Caste In The Post-Colonial World
The Modern Indian’s Invisible Baggage
After achieving independence from the British Empire, caste was outlawed by the newly established Indian Constitution in 1950. However, even today rural communities can be seen as starkly segregated according to caste. Violence due to the practice of untouchability is expressly widespread.
Though upper castes have gained occupational mobility in the past centuries, millions of lower castes, especially Dalits, continue to be trapped in inhumane occupations such as manual scavenging, cleaning toilets, and handling dead animals. These jobs lead to rampant disease and early deaths. Even when they escape this paradigm, they are unable to escape their caste.
The recent Cisco case undeniably exposed that wherever Indians go, we take our caste with us. As Yashica Dutt, author of Coming Out As a Dalit, discusses, “caste prejudice and discrimination is rife within the Indian communities in the United States and other countries. Its chains are even turning the work culture within multibillion-dollar American tech companies, and beyond.”
This is not to say that caste only affects those in the lowest rungs of society. This system is violent towards all those who deviate from it. It has been maintained primarily through endogamous (largely arranged) marriages. Those who try to deviate are subject to ostracisation and violence. After all, injustice faced by even one person is an injustice to all people.
History, as written by the victors, neglects to inform us about the persistence of caste. Across the world, the system of subjugation against Blacks in America has had to constantly reshape itself from slavery to Jim Crow Laws to mass incarceration as responses to ongoing anti-race struggles.
All the while, Indians who benefit from the caste system have mastered hiding, suppressing and erasing anti-caste struggles.
While United Nations resolutions have condemned racism, apartheid and occupation, they have never even acknowledged the cries of over 200 million Dalits worldwide. Caste instead remains a blatant form of discrimination embedded within the Indian consciousness. It is an inescapable yet invisible reality faced by all Indians — be it occupation or even love.
