Dissimilarities between perceptions of caste system among Indians & of racism among Americans
My
experience suggests perceptions of the caste system among Indians and
of racism among Americans have two key differences, one of degree and the other of kind.
The one of degree is longevity.
Thousands of years older, India's caste system has had that much more
time to get thoroughly marinated in people's psyche. Inequities that
should rightfully horrify any decent mind have thus become part of daily
life, meaning people display a shocking degree of acceptance about the
whole kit and caboodle of caste. Such wholesale acceptance of structural
inequities is somewhat less visible except to discerning eyes in the
frantic churn of huge, bustling metros, but much more so going down to
smaller towns, becoming especially visible in the hamlets and villages
of rural India.
The one of kind is
the diabolically clever manner by which the Indian caste system was kept
in place through history, by ascribing actions of the past life, one's
past life's karmas, as the arbiter for present life caste.
‘Born
low caste or worse yet, casteless Dalit in this life? Too bad, only
means you committed awful sins in your past life so you're fated in this
one to beg, be a cobbler, dispose of dead bodies or clean other
people's toilets.
Born a high caste
in this life? Excellent, earning it by your past life good deeds, you
merit all the advantages bestowed upon you in this life by the mere
accident of birth.’
The Indian caste
system evolved to maintain social order by distributing power
hierarchically and hereditarily. Its in-built advantage was a permanent
and permanently oppressed under-class of casteless Dalits serving as the
pressure release valve to mitigate inherent power distribution
differences among caste Hindus. As for the Dalits? Conveniently
self-serving answer in the form of 'Too bad, they're fated to carry in this life the burden of their past life karma'.
Maintaining such a spurious charade for so long took a seriously
devious level of con-artistry. After all, one can't petition for better
equity in this life by summoning one's past life in court to provide
evidence under oath of past life virtues, can one?
Similarities between perceptions of caste system among Indians & of racism among Americans
Segregation.
Both American racism and Indian casteism malevolently twist the notions
of purity and pollution to foster and maintain untenable levels of
structural social and cultural inequity. Forceful black segregation
followed by white self-segregation to affluent neighborhoods and better
endowed school systems are eerily similar to how Dalits were kept
segregated in India.
‘No, not among us,
your community needs to live leeward down where the effluents flow out
to from our pure caste habitations and no, you aren't welcome in our
temples either. Stay away from us, you dushtas! Even your shadow must
not cross us.’
What could breed more
easily than suspicion and mistrust when population segments are kept or
keep themselves separate? That makes it easier to filter and dole out
privileges based on caste or race. After all, there's no law that a
black man caught with marijuana should spend years in jail while a
similarly culpable white man either pays a small fine or goes free. One
can have any number of laws on the books but selective interpretation
and application, which can be sub-conscious and therefore that much
harder to pin down, thus end up actively shaping common perceptions, the
easiest among them making a self-fulfilling prophecy out of the
demonizing trope of excessive criminality among blacks.
Denial.
American racism and Indian casteism also have in my opinion similar
degree and vehemence in hand-waving away benefits one accrues from
accident of birth. Both have instituted various forms of welfare
subsidies and affirmative action programs as attempts to expiate past
inequities, eliciting immediate incessant howls of 'foul, foul, unfair'
from some of the generationally privileged. Why? Apparently life is
zero-sum. Government attempts to tilt the scale away from generational
inequity to benefit one apparently do so at the expense of another, who
as a result is directly deprived.
As these
efforts visibly benefit their poorest, Dalits in India and blacks in
America, recriminations against them are usually barely restrained and
easily provoked into full bloom. For example in America, Ronald Reagan
needed but one example, that of career grifter
Linda Taylor - Wikipedia,
to excoriate legions of welfare recipients as Cadillac-driving welfare
cheats and use as an excuse to start gutting the American social welfare
system, a process that each successive administration has only added to
to different degrees but not reversed, at least not substantially until
the ACA Medicaid expansions.
Growing up in India, the arguments against affirmative action were variations of, 'What
do you mean? I was born dirt poor and look how successful I've been.
I'm a self-made person. I didn't depend on government hand-outs.'.
At least materially, those who spoke thus were indeed born relatively
poor and ended up firmly within the ranks of the relatively affluent
middle-class. So what benefits were they hand-waving away?
How
about a long lineage of literacy? Literacy is a priceless advantage, a
generational privilege so easily taken for granted, it can be and indeed
is entirely glossed over. Everyone in my family could read and write,
even my great grandmother. Even today how many middle-aged Indians could
claim even their great grandparents were literate? When I started to
learn to read and write, I had not just access to all the necessary
materials but indeed birth advantage meant just about everyone in my
formative environment was able to help me along every step of the way.
Mind
you, even those within my circle who grew up poor and claimed to be
self-made somehow managed to attain multi-lingual fluency, being fluent
in not just several Indian languages but also English, clear evidence if
such were even necessary that even the so-called dirt poor aren't
homogenous, with some endowed by caste (or race in America) with
structural advantages of support networks and connections that rote
political discourses choose to conveniently overlook.
Resentment.
Another standard trope common to Indian casteism and American racism is
the lowering of so-called standards and norms. Well, maybe the first
few generations of literates among the generationally fettered would
fluently deploy better vocabulary, syntax, grammar and spelling if
they'd also been so lucky as to have their formative environment be
staffed and stuffed with those capable of helping them every step of the
way day in, day out but they just didn't.
For
the most part, in both India and America they've merely had difficult
and unstable access to poor schools in poor neighborhoods, staffed by
poorly paid, poorly trained and likely poorly motivated teachers, access
to few or none after-school resources, and certainly little access to
knowledge and learning within their own families, communities and
neighborhoods, not from any lack of moral fiber but simply as the
reality of how structural social and cultural inequity plays out.
Rather
than individual merit alone, intergenerational wealth and resource
transfer greatly influence one's own success in life. Disproportionate
numbers among Indian Dalits and American Blacks lack the resources to
help finance their children's college education, help them make down
payments on their houses or leave behind a bequest or inheritance,
advantages the rest take for granted, and which help them both build and
retain wealth across generations.
However,
admitting such essential truths means letting the proverbial cat out of
the bag, that such inequities exist not by accident but on purpose, to
keep a permanent underclass of cheap and desperate labor available at
the ready to do the bidding of the rest of society comprised of relative
winners by birth. In that respect, not just perception but also purpose
of caste in India and of racism in America are entirely yoked.
