The Luxury of Being Casteless
Recently, I was talking to a fresher at my college who was unhappy with the branch he had been allotted. He blamed reservation for his situation, arguing that reservation amounts to “reverse casteism.” He also claimed that casteism no longer exists in India today.
These days, a protest is going on at Jantar Mantar to remove reservation. The biggest argument against reservation is that casteism does not exist anymore, so why should we be punished for the acts of our ancestors?
I think I understand the problem. It is not that they are casteist or something; it is just that they are privileged enough not to encounter casteism in their lives.
I realised we need to fix this. That’s why I chose to write about it.
For instance, recently, the Leader of the Opposition said that tea stalls have separate cups for lower castes and upper castes. The whole internet was mocking him for this statement. I don’t think many of those mocking him had ever visited a small tea stall. But I can say from personal experience that, before my grandmother’s death, we had separate tea cups for workers at my home.
You may ask: if casteism exists, then why don’t we see it in the media? Why is the issue rarely discussed in films? Why is it mostly discussed only in political debates? The answer is simple: 90–95% of leadership roles, such as Editor-in-Chief and managing editor, are held by people from upper castes. Almost 80% of TV anchors are also from upper castes.
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What can I even say about Bollywood? They have a very strange relationship with casteism. In these films, the hero often has no caste, or if a surname is revealed, it belongs to an upper caste. Films do not portray being Dalit as normal. Even when a film features a Dalit hero, the actor playing the role is actually from an upper caste, and the film itself focuses on the issue of casteism.
Sometimes Dalit characters are just there to show that the protagonist is a good human being. For instance, in Lagaan, the character of Kachra was there to show two things: one, that Bhuvan is a good human being; the other, the fact that a Dalit deserves respect because he is a good player. A similar kind of thing is there in Sujata: Charu embraces Sujata when she saves her life. This indirectly shows that a Dalit deserves respect when he or she has something to offer you.
You would ask why Bollywood has this kind of relationship with casteism; my answer to this question would be that it’s not completely Bollywood’s mistake; we also failed as an audience. To explain this, let me give you an example of the movie Article 15. The director touched on this topic to get hate from both the upper caste and the lower caste; the upper caste criticised the movie for using phrases like “Mahant ji ka beta”; the lower caste criticised the movie by saying that we don’t need a savarn saviour; why not a Dalit leader criticising caste? So why would a director touch the topic? Isn’t it better to give the movie a so-called “casteless character” (upper caste)?
Overall, I would say that casteism exists today, and I told you the obvious reason why it is never discussed beyond political discussions. So you would ask what the solution is to the caste problem when we can say that there is no casteism.
The answer is simple: we have to end caste to end casteism. The best way to end caste is through inter-caste marriages because caste exists as long as the so-called caste purity exists.
To understand this solution better we should listen to the most used argument against inter caste marriage they say that if a upper caste marries lower caste what would caste of the child.The argument explains my point the child will have no caste , he or she would be a human and have no caste.
This way casteism will be annihilated and it would be the first and most crucial step in forming a caste less society.
Jai Bhim
