Caste Matters

by Suraj Yengde

Unlike race and gender, the issue of caste is not physically distinguishable. Thus, hiding behind this justification, many dominant-caste supremacists continue to inveigle themselves into positions from where they can speak for the oppressed. Due to access to global culture and spaces, dominant-caste people auction Dalit-related issues to attract the attention of international development agencies. The development-related model reinforces the unequal donor–receiver relationship, thereby permanently putting Dalit people at the receiving end—the lower end. This hierarchical engagement with Dalits sidelines the radical call of Dalits who want to destroy the oppressive system from its root. It instead proposes development-based models tied to the liberal notions of welfarism, wherein project-based instalments of community ‘progress’ are proposed, undermining the urgent call of the oppressed who want to end and annihilate the echo chamber of their oppression. Such development-based models are under neo-liberal control across the world; they are funded wherever oppressed people have demonstrated dissent. These models, as vehicles of neo-liberal finance capitalism, are deployed to pacify the brimming anger of the oppressed and slow down radical action by bureaucratizing and eventually paralysing a potential revolution. The handlers of such agencies and country/mission heads are invariably dominant-caste people who are hand in glove with neo-liberal aggression. Perhaps due to this...