Coming Out as Dalit: A Memoir

by Yashica Dutt

spent close to ten years working as a journalist in Delhi. During that time, writing a book wasn’t something I could ever have seen myself doing. I didn’t think I had enough to say, that I was willing to share with the world. After I came out as Dalit, I no longer had anything to hide.

I never saw caste for what it really is—the invisible arm that turns the gears in nearly every system in our country.

Hiding one aspect of your identity is like leading a double life. You don’t feel like you belong anywhere. You create masks to wear in each of your lives, and switch artfully between the two. Eventually, the two blur together and you no longer remember who you were.

Pretending to be from a caste that’s not Dalit is something like that. And there are so many of us who are living this lie. We avoid talking about caste, hoping to somehow find a place in the world of upper-casteness that has been forbidden to us.

Our Dalitness is imprinted onto us through the burned bodies of our children, suicides of our PhD scholars and college students, rapes of young girls and women, asphyxiation of our manual scavengers and ‘honour killings’ of lovers. These penalties are so routine that they aren’t even considered worthy of shock and outrage.

My grandfather had dropped Nidaniya—a typically ‘Bhangi’ last name—in his twenties, perhaps around the time he was forced down from the horse he was riding during his wedding procession at sword-point by caste Hindus in Jaipur. Seventy years later, little seems to have changed as caste Hindus still humiliate Dalit grooms who display any upper-caste symbols of Hindu wedding revelry like decorated turbans

Even beyond the recent heightened intolerance for beef, vegetarianism has been the gold standard for caste purity.

‘My birth is my fatal accident.’ ‘Never was a man treated as a mind. As a glorious thing made up of stardust.’

common with. We had many things in common, but one very vital thing was different. Unlike me, Rohith did nothing to bury his Dalitness. Instead, he used it as a shield to stand up for his fellow Dalit students in Hyderabad University against the caste-based

Once I started working as a journalist, the question of my caste lost some of its intensity but none of the fear that came with it: the fear of being caught, the fear of losing friends, respect and even my bylines.

We were largely either pathetic victims or corrupt, immoral opportunists.

I was born in a Dalit family in Ajmer, Rajasthan. And I grew up learning to hide it. My convent school education, a non-Dalit sounding last name, and a skin colour that was ‘dusky but still not dirty’ eased my passing as a non-Dalit. ‘Beta, what caste are you from?’ ‘Aunty, Brahmin.’ A lie I spoke so often and with such conviction, that I not only fooled my friends’ mothers but even myself.

Instances of subordinates ignoring protocols because of the senior officer’s lower caste, the stonewalling of promotions despite possessing the requisite qualifications and the denial of desired postings are common experiences for Dalits in the civil services.

Every time a Dalit succeeds—most caste supremacists find the concept sacrilegious—this argument is trotted out to induce guilt in them about reservation. Curiously (and reasonably), the same logic doesn’t apply to economically backward upper-caste farmers who avail themselves of government aid and subsidies.

Thousands of years of religious and social policies that denied education to Dalits are discounted and they are regularly challenged to prove their talent without using the ‘crutch’ of reservation. Reservation allows Dalits entry into the upper-caste system, but only their drive, talent and ability creates genuine, viable opportunities for them to get ahead.

Caste Hindu men in many regions consider Dalit women as sexual property. ‘Access to a Dalit’s man land comes with access to his Dalit wife’ is a familiar sentiment across the country.

Dalits in India have been passing as upper-caste Hindus, especially since the Constitution guaranteed everyone equal rights. They also adopt elaborate lifestyle changes—changing their last names, moving cities, following rigid Brahminical traditions, turning vegetarian, exhibiting excessive religiosity—to appear more like upper-caste Hindus.

Untouchability was the ‘rule of the land’ and they quickly caught on that if caste divided their colonial subjects, they would never fully unite to revolt.

The laws that the British established sided with the upper-caste majority, and they claimed that they did not want to interfere in local beliefs and practices.

Being able to talk in perfect English with no trace of a regional accent remains the mark of wealth, pedigree, class and even intelligence in modern India.

drinking was to keep an eye on him at all times.

We are a society that is obsessed with fairness—the Indian skin-whitening industry was worth around $450 million (₹3,163 crore approximately) in 2016. We demand that potential brides be ‘very fair’ and are openly bigoted against darker-skinned men and women who don’t fit our idea of ‘fairness equating beauty’. These biases are blatantly manifest in educational institutions, workplaces and, inarguably, the arranged marriage market. The bias against dark skin affects both men and women, but in our patriarchal set-up, it is women who suffer its consequences the most. Hurtful and mean comments like ‘black crow’ and facetious concern regarding their inability to land a life partner are a big part of the lives of dark-skinned women.

