Privilege and Empathy: How are the Social and Economic Discriminations Different?
An Analysis of reasons behind the Caste system and how does it stack up with Class and Racism
Privilege is comparative but not invisible. Discrimination is a reality. Every human one way or the other might have faced discrimination. A brown-skinned individual might have faced discrimination from fair-skinned individuals. A Black person might have faced discrimination from brown-skinned individuals. As the example suggests, even in color-based racism or colorism the discrimination can be comparative.
The Majoritarian societal notion of an area plays a critical role in molding discriminatory assumptions. This then becomes oppressive when politics or religion gets mixed up with prejudices. Racism is comparatively easier to discern based on skin color while casteism is hard to discern based on visible facial or skin color. The casteism of the Indian sub-continent stems from a strange notion of birth which then got twisted to worth. Both are the same in context.
The white majority of Europe and the US has played into the rise of prejudice against blacks. Blacks were the people who got transported to the west from Africa for manual labor by the colonizers. This then resulted in the abominable practice of slavery, especially in the US during those days.
The case of the Indian sub-continent is quite different. There is no fair skin majority in India. The original color of people is brown. Yet, the local cosmetic industry makes a giant profit by feeding into the local people’s insecurity based on fair skin obsession. While the right and ultra-right try hard to blame this attitude to be colonial baggage, the truth is that it is not.
The short film ‘The Discreet Charm of the Savarnas’ quite clearly shows the Upper Caste prejudice based on fair skin. The crux of the story deals with the various caste prejudices and upper-caste hypocrisy that exists in the academic or intellectual circles of India. The short film is about three upper-caste directors searching for an out-caste (Dalit) for their film venture. They approach an upper-caste man who considers it as an insult for them to have come to him with this offer.
Then they meet a Dalit girl who the upper caste directors find it hard to digest her identity as she was too ‘fair and beautiful’ to be a Dalit. Their prejudice was so strong that they end up offending her and she turns down the offer. One of the directors finally plays the lead role in their film after making himself less fair by makeup. I wonder if the colorism of the Indian subcontinent was a colonial vestige then how come it got related to caste?
The word ‘Caste’ in English is naturally western. Because English is a western language but that doesn’t make the practice of Casteism a western or English construct does it?
The Ultra-right takes great pain to prove that the Indian caste practice-system, oppression, and violence as western constructs by arguing that the word ‘Caste’ in English. So what about ‘Jati’? Isn’t that the Hindi of Caste? Is that also a western construct? I wonder how many Westerners know the meaning of ‘Jati’ unless that westerner knows Hindi.
To prove that their ancient Vedic culture is supreme without any flaws the Ultra-Right and Right has been using various aspects of logical fallacies as pictured in the above example. The organization called RSS is known for being an expert in the art of disinformation campaigns. They are the deep state of India’s current Ultra-right Fascist BJP dispensation.
Class and Caste
Class privilege is different from caste privilege and race privilege. Class privilege stems from the economic status of an individual. When Karl Marx came out with the concept of Communism its sole aim was to end class-based discrimination. This would work only in situations where economic disparity is the sole concern. The left, socialist or communist outlook is not for addressing either social or religious disparities. This is where the ideas of the left have failed in western and India’s context.
The caste privilege of India’s Upper caste and race privilege of the US are similar in being social issues. But they differ in others. Racism in the US is a majoritarian prejudice towards minorities. Casteism is not a majoritarian prejudice. It is a minority prejudice parading itself as majoritarian prejudice.
The lower caste-outcaste populations of India form 75–80% of the population. The other 15–20% forms upper caste. This disparity existed even during Buddha’s times. Buddha being a social reformer who worked for the oppressed called the 75–80% the Bahujans (the majority).
There are regional variations for casteism in the Indian sub-continent. But, in general, religious minorities and tribals are considered as outcasts along with Dalits. The Upper Caste minority has three castes. They are the Brahmins, Kshatriyas, and Vaishyas. Brahmins are at the top of the caste order.
This prejudice towards the majority was firmly established by Brahmins through their religion called Hinduism. Hinduism was not a religion before the era of Buddha (563 B.C. to 483 B.C.). It was a collection of the way of life forms that people of the Indian subcontinent followed. The Arabs who were involved in trade with people here before 563 B.C. called the local people Hindus. Hence, their way of life was called Hinduism.
Brahmins through their control over the rituals and customs of the Indian subcontinent used the respect they had to control the people here. Through rituals and superstitions, they firmly held their position as the common people of India came to them for solving their problems. The Brahmins spread their religion through the Vedas and their religion was called the Vedic religion.
After the advent of Buddha, people of the Indian Subcontinent started finding the Brahmanical Vedic religion to be discriminatory and irrational. Buddha prohibited animal sacrifices and casteism which the Brahmanical Vedic religion championed. Brahmins used to eat the meat of cattle during that time as Manusmriti (chapter-5, verse-30) says,
It is not sinful to eat the meat of eatable animals, Brahma created both the eater and the eatables.
People found Buddha’s religion as peaceful and rational and started converting to Buddhism. Buddhism at its peak overtook the Vedic religion of the Indian subcontinent during Buddhism’s golden age.
Ambedkar in his books Who were the Shudras? and The Untouchables: Who were they and why they became so? describes as to what really happened. Sensing Buddhism to be a grave threat to their religious, cultural, social, economic, and political power, the Brahmins brought in some key reforms. They gave up meat altogether and became vegetarians. Prohibited animal sacrifices and meat-eating. Even went to the extent of making Cows sacred and hence slaughtering them becomes sacrilege.
