Why Dalits aren’t afraid to breach caste silos now
The moustache protests underline the confidence of a generation raring to question hierarchial traditions
Who is Dalit? The answer, in the not-so-distant-past, was predictable: A starving farmer from the rural hinterlands conveniently removed from urban intelligentsia–a comfortable construction that kept discussions of caste away from the living rooms of 21st century India.
Not anymore. Buoyed by constitutional protections and enterprise , the community now occupies spaces hitherto “reserved” for dominant castes and transforming what it means tobe Dal it: Not a mute suffer er but confident individuals claiming their rights.
Recent protests against attacks on Dal its in Gujarat for sporting a moustache showcase this spirit. Dalit men across India mobilised on WhatsApp, Twitter and Facebook to post selfies with moustaches as defiance.
Though one of the attacks is now under doubt and might be fake, the underlying point made by the protesters is unequivocal–anew generation of Dalits won’t be sated in a discourse of passive suffering.
A result of this assertion has been an expansion of the conversation on caste, from basic subsistence to web access, gender, political power and higher education – and growing resistance in situating caste in the Dalit body, instead seeing bias as shaping our lives, economies and social structures.
The moustache protests, for example, broke out of the traditional mouldofd ha rn as and took over a medium often crowded by voices from dominant cast es. The twirling mo ust aches and facial hair also underlined the significant but little-understood ways in which ca ste governs gender, and how any conversation on masculinity is incomplete without probing how endogamy and caste inspire masculine behaviour — the oft-used synonyms of Jat, Khsatriya or Rajput to signify virility a clue. In Gujarat, the objection was linked to a struggle for power and how masculinity was punished to deny that.
Ca ste is about power. The new wave of Dal it protests understand this well and therefore targets bastions of power: Academia, political representation and culture. From the protests sweeping universities demanding a more equitable culture to Bhim Army’s muscular response to subtle and overt ways of ca ste governance, a new generation of Dal its are taking off from their Dalit panther ancestors.
So if you asked ‘Who is a Dalit’ today, the answer could be as varied as India: The daughter of a bureaucrat, the top per of the country’ s toughest examination, a social media expert, a village head manor a political commentator.
A vast majority of Dalits are still poor and lack basic amenities but impoverishment, soiled clothes and broken English are no longer the only reference points to talk about caste. Dalits are no longer the labourer who dies 15 minutes into a movie, they’ re Newton.