Scottish philosopher David Hume further rationalized racism in his infamous 1748 essay ‘Of National Characters’. In a footnote, he wrote: ‘I am apt to suspect the Negroes and in general all other species of men (for there are four or five different kinds) to be naturally inferior to the whites. There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation.’

What I knew for sure was that no one expected a Dalit to be bright. So it wasn’t enough for me to be bright, I had to be the ‘brightest’ to convince them, and essentially myself, that I was their equal.

As per the 2011 Socio Economic and Caste Census there are ‘1.8 lakh Dalit households manually cleaning the 7.9 lakh public and private dry latrines (not the modern flush one) across India; 98 per cent of scavengers are meagrely paid women and girls’. An Indian Express article described how female manual scavengers in Meerut remove human excreta with bare hands, without gloves, aprons or safety equipment ever being used. The same practice is followed in many other parts of the country.

The stench of the filth they handle daily never fully leaves their bodies no matter how often they bathe, isolating them further from their communities. Yet, manual scavengers have few options for sustenance outside their dehumanizing and dangerous profession. If India truly intends to become post-caste in the next few centuries, ensuring no Dalits need to deal with someone’s filth just to survive is the place to start.

Hinduism has been another way for her to get closer to an upper-caste identity—the deeper her knowledge about Hindu rituals and traditions, the more easily she could pass as Brahmin.

In 2007, former UGC chairman Sukhadeo Thorat and Paul Attewell conducted a study of the hiring patterns of Dalit and Muslim candidates in private sector companies in Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Chennai. Fake résumés of similarly qualified candidates with Dalit, upper-caste Hindu, and Muslim last names were sent to seek entry-level positions in these companies. Despite there being no difference in their education or experience, they discovered that Dalit applicants were called 33 per cent less and Muslims 66 per cent less than upper-caste candidates. That study sent shock waves across industries and companies fell over each other to reiterate that they hired people only because of their ‘merit’.

Columnist Chandra Bhan Prasad recounts how Agra Dalits who had historically worked in the leather industry, trading with the British, were edged out by upper-caste businessmen soon after Independence.

‘If paying collective reparations for collective guilt is appropriate, then how about India “atoning” for thousands of years of its caste system?’ senior policy analyst Shikha Dalmia asked in her column for Time magazine. The difference between the British and the Indian upper-caste establishment, Dalmia noted, was that the British were at least willing to reflect on their history. The upper castes, be it during the Mandal Commission protests, the 2006 anti-reservation protests or the private sector’s protest against reservation can’t even stand the idea of compensation for the discrimination and violence that still affects millions of Dalits today.

Through the Chawdar Tank March Ambedkar introduced the radical idea of Dalits inherently having the same rights as everyone else. Both were similar in their significance and impact if not the scale. Yet the Dandi March is considered a singular event in Indian history and the Mahad Satyagraha is barely discussed outside the Dalit community—another example of the unequal regard for Ambedkar and Gandhi.

After the Chawdar Tank March, and the upper-caste purification ritual, caste Hindus filed an injunction to close the tank once again to Dalits. This led Ambedkar to lose faith in the upper-caste Hindus who he had hoped would join the Dalits in their struggle for their rights. So at the end of the year, on 25 December 1927, he announced the second ‘Mahad Satyagraha’ conference for Dalit rights. Far more aggressive and provocative than its first version, the second Mahad conference called for ‘absolute equality’ for Dalits and had over 3,000 Dalit ‘satyagrahis’ in attendance. At the conference, Ambedkar compared the event to the National Assembly in France in 1789 that spurred the French Revolution that overthrew the monarchy to establish a first of its kind republic. By comparing the ongoing Dalit movement to the French Revolution, Ambedkar sent a clear message to the caste Hindus that Dalits under his leadership were ready to revolt against the tyrannical oppression of the caste system.

At the time, the idea of Dalit rights was limited to removing the practice of untouchability. Ambedkar dismissed this soft-peddling approach, calling it a ‘low aim’ and asked for Dalits to be recognized as ...

Having been let down at the first conference, Ambedkar now asked Dalits to stop expecting ‘Brahmins to rise in revolt against the caste system’ and encouraged Dalits to tear down the ‘man-made’ barriers on their own. To underscore his ideas and further inspire Dalits to reject the artificial inequalities of the caste system, he invited G. N. Sahasrabuddhe, a Brahmin, to read out the most offensive sections of the Manusmriti. Then, in his boldest and most direct attack on the caste system and its roots in Hinduism, Ambedkar and the Dalit satyagrahis collected dozens of copies of the Manusmriti and set them on fire. Burning a Hindu religious scripture that many upper-caste Hindus consider an important treatise on various aspects of life, in particular the caste system, signalled the beginning of Ambedkar’s fight for Dalit rights. In 1938, he told author T. V. Parvate that even though he knew he jeopardized his life with the Manusmriti bonfire, he did it because ‘it was a symbol of injustice under which we have been crushed for centuries’. While the Manusmriti bonfire became the highlight of the second Mahad conference, Ambedkar had initially planned to lead the 3,000 Dalit satyagr...

