Casteism Unravelled-I: When Culture is Imitated

[This is part of a series of articles on Caste In India written for citizens with little or no social science background]

Remember Rangeela, the movie? A scene from that when Aamir Khan takes Urmila Matgaonkar for a date in a posh restaurant. Please watch.

Aamir takes Urmila to a Posh Restaurant

When I was very young and Saagar was a huge hit, many girls wanted to have hair like Dimple Kapadia. Grow and cut it like she did. You know why? Because of this feeling that if we had hair like hers then we would also be as gorgeous as her.

Why was it important to look “gorgeous”? Because it meant we would be popular— the usual worries about  roti kapda makaan wouldn’t exist as we would have rich and handsome guys all around us. Also it gave us an ego boost—we wanted to feel special in this universe.

All of us perform a version of this in some form of the other. We identify trait-sets that allows a person or group have access to resources—food, job, assets and bolsters identity. Then we attempt to imitate it. Just like when some folks fake a non-existent American accent to look “abroad-returned.”

Brahmanism is just that. A set of qualities that has been historically identified as “superior” and a way to access resources and power. Brahmins, in the social order of things, appear as the Dimple Kapadias of the society.

This set of qualities also includes the ways and methods to make others feel inferior—not marrying outside your community and a certain sense of community superiority and ways to ensure that others recognize you as such—like practicing untouchability.

The various castes and more importantly, sub-castes in the society attempt to co-opt and imitate some of the traits of the nearest version of Dimple Kapadia they find and try to pass off as same. This is known as Sanskritization.

So within the Dalit community, various sub-groups have fought to appear superior than the other and practice casteism within. For example, in contemporary Tamil Nadu, the majority of caste violence is within the depressed castes itself, where one sub-group claims to be superior than the other and practices the same caste violence that Brahmins were associated with historically. Remember the recent tragic love story of Vanniyar girl and Dalit boy? If you study the history of Vanniyars, you would realize that they have fought to be recognized as not a “lower caste” but as Kshatriyas—see Wikipedia link here. They practice the same set of casteist customs as was associated with the upper-castes before and are openly anti-Dalit in their political orientation. Read this well-researched Kafila article on this issue here.

This mimicking happens all across the society including within upper-caste communities. In Maharashtra, who can be considered as a full-blooded Maratha is an ongoing struggle amongst those who seek to participate in active politics. The same is also true within Brahmin communities there with ongoing struggles for superiority amongst sub-castes like Chitpavan, Deshasta and Saraswat Brahmins. Do read about the mythological origins of Chitpavan bramhins here and reflect.

Within the Tamil Bramhins, there is a sub-caste conflict between the Iyers (following Adi Sankaracharya’s Advaita philosophy) and Iyengars (following Visishtadvaita philosophy of Sri Ramanujacharya). Within the Iyers, there are further sub-divisions. I was drilled as a child with the understanding that I came from the highest sub-group within the Iyer clan—the Vadammas and hence was culturally superior to other sub-castes within my clan.

In other words, in India, caste issues is not a simple upper-caste and depressed-caste conflict. It is a pervasive and gangrenous cultural internalization of ways by which thousands of communities (jatis) fight with each other to claim superiority and use various methods to sustain that worldview.

Who is what caste and when they became that caste/jati is debatable across society but the caste culture permeates nevertheless.

In feeble forms, it may be parents not accepting marriage with assumed “lower” sub-castes. I once had a relative (Iyer guy) who married an Iyengar girl without her parents’ permission. The poor girl suffered excommunication from her parents and extended family circle for many years before reconciliation.

In violent forms, it leads to cutting off access to work and food for the so-called “lower” castes, killing, group massacre and gangrape.

If you want to be rid of casteism, think closer home on how your community and family continues to maintain that culture and break it now. We are not superior to each other. In the final analysis of things, we eat the food Mother Earth provides and breathe the air sustained around us and drink the water graciously provided by her waterbodies-- as equal beings always.