Thread by @asuph

Another Sunday. Another thread. #caste #privilege #merit #prejudice

My primary school was a govt. aided vernacular medium school run by an ed. institute (one of the better ones in my home city). My first recall of #caste is from when I was in 2nd/3rd.

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One of our teachers that year was NOT upper-caste (unlike most teachers in the school), and the predominantly upper-caste parents (including mine) weren't happy with the "quota" teacher. The general mood was "our education system is going to collapse due to quota"

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The thing is, this was decided based on his "surname", and of course based on prejudice of all the upper-caste teacher's, who had an obvious grudge against "quota system" that the govt. grant mandated. I don't even remember if he was a good or bad teacher.

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All I remember is the grounds he was branded as a bad teacher. One: that he was a quota teacher, so obviously not meritorious. Two: his language which wasn't "brahmni language", so not "pure/right". Will our children's language be spoilt, was one of the concerns.

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So let's talk about language. The "pure" Marathi is a language of the Brahmins, of course, because, who else will decide what is the right/pure language? So while the Bahujan use softer "n" and "l" (unlike ण or ळ) it's considered "low language".

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There's a famous UC joke: and I'm giving it verbatim here NOT to insult but to exemplify how casual and pervasive the language snobbery is.

A (lower caste) teacher is teaching (lower caste) students how to pronounce the word "correctly". He says: baamana waani paani mhan.

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For the non-Marathi speaking people, let me explain. The "joke" is that the lower-caste teacher is trying to correct the pronunciation of his student (to be like a Brahmin), but cannot himself pronounce it correctly.

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In the upper-caste circles (of which I'm part of, by birth), this is a completely "normal" joke. Because to them, their language is pure, and other people's language's impurity is the proof of their "inability" to even speak correctly.

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Lower-caste candidates who get government jobs are referred to as "aani baani paani" guys -- the caste markers that won't "wash away". No one needs to even evaluate the actual skills of such a person, because, hey, one: quota, two: language which proves ...

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Back to my school teacher. The conditioning and prejudices are so strong that I grew up associating "language" with "ability". I "assumed" the teacher was an "inferior" teacher. I had no vocabulary of prejudice, no understanding of "caste", just a vague awareness of it.

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Contrast: another teacher: my 1st std. class teacher. She was a Brahmin. And she was a terrible teacher, and not very bright. I know this because she was our neighbour. and she would take help from my mom for 4th standard maths problems (she use to take private tuitions!).

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But yes, she could speak the "right" language, thanks to her born caste, and growing up with others like her. No one was bothered about her. She wasn't a bad teacher because:

1: merit -- she wasn't quota teacher!
2: she spoke like a brahmin (that she was)

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The future of our education (or our children) was not at stake because of her, of course, unlike the "quota teacher", which is funny, because they "knew" she was not competent. This is #caste privilege. It took me years to realize this simple thing -- that's power of #caste.

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The fact of the matter is, not many of our primary teachers were very good. But still, the prospect of a diversity candidate getting that job was anathema to the savarna parents. While a known, terrible, teacher who was upper-caste was not.

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Another thing I've learned (and I don't say it to whitewash the upper-caste atrocities, and prejudices that have very real and terrible consequences) is that you don't need "bad" people to propagate "bad" system. My parents weren't overtly casteist.

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They supported intercaste marriages in our extended family. They did not practise active casteism. They were quite progressive for their times. They didn't teach us that we were better somehow because of our caste. But that is the weird nature of the beast.

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It propagates through unconscious biases. To the level that no savarna is immune to casteism (just as no white is immune to racism). I know I'm very likely to have internalized some of them, and I have to watch both my privilege and my prejudices all the time. Actively.

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It took me, literally, years to start seeing many of the (obvious in the hindsight) implicit biases in me and the people around me and to acknowledge my privilege, and more to see how structural privilege operates.

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But those who are at the receiving end do not have the luxury of time. This is a thread for the savarna. We owe this to the majority of this country: we need to keep questioning our prejudices, and those of people around us -- people we have some moral capital with.

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