Half a decade ago, I was witness to an upsetting situation at a wedding I was attending in my native village in Azamgarh district, Uttar Pradesh. I was from the groom’s side, the baraat was delayed in the hot May sun, and it took us some hours to reach the bride’s house. The groom was enveloped in a brown suit, and was sweating profusely. And he was wearing sunglasses. The young man had put them on while starting from our village in the morning, and there was no getting him to take them off, even at 8 pm, even for the rituals!
A few years ago, there was a news report from Rajasthan: a young Dalit was thrashed by the upper-caste youth of his village for dressing in shoes, jeans, T-shirt and yes, sunglasses. Born to a landless farm worker’s family, the Dalit youth ran away from his village to a nearby town. His story, reported by a Hindi daily, did not detail his trajectory in town. But he was in a non-farm job for sure and was probably paid in cash. He had saved enough money to procure a few material markers of his triumph and, as young men are wont to, he roamed around in the market wearing them. The upper-caste youth started by making fun of him, but when he confronted the sons of his ex-masters with the newfound sense of freedom he had acquired in the city, they beat him up badly. More than anything else, what provoked his assailants were apparently the sunglasses.
Scan through the newspapers of the Hindi belt in May-June, during which hot months, for some reason, most Dalit marriages take place, and you will find reports indicating a new pattern of atrocities. No one usually interferes when Dalit grooms, as they are increasingly doing, ride in cars during baraats. But some families choose to put grooms on horses—against the settled tradition of horses for upper-caste grooms, bullock carts for Dalit grooms—and are often confronted by the local grandees, who try to force them to get off the horses. During such disputes, stoning of Dalit baraats is common. Donkey breeders, they say, must not ride horses. What a shame that for Dalits, even weddings have to be held under police protection.
Wearing sunglasses, riding horses—to Dalit youth, it’s all about insubordination to a tradition of suppression, to this day felt far more in rural India than in the cities. The response? Dignity reigns supreme, even if it comes at a price: get thrashed, but make sure you flash your newfound status. India is marching on a new path; Manu is on the run, and his dharma—that the Untouchables cannot sport good clothes or ride horses—is on the run too. Thanks to the might of the market, and the power of buying, rank in society is now fully convertible; earlier, it was fixed at birth. Material markers are undermining social markers. The new symbols of power and affluence are cellphones, dish TV connections, bikes, sunglasses—and Dalits can buy them too. Too bad if you are pure but your hands are empty, they proclaim to the upper castes. The surname is losing its relevance; the Young Dalit is buying more than just what was forbidden him for ages. He is buying acceptance.
The post-1990 growth of the nation, coupled with urban expansion, has allowed young Dalits to escape from one of the two main shackles of the caste order, restriction to particular occupations, or occupational purity. (The other shackle, of course, is the upper castes’ claims to blood purity.) All castes and sub-castes had distinct occupational identities and vice versa. Occupations forced upon the Dalits were considered impure and polluting. With the arrival of newer occupations, Dalits got opportunities to escape these regimes of purity and pollution. Home delivery of pizza and other foodstuff is caste-neutral. Dozens of such jobs have come into being within just two decades. With new cleaning gadgets and uniforms, sweepers have now evolved into house-keepers who look like paramedics.
Today, the young Dalit is growing in fairly caste-neutral circumstances. Sure enough, occupational purity has taken a beating. Claims to blood purity are more difficult to conquer. For instance, the Indian intelligentsia hasn’t found it necessary to probe the phenomenon of honour killings. In a substantial number of cases, the runaway couples display a pattern—the husband is Dalit, the wife non-Dalit. That is, from a mass of people considered unsociable, some men are becoming acceptable even as husbands. India is passing through a phase where something very critical, and unthinkable till recently, is happening. To understand the enormity of an upper-caste girl eloping with a Dalit boy, you have to consider the Dalit’s position in society just a few decades ago. So fierce is this rebellion that many couples get butchered by their own parents.
More than sociology, there is psychology at work. Take the movement of Dalits from village to small town to large metros. They will have lighter pockets than their non-Dalit counterparts. But it will be noticed that with identical levels of affluence, Dalit youths will be dressed more flashily. With a similar level of money flow, a Dalit household is more likely to deploy a TV antenna on his rooftop than the non-Dalit. This has international parallels too. In the US, for instance, black youths are flashier than white Americans. With the first disposable dollar, the black youth knows which direction to head for—the nearest shopping complex. A black child grows with certain stereotypes woven around blacks’ public imagery. ‘The black in shabby clothes’ is one such stereotype. The young instinctively fight that stereotype. American universities have shiploads of evidence based on literature explaining why blacks are trendier and flashier than their white counterparts. Dalit youth, despised for ages and called names for being unclean and ill-dressed, are swept by the phenomenon of acquiring material markers. Quite like the blacks, with their first disposable income, they’d rather run to the nearest mall. Visit a village around Delhi and compare the clothing, cleanliness and hygiene standards of Dalits and non-Dalits. Despite being low on income, Dalit youths will be trendier and more flamboyant. However little it might be, a Dalit’s wealth will always be more visible. Dalit youths relish such demonstrations.
In India today, democracy is deepening. A few years’ stay in a city—either as workers, students, skilled workers or entrepreneurs—and Dalits turn rebels. When they go back to their village homes, they refuse to swallow the indignity their caste forces on them. They realise democracy is a beautiful thing. They deploy the electoral process to beat the old order. Despite the political system being corrupt and inefficient, Dalits go with it—they generally make it a point to vote. Dalit youths know well that institutions outside the state are nothing but a collection of khap panchyats. One needs to be a Dalit to know that inefficient and corrupt governments are better than efficient and honest khap panchyats that osctracise, penalise, even order thrashings. During elections, Dalit youths ensure that their people head for the polling booths.
While all of India is marching ahead, Dalit youth will march faster. As noted thought-leader Prof Gopal Guru argues, Dalits can’t be nostalgic. Nostalgia is only for those who once dominated society. To me, nostalgia imprisons and makes the nostalgic past-centric. Those with a past-centric mindset can’t move faster, can’t achieve that quantum jump. All oppressed communities and social classes live by only one option—to look to the future. There is nothing in the past that Dalits can celebrate. The past, therefore, can’t drag them backward. Upper-caste youths are cursed by their past, and their nostalgia for it. The Dalit is not. However inefficient and corrupt the present may be, the future is always full of hope. Dalit youths have come to appreciate the might of the market. Rank in society is now negotiable. So he is out shopping.
(The writer is an activist and researcher. He has many books on Dalit transformation to his credit.)
