My dadi was a lovely woman. She was kind & fair. One of the ladies who did the sweeping & mopping at home would often get her little girl with her. She was as old as me. It was usually around breakfast and my dadi always ensured she was served the same breakfast that I was (1/n)
The only difference was that I would sit on the dining table & eat while Suman would sit on the floor. There was also a different plate for her. Everyone was perfectly happy with that. Even Suman’s mother who had accepted that being Dalit meant that you can’t sit as an equal(2/n)
Suman’s mother would often talk about how kind my dadi was. And she was. It just never occurred to her that every time that little girl sat on the floor & ate from a different plate, a little bit of her dignity was chipping away. She was being told that’s her place in life (3/n)
You see everyone accepted it. We did, because we were made to believe we are superior. The cleaning lady did because she also accepted our innate superiority. And it has nothing to do with poverty. A poor Brahmin would have never been made to sit as an unequal! (4/n)
No incident has left a more indelible impact on my mind than this. So when people say ‘caste doesn’t matter’ and ‘reservation kills merit’ they don’t understand that reservation isn’t a poverty alleviation programme. It is to give Suman a place on that dining table. (5/5)