This damage control helped Brahmins retain their eroding religious, cultural, social, economic, and political power. To destroy Buddha’s influence, they strengthened their contacts with Kshatriyas and elevated the position of Vaishyas.
Ambedkar argues that the Shudras were the people who fought against Brahmanism. They were even kings with their own empires in the Indian subcontinent. He hypothesizes that Brahmins gave them the degraded status due to a violent conflict that ensued between both of them. The Untouchables were Buddhists and their untouchable status is a result of Brahmanical hatred towards Buddhists.
They changed the Vedic religion to the religion of Hinduism to make it the religion of all the people residing in the Indian subcontinent. This they did by introducing and popularizing Puranas.
The Puranas were the new group of ‘Holy’ books that Brahmins wrote at this time to make their ideas gain more traction among the local populace. This was important to justify Vedas and advance their cause. The Puranas proved to be superior to Vedas and helped the Upper Caste once again take hold of the Indian Subcontinent.
The caste privilege is the prejudice of 15–25% Upper Caste minority that they morphed into a Majoritarian agenda by indoctrinating this as the religion called Hinduism. Casteism was and remains to be in vogue due to the influence of religion and religious texts such as the Vedas and Puranas. The Vedas made it by birth while the Puranas justified it is by worth.
Even when the caste system cannot be discerned through the naked eye as it has no relation to race, the dominant character of Brahmins and upper caste has made themselves synonymous with Fair skin. The lower caste-outcaste skin color is brown or black in their world view.
The upper caste calls themselves Fair Skinned Aryans. This idea dates back to Indus Valley civilizations when a group of migrant population from the Indo-European area migrated to the Indian sub-continent. Recent studies show that this was more of an invasion that was not non-violent.
These are social privileges that don’t hold any scientific basis for the discriminations that they cause. The failure of India’s liberal space is their inability or ignorance of the fact that RSS-BJP’s communal, and casteist fascism is not majoritarianism. Rather it is the conspiracy of a minority that controls a majority through the lens of the religion called Brahmanical Hinduism.
It won’t be a surprise if this failure is a concerted effort to ignoring facts as India’s Left and Liberal spaces are all dominated by Upper Caste. They probably want the status quo maintained. This is similar to the stand of the liberal Congress party who is complicit in the communalism and casteism that reigns under their surface.
Privilege and Empathy
To understand and work for the oppressed, the people with social privilege requires empathy. People of privilege would find it hard to even accept that discrimination exists as long as they don’t suffer from it. The truth is the oppressed face it daily based on racism, communalism, casteism, colorism, sexism, and other forms.
Once a Professor was called to deliver a talk in our college. When he was having lunch, a boy was serving the food. He asked the boy’s name which turned out to be a Muslim one.
He looked at the boy from bottom to top and teased the boy in front of the other professors.
‘Why are you clean shaved? Why aren’t you sporting a beard? You should be wearing a skull cap!’, He said laughing.
The professor was a Brahmin. There are casteist and communal aspects to his comments. The comments were explicitly communal while they had implicit casteist connotations. This is because Muslims are considered as outcasts along with Dalits.
The Brahmin professor is an accomplished academician. His education has done little to reform his casteist or communal outlook.
For one who has not felt such discrimination, emotional empathy as a human being is necessary to understand the plight of the oppressed. If the professor had emotional empathy he wouldn’t have made the comments.
For a privileged person to work for the underprivileged, she requires compassionate empathy. This requires to emotionally feel with the oppressed. Then it requires her brain to make that extra effort to think logically and take action. This is hard to come by to a person who hasn’t undergone any sort of discrimination. Even if that person has suffered discrimination, this requires a person to feel that particular kind of discrimination.
It is comparatively easier for a person who suffered communalism to have compassionate empathy for a person who suffered racism or casteism. This is because all three are forms of social discrimination. They stem from social privilege induced supremacist ideas.
But, It is comparatively difficult for a class discriminated person to feel compassionate empathy for the socially discriminated individuals. This is because they are different forms of discrimination. It is more difficult for the class discriminated person to feel even emotional empathy if not compassionate empathy for the victim if he identifies with the usurper. This identification can be based on race, caste, sex, gender, religion, or color.
This complicated scenario is what prompts oppressed people to search for others with who they can relate and identify. For the oppressed, it also means shared experiences of discrimination and suppression.
Further, it is also important for the oppressed to speak up about their experiences of various kinds of oppression they faced. This is crucial for the privileged to understand the plight of the oppressed because they themselves have not suffered such experiences. The intersectionality of discrimination stems from the complexity of human identity. In the end, one way or the other an individual would have suffered some kind of discrimination.
The first step for one to feel compassionate empathy is to sympathize and feel emotional empathy. This requires the realization that that as long as we are not perfect we are bound to suffer because of our disadvantages and discriminations based on it. As Socrates puts it,
Nobody is perfect and that nobody includes me
If this leads to insecurity, the insecure mind might go on to use his given privilege to suppress others. This might be to hide his own insecurity. In such a scenario, it would be good for him to remember Newton’s third law.
Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
The key for the oppressed is not to give up their struggles as this would mean escapism from their ground realities. No matter how strong and powerful our usurpers are, we have laws of nature with us. According to Ambedkar,
Lost rights are not won by appealing to the conscience of the usurpers. It is won by relentless struggle. Goats are given for sacrificial offerings, not lions.
