#10 Caste, Guilt of Missing Out and Escapism
We're back with our regular stuff! This week we talk about the wretched caste system, feeling guilty about things on the internet and escapist films.
"I don't believe in all this"
- Sneha
The first time I came across caste was when a Pillai boy asked me why my house is bigger than his. Ezhavas were supposed to be a “backward” caste hence poor, so how this anomaly? I may have been 8 or 9 then. Soon, I would hear about caste in our history textbook and form a very rudimentary understanding of it like the rest of my classmates. But we would never truly learn about caste properly in school, ever. It seems baffling why most of our textbooks would simply gloss over such a significant element of our history, but so they do. Examining one of the primary reasons for our failure as a society may not be very enticing. We’d rather brush it under the carpet and blame the British for everything.
Caste to most of us is a distant concept. Something people in villages practice. Something we do not have to confront because we call ourselves progressive and thereby blind to caste. So, when a case like the Hathras rape happens, it nudges our conscience, forcing us to acknowledge the everyday reality in our country that we blissfully ignore. These cases are not new, nor are they rare. Caste-based violence in India is a stark reality. Over the last decade, the rate of crime against Dalits has gone up by 25%. In the last decade. Not a century, not a millennium. Decade. While some of us cry hoarse on social media about how caste-based reservation is the worst thing to happen to India, a community of people deal with the very real implications of it. While traditional practices of untouchability still persist, physical violence, murder, rape, burning etc has become tools for the dominant castes to assert their superiority over Dalits and other marginalized groups. Any action of defiance by people that would challenge the caste-based status quo is met with violence from the “upper caste” Hindus to remind them of their place in society. And as a testament to our patriarchal country, Dalit women find themselves at the bottom of this Brahmanical hierarchy.
But caste atrocities do not make headlines like others and not for the right reasons either. In 2006, Bhotmanges, a Dalit family in Maharashtra was ruthlessly tortured and murdered, in public, by the dominant Maratha caste of the village. All for appearing as a witness in the court against the attackers. Despite knowing the caste steeped history of the case, the courts refused to call it a caste crime. Fourteen years later, not many of us remember this. Brutal caste crimes like these have happened before and continue to happen today in varying degrees of violence. In recent years we have witnessed incidents of caste terror ranging from getting beaten up for not greeting a Thakur, to Dalits not being allowed to climb a horse. The examples are many. And if you argue; but Sneha these things happen in villages and more conservative states, who would dare to do this in Mumbai? You may be wrong.
While such gruesome ways of discrimination may not be very prevalent in cities, here caste manifests itself in sneakier, more insidious ways. Our caste consciousness should appear when we realize that most sanitation workers and cleaning or housekeeping staff inside our homes and offices are from Dalit groups. These are occupational practices, passed down through generations, that the Hindu religious texts have deemed as “impure.” Dominant caste people have consistently reminded them of this “impurity” by ill-treating their employees as being beneath them, reinforcing the age-old hierarchies. Certain government policies even ensure that these hereditary practices continue for generations, further systemically preventing many young people from pursuing different career options. A quick read on why the reservation system even exists is a good place to start understanding the caste dynamics in urban places. A lack of representation of SC, ST and OBC communities in positions of influence ensures that their stories remain unheard and issues of these communities suppressed.
Outside the economic and policy sphere as well, caste will pop up its head in our homes ever so often. Just because we or our families do not overtly discriminate based on caste, doesn’t mean we stopped believing in it. We carry this hierarchy and the privileges attached to it everywhere we go. While on one hand I may happily hop on to my Brahmin friends’ homes and share meals with them without a second thought, on the other hand, my mother would scowl at the idea of us marrying a Pulayan. “An upper caste would never marry you, so why would you marry a Pulayan?”, she would justify. Caste also made itself known when I found out why there are separate Nair Samajam and SNDP Association along with the various other Malayali associations in Powai. And when my college classmate, when asked about if she’s from Uttar Pradesh, would vehemently confirm “Yes, we are but we’re Kayasthas! We’re right below the highest Brahmins!” And if you are confused by the various caste names I’ve taken in this piece, I’m happy for you. It must be a privilege to not know. Considering how our social media spaces and traditional newsrooms, much like all the other spaces, are dominated by savarnas or caste Hindus (i.e. people falling within the four-fold caste system), we are shielded from the caste dominated realities. Effectively building echo chambers where we never get to see or hear stories that are not like ours. This distances us; urban, middle class and upper-middle-class, apparently “caste blind” people, from the ground realities of our society. So when we hear a case like Hathras, we have trouble understanding the role of caste in it. And for cases like that of Rohith Vemula and Dr. Payal Tadvi, the outrage is missing altogether.
Mainstream history has also tried to erase the Dalit, Adivasi and Bahujan history. While we were taught about the Dandi March, we would skip the Mahad Satyagraha by B.R. Ambedkar; a peaceful march to reclaim the rights of Dalits to drink water from the village wells. The Bhima-Koregaon battle would receive only a cursory mention. We would never hear the anti-caste ideologies of revolutionaries like Jyotiba, Savitriabai Phule and Periyar E.V. Ramasamy. Stories of Jhalkari Bai and Nangeli would never be told. We only learn a version of history where subaltern perspectives are not given space. Which is why it is important to seek out and learn about caste because for many of us our history and reality are different from that of others. To be able to truly eradicate caste, we must first understand it.
