Caste

Savarna Culture

In medical field

Nuanced reading

For Savarna Education

This paragraph from Suraj Yengde’s “Caste Matters”:

“There were radical anti-caste Phuleite and Ambedkarite Brahmins who laid their lives in the service of the upliftment of Dalits and in the project of the annihilation of caste. I uncover these figures in Chapter 6 by analysing what prevents contemporary Brahmins, the progeny of Ambedkarite Brahmins, from taking an active stand against caste-based discrimination. Many liberal Brahmins and ‘upper castes’ do express their disagreement with casteism but their disapproval of such a system does not change the situation of Dalits. This has to do with passive liberalism rather than the radical humanist position of being a ‘cultural suicide bomber’ willing to blow up the oldest surviving edifice of discrimination.”

Here are some resources on how to be a radical humanist who fights for abolition of caste.

https://feminisminindia.com/2020/07/02/anti-caste-ally-5-things-to-keep-in-mind/

Sakshi and Astha makes these points in the above article:

  1. Check Your Casteist Language For Slurs Against Dalits.
  2. Read And Amplify The Writings of Dalits.
  3. Ready To Feel Uncomfortable When Having Conversations About Privilege and Social Capital.
  4. Understand The History And The Reality Of Caste-Based Reservations.
  5. Mind Casteism Around You—In Your Houses, Schools, Universities, Workspace etc.

They elaborate on each point in the article linked.

https://www.equalitylabs.org/castereadinglist

This Unlearning Caste Supremacy Reading List by Equality Labs has the following sections CASTE AND BRAHMANISM 101 ANTI-CASTE HISTORY DALIT THEOLOGY DALIT LITERATURE CASTE IN THE UNITED STATES

https://www.roundtableindia.co.in/are-you-asking-how-to-be-allied-with-the-dalit-rights-movement-here-is-the-answer/ alternate link: https://velivada.com/2020/10/21/how-to-be-an-ally-here-is-the-answer/

Shivani Waldekar writes several points here

  1. Pass the mike, shut your mouth and listen carefully.
  2. Don’t dare to appropriate our spaces and don’t dare to take our leadership.
  3. Don’t liberate Dalits, liberate yourselves, your own caste people and expose your own epistemologies.
  4. Don’t project yourself as Dalit.
  5. Ally with your own community and fight Casteism on your own fronts.
  6. Stop victimization, join the Dalit movement by following Dalit voices, appreciating and empathising with it.
  7. Please sit, and watch while we Educate, Agitate and Organise!
  8. Read Dr. Ambedkar and Dalit literature as well.

The link goes to further details and also has a couple of evocative poems

https://feminisminindia.com/2021/06/03/5-ways-to-be-an-ally-without-savarna-saviour-complex/

The 5 Ways To Be An Ally Without Savarna Saviour Complex as per Mansi Bhalerao are:

  1. Do not dismiss caste as a mere material reality
  2. Do not fetishise caste
  3. Do not homogenise and commodify caste identities
  4. Don’t make your allyship convenient
  5. Do not appropriate Bahujan spaces and voices

Details in the link

https://feminisminindia.com/2019/07/17/guide-manage-savarna-privilege/

Smriti Bhoker and Deyir Nalo writes A Step By Step Guide To Manage Savarna Privilege and their points include:

  • Marginalized Women are not your Feminist Nannies
  • Stop Generalizing and Comparing Miseries
  • Positivity Culture is an Expensive Candy Cane
  • Show Up Without Expecting a Penguin Book Deal
  • Don’t Use Inclusivity For Tokenism
  • Listen More
  • Stop Acting Like a White Man When They Call You Out
  • Confronting Privilege and Moving On
  • Stop Looking Down on your Marginalized Friends
  • Call out your Savarna circle

Very many details in the link

https://idronline.org/podcasts/on-the-contrary-podcast-social-impact/notes-on-anti-caste-allyship-christina-dhanaraj-and-dhanya-rajendran/

This is a podcast transcript between Christina Dhanaraj and Dhanya Rajendran. The callouts are:

  • After so many years of affirmative action, why have we not been able to ensure that it’s percolated into every segment?
  • It’s not just about getting people in, but also about creating a culture and an environment where they are made to feel full and complete, and we are able to thrive.
  • The best way to start that very long, arduous, and complex process of ridding ourselves of caste and casteist mindsets is to have caste-marginalised people at the centre of this change.
  • I feel that the people who are aware of the movements, the people who say they are anti-caste or they are against the caste system, they cannot keep learning forever.
  • I feel that even calling out requires a whole lot of labour, a whole lot of emotion, and I have participated in these only to realise that over a period of time, it erodes you as well.
  • Call-outs and cancelling and all of that is good, but it has its own limitations.
  • If young people are made aware of their privileges and the lack of privileges of other people, it really makes the journey much easier.

Details in the link

And finally, I quote Sophia from https://www.roundtableindia.co.in/rainbow-casteism-and-racism-in-the-queer-community-is-alienating-us/

Why should the burden of education always rest on the oppressed?

Religion

  • In Mahatma Phule: The Abandoned Master of Malis, Rahul Sonpimple argues that religious conversion provides a framework that can hold together an opposition against brahmanism and that without it the opposition cannot sustain and people can get assimilated back into brahminism