‘Their voice was to echo for the first time in the history of two thousand years, and more so in the governance of their motherland’, he wrote about the conference.

He then said the now famous line, ‘Mahatmaji, I have no homeland. No self-respecting Untouchable worth his name will be proud of this land,’ and walked out.

Omvedt argues that ‘Gandhi was not speaking from their [the Dalits’] perspective; he was not even speaking as a national leader; he was speaking as a Hindu at the second Round Table Conference’. Gandhi believed that giving separate rights to Dalits or Depressed Classes ‘will create a division in Hinduism which I cannot possibly look forward to with any satisfaction’.

‘If Mr Gandhi wants to fight with his life for the interests of the Hindu Community the Depressed Classes will also be forced to fight with their life to safeguard their interests.’

But Gandhi refused to yield to the fifteen-year period after which the reserved seats were to be reviewed. ‘Five years or my life,’ he famously responded.

Omvedt quotes Namboodiripad in Dalits and the Democratic Revolution and adds that while the communist- and socialist-minded leaders of the time had enough influence to participate in such a ‘crucial political process’, they didn’t because ‘they were uninterested in it. Marxists did not take part, not because they were unable to, but because they did not see the issue of caste and untouchability as important.’

‘Instead, Gandhi envisaged a paternalistic organisation, controlled by caste Hindus working for the “uplift” of Untouchables,’ Omvedt

Omvedt explains: ‘Gandhi did not see untouchables as individuals born into a particular community but rather as somewhat unthinking members of an existing Hindu community… Ambedkar, in contrast, put the individual and his/her development at the centre of his vision’.

While the Harijan Sevak Sangh didn’t do very much for the cause of the Dalits, its description of Dalits as Harijans (children of God) caught on. While it seems harmless enough to call a group that is discriminated against God’s children, it has deeply problematic undertones. By connecting Dalit suffering to divine fate, it lets upper-caste Hindus, who are the ones perpetrating the suffering, off the hook. It also indicates, quite damagingly, that the Harijans’ lower caste is somehow related to their karma.

In 1933, Ranga Iyer introduced the Temple Entry Bill. The bill stipulated that trustees of various temples would have to allow the entry of Dalits if a majority of municipal and local board voters in the area around a temple voted for

Ambedkar, having been let down during the Kala Ram Temple Satyagraha, knew that no upper castes would willingly vote to allow Dalits into temples. Dalits had already ‘tested the Hindu mind’ and discovered that they were not wanted, so he argued that Dalits didn’t need to enter places which banned them, any more than Indians needed to enter Europeans-only places that declared ‘Indians and Dogs not allowed’.

Perhaps Ambedkar knew that, as with the Anti-Untouchability League, the Ranga Iyer Bill had little interest in removing untouchability and offered nothing beyond token temple entry to Dalits. In his statement to the press, he wrote, ‘To accept temple entry and be content with it is to temporize with evil and barter away the sacredness of human personality that dwells in [Dalits].’

Many leaders in 1932 believed that with reserved seats for Dalits under the Poona Pact, untouchability would become a thing of the past in the next twenty years. Ambedkar, who grew up Dalit and had faced upper-caste rejection and discrimi...

Gandhi and Ambedkar faced off several times and eventually a deeply disappointed Ambedkar wrote: There have been many Mahatmas in India whose sole object was to remove Untouchability and to elevate and absorb the Depressed Classes; but every one of them has failed in his mission. Mahatmas have come and Mahatmas have gone. But the Untouchables have remained Untouchables.

Knowing that almost all of them were Dalit filled me with a sense of safety I hadn’t experienced so far.

Among the 500 (mostly rural) women that the authors of Dalit Women Speak Out (a study of the systemic violence that Dalit women face) interviewed, many spoke about the shocking practice of an upper-caste man raping a young Dalit bride on her wedding night. This rape and abuse continues throughout her life, where any upper-caste man can rape her any time he wants. When the husband of the woman sees the footwear of an upper-caste man outside his house, it is a sign and he must spend the night elsewhere. The sexual abuse of Dalit women, where upper-caste men feel entitled to a Dalit’s women body follows them into the workplace. Dalit women from Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, told the authors that on the day an upper-caste landowner wants to rape a Dalit woman working in his field, other workers are made to leave early to let him assault her.