Caste in Urban India

Growing up in Madras, I had very little idea about caste. We lived in a mixed neighbourhood and we knew that different people belonged to different religions, but caste was never discussed or referred to. The convent school I studied in told us that there were four castes and that was that. There was absolutely no discussion on the injustice or violence that this differentiation causes. Or how very much a part of life it is in much of India. When we were in the twelfth and writing various entrance exams, caste came up because of the high reservations quota in Tamil Nadu. However, it didn’t really touch me since I had no desire to become either a doctor or an engineer. And somewhere deep inside, my sense of justice said that reservations were the right way forward till the balance was regained. 

It was not until I was 25 years old, did I really face the issues of caste and what it means in another India. No, it wasn’t a pleasant experience at all – I had been accused of discriminating based on caste and it was in vain that I tried to explain that really I had no clue about various castes and their assigned positions. Nobody believed me then – today I understand why. At that time I was very perplexed since surely there were many others like me – most of my school mates definitely! 

My memories of this episode were dredged up by an article I read in the newspaper last week. It was titled “Casteism exists in India, let’s not remain in Denial” by Namita Bhandare and credited to HT Media. It is based on a study by NCAER and the University of Maryland. The final results are due out next year. 

In the last 20 years, I have managed to educate myself on issues related to caste, the Dalit movement, etc. thanks to many of my colleagues in the social development sector who have worked their entire life on these issues. I am certainly no expert on the issue, but there is a glimmer of understanding now of the issues involved. I do not dare offer any solutions to this complex set of issues – but I do see positive work from groups who work on a combination of the social, political and economic. “Revolution alone is not enough – it has to go together with the self-confidence of the individual and their growth through education and better economic status” is what some of these groups say and I tend to agree. Do you try to mainstream the Dalits or are the Dalits the mainstream and it is the others who need to be worked on? How does gender play a part in this tangle given that Dalit women are often used as tools of retribution? And the questions go on. 

I am not trying to get into an erudite debate here. I am trying to ask each one of us to look within. Urban India is constantly shocked at the situations that caste throws up. A study conducted in Rajasthan in 2001-02 by Unnati of manifestations of caste revealed jaw-dropping situations. In police stations, the surveyors found, two pots of water – one for Dalits and one for the others. In schools, it was the norm. Dalit children were made to sit at the back of the class. In the primary health centre (PHC), ditto. The case of the Dalit District Collector made headlines – his peon refused to serve him water! This was a decade ago. I am not sure there has been a radical change since. In supposedly developed Tamil Nadu, tea stalls still have two sets of tumblers – one disposable and the other made of glass or steel. No prizes for guessing which is for whom!

All of this is easy to debate for the chatterati. It happens out there, to others. We would never do that. Oh no, we don't discriminate. We are educated, well-informed, well-travelled; we are slightly superior really. Of course everyone is equal. 

So then let me ask you – do you have a separate set of utensils, crockery, cups, plates, etc. for your domestic workers? 

Every time I hire someone to work in my house, I go through this discussion when I offer them a cup of tea. “Akka / Didi, which cup should we use?” I tell them to take their pick. Then they explain that they are usually assigned a cup and a plate and they use only those. The first time I was a bit confused – the lady was hired to wash all the vessels. Was she saying that she would not wash all of them equally well? Is that why she wanted hers to be separate? I growled at her and insisted that she had to wash everything properly. And we had a very convoluted conversation at the end of which I slowly understood what she was saying. She was a Dalit and most of the houses where she worked were of non-Dalits. So even though she washed all the utensils, the ones she used were to be kept separate. The logic still eludes me.

Working in responsible tourism, I realised that caste is to blame for why we have such dirty toilets in India. Here is how I understand it – toilets are cleaned by a certain caste group who are fairly low on the hierarchy. They probably don't have a toilet at home themselves. Their work is considered dirty, so no one goes in to supervise them or teach them how to do it. They report that their work is done and it is accepted as such. If a person is not taught how to do a piece of work and then not supervised, it is natural that there will be some who do it well and some who do it badly. And since there is no incentive to clean a toilet, slowly those who do it well will also stop bothering. 

 One of the first tasks that I do when we set up a guest house is to teach all the staff how to clean the toilet. I am always told that this is the first time they are being taught to do this or that anyone holds the same broom and brush that they do. It is not the cleanest job to do, especially the first time, but isn’t that what soap and water are for? 

The article I referred to earlier gives the statistics on percentage of Dalits in newsrooms, corporate Boards, etc. And expresses shock at how low that percentage is. We think that if we stop asking people about their caste, the problem is solved. What we have done is just window-dressing. The problem has not even been acknowledged, leave alone understood or addressed. Caste becomes important during elections, but there is little or no evidence of serious work on changing attitudes and behaviours that are discriminatory. Yes, there are the necessary laws. But when the police station has two separate matkas, do you expect them to take discrimination cases seriously? 

Those who make policy in India live in a rarefied atmosphere. They are not just politicians – they come from every walk of life. They have a theoretical knowledge of the realities of India. They probably emerged from that some decades ago. However, today, for the most part they are totally clueless and very far removed from another India. They probably do make forays into this other world, but they are so cosseted, that the reality does not come anywhere close to touching them. The problem is that this disparity is growing wider year after year. And we continue to be in denial.

12/Dec/2014