P.S. Writing this piece has given me a mini identity crisis (thanks to the caste system) so if you see inconsistencies with the pronouns used, please bear with me.
Also, someone once said that the only reason why we know our caste is because of Government issued certificates and that there is no other way to find out. Surprisingly, many people seem to believe this. What do you think the point of surnames is, my friend?
There is an abundance of anti-caste literature freely available on the internet. Start here:
Annihilation of Caste: Dr. B. R. Ambedkar.: Book PDF
Persistance of Caste: Dr. Anand Teltumbde: Book PDF
This brilliant drive folder contains a large number of resources on anti-caste politics. And it’s all free access! I do not know who compiled it, but that person is going to heaven! Ambedkarism: Google Drive.
Check out these highly informative interviews:
Some more links:
On why Hathras is a caste crime: Read: The Quint
On the grim reality of how the state has failed the sanitation workers in India
A very important documentary
Understand reservations better: Check out: EPW
Step Aside FOMO, There’s A New Kid on the Block
- Diti
I recently introduced my parents to the internet famous term FOMO, i.e., Fear Of Missing Out, a feeling of missing out while the people who you follow on the internet have the time of their lives, basically YOLO-ing. What makes this feeling strange is that while most of us, at least the more self-aware people who consume media with an understanding of how it works, know that no one’s life is as simple, glamorous or happening as they make it seem on the internet, it does not stop us from wallowing in it. Lives portrayed on social media hide behind a multitude of filters, catchy captions and careful exclusion of anything resembling hardships and we as the audience refuse to acknowledge these aspects even when they are staring us in our faces. No, that girl I was in school with and haven’t been in touch with since 10th grade does not have the perfect life. Instead, she has a unique set of problems she is dealing with that she doesn’t find necessary to broadcast to the world on her aesthetic Instagram page. I know it. You know it. But how do I stop my brain from being jealous?
But for a moment, let’s keep FOMO aside because social media has resulted in an even bigger problem for me: GOMO. (That is absolutely an acronym I came up with for the sake of this essay, I take full credit.) GOMO stands for the Guilt Of Missing Out because nine times out of ten I’m not afraid that I am missing out on things that people on my timeline are experiencing. (Okay, it is probably around 6 times out of 10, but who's counting.) The carefully selected, edited and processed photos, videos, stories and now reels make me feel guilty. Guilty for not having a skincare routine. Then guilty for giving in to the consumerist nature of following a skincare routine. Guilty about not being productive. But then guilty about putting extra pressure on myself to be productive. I am guilty about not taking lockdown as an opportunity to start exercising and losing a ton of weight. Then almost immediately I see another post and feel guilty about buying the beauty standards set for us. Guilty about not hustling enough but soon after guilty about not giving myself enough time to rest and heal. Occasionally, I realise that I am jealous of my friends’ accomplishments and then I feel guilty about that, too. And there’s always going to be someone on the internet who attempts to make you feel guilty about not commenting and outraging on every single issue in the world. Being on social media these days feels like being in a specially made maze with no way out and hundred different ways to make me feel bad about myself.
Basically, if you want to continue giving all your data to Zuckerbot and keep up with the memes, you are going to feel guilty, compare yourself to every person whose account you come across and then give yourself shit for no particular reason. No amount of better judgement or awareness about the traps of social media is going to help. I find it easier to explain these traps to my friends, telling them how their mental health is more important than the content they create and that social media is not a reality we can compare our lives to, than showing myself the same understanding. I can feel horrible myself but I would fight the internet if my friends felt the same way. Every time that you are jealous of the accomplishments of someone you follow or feel guilty about not having the great job that they do, it only shows that you’re not happy with yourself. It has nothing to do with how happy you are for them. It sucks but do I still spend an unhealthy amount of time on Instagram every day, come away with all the things I should be doing (thrifting clothes, writing a novel, running a marathon, so on and so forth) and then feel guilty about not doing them perfectly or at all? Oh absolutely!
If years of beating myself down has taught me one thing is that while there are people who are doing way better than me there are others who are not. In most cases I fall in the middle of the spectrum. Do I want to be on the upper end of it? Yes, who doesn’t? But right now I am going to try being happy with being the medium. There will always be someone who is more successful, more beautiful, smarter and richer than you are. Every year there will be a new list of millionaires under 30 and another year will go by without it featuring your name. Someone on the internet is going to have a better filtered, edited and carefully curated page than your filtered, edited and carefully curated one. A few couples out there are always going to be happier. No matter what you do, that instagram influencer you follow will always have a better wardrobe and cleaner skin than you do. And no, your father is not going to buy you a BMW like the one that SoBo kid you follow bought with his father’s money.
