From Caste to Class

In 2018, a year during which India was once again the top remittance recipient country in the world I, an Indian immigrant, had finished my Master in International Affairs in Paris, France, at the same university as the sitting French President, secured a freelance position at a top tier event communications agency, produced digital content for aforementioned President, moved into one of the most affluent of Paris’s 20 arrondissements, and had a month long vacation in Spain. That same year, in Pune, India, one person died from clashes between lower caste Mahars and upper caste Marathas. As the violence spread to Mumbai, I recall a family member saying, “Protesting is acceptable, but why the violence?” I listened half-heartedly as I worked on a blogpost for a client. India and caste were far away now. Apart from liking the odd anti-caste post on social media, the extent of my involvement was limited. My focus, after all, was to keep my nose down, play the good immigrant and focus on my career and the results would speak for themselves; the Indian dream at its meritocratic best.

The Indian dream describes a very specific idea. My own life represents this best. I was raised in the then income tax free United Arab Emirates; another Indian that made up 27% of the country’s population, its largest share of immigrants. Over a period of 15 years, the desert country became a tourist hub without even realising that the systemic oppression of immigrants lay at the heart of its success story and, more importantly at the heart of my own.

In the beginning, my parents, like so many before them, often found themselves on the margins of legality, subletting an apartment and working in the informal sector while sometimes going unpaid for it. These immigrant narrative tropes are not unfamiliar to most readers. They were probably just as clear to other Indian immigrants who have made their leap into the west. My family is Brahmin, similar to a lot of other affluent Indian Americans in popular culture. Caste has not been a subject of discussion for most of my life, yet it plays a crucial role in Indian Americans’ ability to achieve economic mobility. For example, Kamala Harris’s grandparents financed the first year of her mother’s edu-cation at the University of California in 1958, enabling her to join California’s intellectual elite and establish herself as a renowned oncolo-gy researcher. Similarly, caste has played an unseen but immense role in my life. The first time I heard of the caste system, I was 10. I had to write an essay about a figure I looked up to. While I was happy to pick Mahatma Gandhi, my mother insisted I be different, and so we went with Dr. B. R. Ambedkar. The conversations about caste that followed definitely included the idea that all of ‘that’ was behind us now. The irony of a young boy of Brahmin heritage invok-ing the name of the primary champion of caste abolition so as to ‘stand out’ at school is not lost on me. At 15, caste bubbled its way to the fore of my consciousness once again when my grand-mother declared that we had been Kamaths before religious conversion; an upper caste South Indian surname. The next foot that kicked light through the door of my caste privilege was “A God of Small Things” by Arundhathi Roy.

‍“God of Small Things”  sowed the seeds of Marxism, feminism, and anti-caste struggle in me. I idolised Arundhathi Roy. But like with J.K. Rowling, I was soon to be bitterly disappointed. Roy too signalled caste erasure; a deliberate systemic political, social, and economic policy that goes back decades. Throughout my child-hood, caste was never discussed, even among my parents’ almost exclusively Indian circle. While they struggled with systemic racism, we mostly ignored the thousands of other Indians present in the country, being beaten, harassed and assaulted at construction sites, in homes and everywhere in between. It is important to note that this was entirely necessary for our own comfort. Behind us were always the domestic help that ate from different cutlery, the construction workers we never talked about. Even though we shared the same passport, their systemic erasure was necessary so that we, the ‘colourless’ elite, could thrive. They were the bad immigrants so we could be the good ones.

Casteism is pervasive within the Indian diaspora as well, especially so in America. The American Dream rose from the subjugation of minorities, slaves and the First People. Similarly, the Indian Dream rose from caste oppression. The latter is about leveraging privilege to send the next generation abroad to reap from the imagined racial equality and access to equal opportunity ostensibly provided by the West. But in erasing caste from this equation, Savarnas like myself and my family accentuate casteism, carrying it in their perfumed luggage across borders. Abroad, we can leverage our privilege through social signaling. Using indicators of social status and privilege — language, accent, clothing, behaviour — we can approximate whiteness and edge closer to it as best we can. Doing so, however, requires creating a subset of ‘them’- Indians that we must not resemble. The sham of a meritocratic society is an idea that Indians and the Indian diaspora buy into wholeheartedly. Trump’s ascent shattered this illusion in a way that Modi’s never would: in Trump’s New America, we were, more than ever, less human than white people. But in Modi’s India, no matter what else happens, I am  Brahmin. I can watch the news in India and “tsk” while drinking my expensive cappuccino. I can get upset about human rights violations. But my own humanity is never questioned.

This is why Mindy Kaling, Lily Singh and Hasan Minhaj always signal their lack of awareness about caste issues. For a large part of my life, I was mostly ignorant of caste. Cultural context and history can explain this: post-colonial India allowed casteism to continue in practice while ‘eradicating’ it on paper through reservations and the Constitution’s anti-untouchability laws. Then, the conversation was just over. My own limited understanding of caste before reading Roy perfectly reflects this. This also explains the selective ‘equal rights’ advocacy seen in many Indian-American narratives. To some degree or other, they have all claimed ignorance of caste-related human rights violations.

Take “Never Have I Ever”, for example. The show is an example of caste blindness, subtle Islamophobia, nods to caste endogamy, and warmth toward the current Indian administration. Of course, Savarnas loved it. The show’s irresponsibly ignorant storytelling gave them their own narrative that depicted how to trade their upper-caste privilege and become acceptable immigrants. Everyone calling out the caste privilege of “Never Have I Ever” was just spoiling the fun.

Unlike Savarnas, the DBA (Dalit-Bahujan-Adi-vasi) community cannot leverage their affluent networks the same way many upper-caste Indian immigrants do. Take the Cisco case, for example; proof that minorities in certain contexts selectively forget that they are oppressive majorities in others. Savarnas perpetuate this oppression and claim minority status and benefits in other countries, all the while erasing the same path for those oppressed. During affirmative action debates in the United States, for example, Savarnas benefit while being opposed to caste-based quotas in India.

In a country where 67% of Dalits said they faced discrimination at the workplace compared to 1% of Brahmin respondents (according to Equality Labs), the silence on caste from Indian-American representatives is deafening. Currently, apart from Pramila Jayapal, no U.S. politician thinks that casteism is a problem. This silence is a reflection of how deeply caste privilege is em-bedded in the Indian diaspora’s success stories.

Upper castes selectively forget the privilege that allows us to escape poverty. My great grandfather was orphaned at 10. He eventually became one of the largest private landowners in his town. Another great grandfather lost prop-erty to his tenants after land reforms in post-independence India. Yet many of their descend-ants have lived their lives abroad, becoming foreign citizens—no easy task. I wonder where the descendants of Dalit orphans from my great grandfather’s generation are now. Since just as recently as 2012, for example, 93% of Dalit families were below the poverty line.

Privilege accrues privilege. There is nothing controversial in stating that many Indian-Americans benefit from theirs, too. But as long as caste privilege remains unaddressed in Indian representation abroad, we are part of the problem. And we need to do this together, not just because we should (as if it were not reason enough), but because we can.