too much for one person to bear. We carry what we can when we can in the moment. I recognize there are many people for whom the burden of being out is too heavy. And there are those who don’t have a choice, who must be out because there isn’t an option. Others are out and hold space for those who must stay hidden. Whatever a caste-oppressed person chooses, what is important is the movement toward our integration into humanity.
As a first step, we must all acknowledge that caste exists. It exists in South Asia, in the diaspora, in America. It exists to the benefit of dominant-caste people but also to their harm. Above all, caste causes immense, unspeakable suffering of Dalits and other caste-oppressed people.
We can no longer avoid the wound, but we can let it be our teacher.
Notes:
Excerpted from The Trauma of Caste: A Dalit Feminist Meditation on Survivorship, Healing, and Abolition by Thenmozhi Soundararajan, published by North Atlantic Books, copyright © 2022 by Thenmozhi Soundararajan. Used by permission of North Atlantic Books.
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