Casteism, not caste order, is changing
The first Dalit Diary, in The Pioneer, appeared on April 4, 1999. It has been 14 years now. To start with, there was a lot of debate on what to call my column. A number of people wrote wanting to know why Dalit Diary. An esteemed reader, not a Dalit, had written asking me that I hadn’t given the title Indian Diary. I may not have been able to address his query then, but I can do so now.
Caste was a reality 14 years back, caste is a reality today and it will remain a reality in the future as well. But some things will change. While caste may remain, it will be casteism that has and will slowly lose its hold over the society. In these 14 years, casteism in the country has been on the decline.
But if one picked up an old edition of the newspaper then or if one went to a newspaper library, and read some of the columns that I had written back then, one will find a series of articles on how Dalits were attacked and badly wounded, on how they were hunted and massacred, on how Dalit girls were raped and then killed and how the upper caste would set fire to the entire Dalit hunts in villages.
This, of course, doesn’t mean that such news has stopped making headlines. Dalits. Even today, are attacked, Dalit girls are still raped and Dalit homes are still torched. What has changed is that some new headlines are making news. Reports on how a Dalit boy eloped with a non-Dalit girl, a Dalit man attacked for marrying a non-Dalit woman, Dalits face boycott since a boy from their community fell in love with a non-Dalit girl and Dalit groom stoned for riding a horse are also making news.
This change has taken place between April 1999 and April 2013. But will this say that attacks on Dalits is on the rise. For me, it is a matter of debate. Earlier, a Dalit groom was never attacked by the upper caste because he could never muster enough courage to sit on a horse and arrive at the wedding venue. He would quietly walk the distance or went on a bullock cart. Today, he rides the horse. The upper caste is intolerant to the fact that a Dalit now wants to do things that non-Dalits do.
It is in this sense that things are changing. Similar parallels are seen elsewhere. Post Emancipation Declaration in the US on January 1863, a new term — lynch — was added to the misery of the Blacks. Once slavery ended, thousands of Blacks were lynched. Blacks were not lynched during slavery days. They were lynched once freed.
But coming back to the question why not Indian Diary. To answer that one will have to forget that the Dalit Diary started in April 1999. Think that it started this year.
In 2008, we conducted a survey of 20,000 households in Uttar Pradesh. The survey was done for the Center for Advanced Study of India (CASI), University of Pennsylvania. Published on August 28, 2010, the report titled Rethinking Inequality: Dalits in Uttar Pradesh in the Market Reform Era was published in the EPW.
The survey was focused on food, habit, lifestyle and occupational changes among the households during 1990-2007. We found that the Dalits had stopped eating millets (bajra) and wheat had become their staple diet. Many people wondered why we (Dalits) were celebrating the fact that bajra was no longer our staple diet. One can’t fault with their thinking. Millets are definitely a better source of food — it is healthier that rice or wheat. I agree. Millets are healthier. But there is a humiliation aspect attached to it.
Dalits didn’t eat millets because they knew about its health benefits. It was eaten by the Dalits and other lower castes because it was inexpensive. And anything eaten by the lower caste had low social acceptance. But, then why were millets grown in the first place. Why did the grains have such a low social markerIJ
Millets were grown because it required very little water. Once the land was ploughed and the seeds scattered, the grain grew with little tending to. Once harvested, the grain was given to the cattle or to the farm help who were often Dalits. It was not as if the upper caste didn’t eat bajra, they did, but nobody knew about it.
To Dalits, coming out of the Millet regime was a freedom from humiliation.
Most non-Dalits are unaware of the things that cause humiliation to the out-castes. They don’t agree that food can have a hierarchy based on caste lines or there is clothing hierarchy or entertainment hierarchy which is based on caste lines. A Dalit can’t play a musical instrument associated with an instrument played by the upper caste. A Dalit will be given a separate plate from which he has to eat.
With such a mindset of the non-Dalits, the column is justifiably called Dalit Diary.