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A postcolonial reading of casteism in everyday India

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This post was prompted by my recent visit to India as well as my reflections on the continuous conversations with Indians (I use the broad framework of India to refer to a space that is rendered meaningful in my interactions with it, narrated through my memories and through experiences that I negotiate in my everyday interactions). So coming to the topic of my post today, the subject of casteism in India, I want to share a viewpoint that is mired in paradoxes. On one hand, a postcolonial reading of the portrayal of India within a frame of the caste system depicts the ways in which the framing of the case politics in India gets situated within the colonial gaze. On the other hand, a materialist reading of the case politics points squarely to the continuing problem of the caste system and the ways in which the system impacts the fate of those at the margins. Of particular importance here is the ways in which the narrative of casteism has been taken up by neoliberal India, adopted within the dreams of development and modernization, situated amidst the materially rich markers of progress.

My recent experiences suggest that the caste politics is not simply a relic of the primtive hinterlands of the country, as the Indian narrators of the story of development and modernization would like to point out. Rather, the caste system and its remnants continue to be ever-present in the everyday politics and day-to-day lives of so-called educated Indians, often amidst the very ways in which they live their lives, the choices they make, and the ways in which they continually exclude the "other." The remnants of the system play out in everpresent segregation practices in cultural customs (such as rituals of sacredness, marking off spaces of sacredness etc.), casteist jokes and references to the lower castes, as well as continual oppression of the lower castes within mainstream structures.

The caste system continues to play out within the feudal logics of contemporary India that have reinvented themselves amidst the promises of neoliberal development. So you have a new breed of Indians who shop at malls, drive designer cars, wear branded clothes, speak in "perfect" English (the so-called markers of modernity) and continue to carry the symbolic relics of casteism in their everyday practices and rituals without questioning them. It is in this context as one listens to the talks about the lower castes and marginalizing practices directed toward the lower castes that spaces of resistance need to be articulated. It is not enough I believe for a postcolonial critique to stop at pointing out the imperial gaze in the depiction of casteism; rather, one has to go much much further in recognizing and resisting the deep-rooted problem of casteism in India.
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chawla said…
Thanks for writing this. I also think that the caste issue is rampant among NRI's. My spouse just met someone from a UN agency who said something to him about being a Saraswath Brahmin. It was amazing to have someone who works in development mention this issue in a social interaction (dinner). I am absolutely and always appalled by this--to not be would mean to pretend it never occured. My goal is to be appalled at both miniscule and larger discriminations equally and always.
July 31, 2011 at 2:00 PM
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