Take this knowledge and decide what you want to do with it. You can either beat yourself about not having a life as perfect as they make theirs seem and feel guilty about never trying. Or you can show yourself the compassion that you would show a friend in the same predicament. It would be wrong of me to preach the latter when I don’t do it myself. But it is an uphill journey. Somedays you just have to stare at the beautiful pictures your couple friends took in Goa and ignore the Juno filter you know they have applied. But other days try not to let the internet rule how you feel about yourself. Everyone manages to uniquely mess up their lives and we all have someone on the internet we compare ourselves to and fall short. This awareness is not going to magically make you feel better about yourself, that’s a discussion you need to have with a therapist, but it will, hopefully, help you not feel as bad. Meanwhile, someone please stop me from pressing the Ignore button on my social media timer reminder every single time!
Are you as addicted to scrolling on Instagram as I am? Don’t worry, we are in good company because so is Rega Jha.
While reading what others have to say about social media and FOMO, I came across a unique explanation of the phenomenon.
Just to get you off Instagram / Facebook / Snapchat / YouTube, here’s an article that made me laugh. Read: The New Yorker
E for Escapism
- Sneha
Back in ancient history in my angsty teenage years (I’m now in my angsty early 20s), I was a strong advocate of watching Sad Films™. And I don’t mean sad as in Pakeezah level sad, where there is nothing but despair and broken hearts and melodramatic background music and overall sadness filling up each frame. I meant movies that were not very happy in nature. The happy ones are our regular stuff. You know the kind where the generally rich, happy main characters have a happy life until they come across a major hurdle in their life (minor hurdle if you are a regular person not from a movie). The plot of the film is them overcoming this hardship and then it is happily ever after, joy and balance are restored in the universe. Pretty much every film to come out of Bollywood. Most of them guaranteed to be box office successes. The escapist kind.
But angsty teenage Sneha was against them. She believed that films should reflect Real Life or whatever it is we do outside films. And our top-grossing Bollywood films are hardly a reflection of real life. I had a distinct dislike for those films. Now I have watched my fair share of all kinds of happy, escapist classic Bollywood films with fluttering saree pallus and romance while hiding behind trees. In fact, the likes of Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Dil Chahta Hai, Hum Tum are still films I can watch any time, any day. But they are also films that are very obviously divorced from reality. The same ingredients and recipes, with small variations. Angsty teenage Sneha did not approve. But she also did not understand the point of escapism. Essentially any piece of literature or cinema that lets us sneak away from reality for a bit and dip into an alternate world can be called escapism. Which makes sense! Considering what a load of horseshit our country and the world are covered in, since the beginning of time, these films seem like a good idea. Yet somehow I was convinced that the only way to escape the banalities of my life was to drown myself in stories that spoke of just more death and despair. I probably felt better about my life knowing someone else had it worse. What a sadist notion in retrospect! But hey, we don’t judge here.
But now that I’m a little older and a little less angsty, and that I get my daily dose of despair from the news, I find myself gravitating towards less sad films. Towards sappy rom-coms and light-hearted comedies. Films like Welcome, Houseful and Dhamaal were probably made solely for this purpose and I’m here for it. Give me more nonsensical, mindless laughs!
But I still can’t get myself to watch Avengers though, don’t hate me.
Somethings to watch out for this week from India and around the globe:
Every year we see some parts of the country ravaged by excessive rains, even in prime urban areas. And every year we suffer it, complain for a while and wait for the monsoon to go away. Only to have it happen again next year. Right now it’s in Hyderabad and Pune. These things can be fixed. Read: The Wire
A harmless advertisement depicting an inter-religious marriage by Tanishq Jewellery received a lot of hate from right-wing Twitterati, forcing Tanishq to pull the ad down. Apparently, we as a country do not like two adults doing what they want with full autonomy, not even in fiction. Read: Scroll.in
… even a loving depiction of harmonious inter-marriage has come to be termed “love jihad”, the conspiracy theory that Muslim men have launched a campaign to lure Hindu women into marriage merely to convert them to Islam. This “is a pointer to what the real underlying tension behind the idea is: inter-religious marriages between Muslim men and Hindu women”.
Thailand is in the midst of protests for democracy, demanding the current dictatorship regime be brought down. Read: Reuters
This Indian woman managed to negotiate with Libyan militants! She was clearly meant to be a school principal. Read: The Hindu
Delhi High Court is hearing pleas on recognizing same-sex marriages! Slowly, step by step. Read: The Hindu
In pre-covid times, you could find free books on Delhi metro trains that you could read and pass it on later. A very lovely initiative almost makes us want to move to Delhi. Read: Scroll.in
That’s all for this week.
If you haven’t received our previous editions, please check your “Promotions” tab and shift the email to your inbox. You can also read the previous editions here.
For all those interested, Diti’s blog dedicated to her ‘healthy’ obsession with books is on our website. You can check out the first edition of ‘What I Read’ here.
Love it? Hate it? Disagree with us on something or have something to share? Reply to this email to write back to us. Or you know, you can always text.
Until next week
Love & Cancelled Zoom Classes,
Diti & Sneha