Caste Matters

by Suraj Yengde

Du Bois, on the other hand, wanted the Black population to acquire positions of eminence in arts, literature, academia and other forms of cultural, moral and intellectual endeavours. He wanted them to first acquire higher human dignity that would prevent society from compelling them into subordinate jobs. He laid this out neatly in a survey of the American post-reconstruction era in a widely circulated paper, ‘The Economics of Negro Emancipation in the United States’ (1911). Du Bois placed emphasis on the Black labour that was systematically disenfranchised and exploited by the American south which found a way through political power, courts, treachery, cheating, wage contracts (which was used as a tool to keep Black labour in check and exploit it under the rubric of law) and notorious legislations to subjugate it.11 The southern White capital was able to do this ‘under the cry of race prejudice’ that was already in action in the United States. Du Bois wanted to elevate Black people from the prescribed subservient position on to their deserving larger human capacities. This is similar to the idea of Ambedkar who wanted Untouchables to leave the hamlets that were the site of traditional caste-mandated occupations. In one of his speeches in 1943 to a Marathi-speaking audience, Ambedkar suggested breaking the taboo by adorning new and clean clothes and embracing a style that would offset the aversion imposed on Untouchables by the dominant-caste gaze. A year earlier, in Nagpu...