http://writingcaste.wordpress.com/how-it-all-began/
How it began
The idea for this blog grew out of an outburst of rage. Titled "Inside
The Hindu Part 2: The thing that must not be named" – the piece that
follows was written as a Facebook note, sequel to an earlier note
about the ways in which internal censorship functions at The Hindu,
Chennai. The first article was received with great rejoicing and
carried lovingly on The Hoot and Kafila and Humanities Underground.
None of them wanted to touch this one:) Caste, quite literally, should
not be named, it seems…
Inside The Hindu Part 2: The thing that must not be named
aka. The bitch is back and she is so fucking angry
Dear internal censor, you shot down my proposal for an article on
state expenditure for dalits. Then how dare you write this story?
"While the UPA has focused on bettering the lot of the Dalit
community, it is dominated by upper caste Hindus, very few of whom are
genuinely concerned about the plight of dalits," the American Embassy
said in a cable sent under the name of Ambassador David Mulford" How
dare you? I hereby declare war. Do you remember? I told you that
successive Tamil Nadu state budgets showed a decline in expenditure of
money intended for dalit welfare. In other words, the government that
was empowering the poor with television sets was using for other
purposes the funds intended for the Scheduled Caste population – funds
which should not be diverted to other schemes or returned. I spent an
afternoon poring over budget documents, I visited non-governmental
organisations that were doing research in this area, I went to the
office of an IAS officer who was being shuttled around departments
because he questioned the diversion of these funds. "Do you really
think The Hindu will carry this story?" he asked. I came to you and
asked if I could give an article for the State pages about this. You
said, "No. The budget was presented last week. How is this news?" And
now you write about how a white man is concerned about the welfare of
dalits? What is wrong with you? Why is it not news if your lowly
brown-skinned reporter wants to write about this with more data to
substantiate the claim? Here's a quote for you: "While The Hindu has
claimed to care about bettering the lot of the Dalit community, it is
dominated by upper caste Hindus, very few of whom are genuinely
concerned about the plight of dalits." Take it and fuck off.
Oh, before that, the preface: First, yay! Contrary to what I told some
of you, I do have more stories from The Hindu to tell. Second, to all
the former and current journalists who have expressed sympathy, write
your own stories also please. And leave us a link. Thank you. Third, I
was spooked by the massive wave of love that engulfed my post on
internal censorship at The Hindu. I mean this is the Internet, right?
Have I been moved to a parallel universe? Where were the disagreeable
trolls, the flaming comment wars? From across the political spectrum,
I have received warm praise of my writing skills. So. Let's raise the
stakes. Let's do something more difficult than growling about internal
censorship in the media – something which both left and right seem to
enjoy. Let's talk about caste.
I estimate that 80 per cent of The Hindu's workforce is Brahmin (of
the Tamil Nadu population, they form less than 3 per cent). I might be
exaggerating. This is based on a visual estimate. You work long enough
in The Hindu, Chennai, you will be able to tell apart the Tamil
Brahmins – the TamBrahms – with their distinctive features. Then it
started making sense to me. So many people in this city reminded me of
one of my favourite professors, I did not know why. They are all
Brahmin. They have been marrying each other for so many generations
that they have distinctive facial features – this fact horrifies me.
Once, I was called to office by the internal censor (of
engineering-college fame) on an 'urgent assignment'. I got there
post-haste to be told that his blue-shirted highness who rules The
Hindu roost himself wanted to show a white friend the Egmore museum.
As a reporter who had written a couple of stories about the museum's
galleries and its environs, I obviously was the only person who could
guide them around the place. The internal censor had to explain to me
twice what was expected of me. I couldn't wrap my fiercely-independent
head around the fact that I was expected to play tourist guide to my
employer and a visitor. At the museum, I had to confess my utter
ignorance about the bronzes or Indo-Saracenic architecture or anything
that the white lady wanted to know about really. "Would you be able to
find someone who knows?" his highness inquired regally. I knew my way
about the admin block there and found a curator who was simultaneously
flustered and thrilled that the blue-shirted god himself was there to
grant him darshan. He went pounding down the stairs ahead of me to the
bronzes gallery in less than half the time it took me to move my
portly form there. The white lady admired the stunning
Ardhanareeswarar near the entrance of the bronzes gallery.
"Exquisite," she breathed. 'Well, of course, it is,' I grumbled inside
my head. "What is that?" she asked, pointing to the thread that is
depicted along the bust of Ardhanareeswarar's male half. I had never
noticed it till that moment. "The thread that the so-called twice-born
wear," said his highness. Ardhanareeswarar is FC, apparently. "This,
this", said our eager curator, pulling out and displaying his sacred
thread.
I am not twice-born. In my earlier birth, I was a water buffalo – I
have retained the generously rounded form for one, not to mention a
love for the placid lifestyle. Also, I like to plod and gaze at the
world through large, limpid eyes, wondering at the indecent haste of
human life. Ok, ok, I might be deliberately misunderstanding what
twice-born means. Apparently the twice-born or the dvija is a Brahmin,
Kshatriya or Vaishya who undergoes a physical birth and a spiritual
one. Also, "A dvija does what he ought to do rather than what he wants
to do. He does not avoid what he dislikes rather he avoids what ought
to be avoided." That settles any lingering doubts I might have had – I
am definitely not a dvija, I am not even a 'he' to begin with. Are
Brahmin women twice-born or not? Expert replies would be welcome. For
this post, I am going to presume they are.
So, there was the time when I plodded into the editorial section at
The Hindu to find people at their various desks standing upright and
facing the same direction with cow-like expressions. (Us buffaloes
find cows to be plain silly) I wondered, uneasily, if I had walked
into some barbaric ritual that editorial performed while no-one was
looking – they did like to massacre the occasional innocent story and
play with torturous headlines, I'd noticed. Then I realised that a
puja was on and standing up, wearing suitably devout expressions, was
apparently the right way to acknowledge it. The gods presided over the
reporting and editing sections at The Hindu, Chennai, in size A3
Technicolor. Some were quite the Ravi Varma-esque beauties, others
were just in bad taste. Presumably, the deities must have been driven
distraught by all those treats of cake and murukku and what-have-you
that we kept giving each other inside reporting. So, the ordained
members of the twice-born would try to propitiate them by
half-heartedly waving plates with flaming camphor and other
paraphernalia and ringing beautiful hand-held bells at them. In
counterpoint, the Muslim woman who briefly was my colleague was
directed, after much delay, to a cramped place with barely any space
to kneel when she requested a room to use for her daily prayers during
Ramzan. There were fringe benefits to this communal celebration of
being Hindu – gorgeous saris for Pongal and Deepavali for the ladies,
and for another of them festivals – I forget which – generous-sized
bags of puffed rice for everyone. Yummy.
Less palatable was seeing how caste marks this predominantly-Brahmin
workforce. The meetings of their favourite caste association would get
coverage and column-inches, of course, but that didn't annoy me quite
so much. The normal-food eaters can't eat their food in the canteen,
because the smell of their non-Brahmin food is offensive to the
nostrils of their twice-born colleagues. They can't eat inside the
reporting section's room, without remarks along the lines of "Which
walking, swimming, flying thing are you eating today?" Some twice-born
colleagues would ask this same question practically every time one
unfortunate normal-food eater opened her tiffin box in office. I would
have given anything to hear our normal person to say, "What the fuck
do you care, you eater of grass?" Instead, she would meekly submit the
menu for the day and receive some more 'good-natured' (read caste-ist)
ribbing.
Also, like most newsrooms in the city, The Hindu too had its mandatory
sprinkles of Nairs and Menons. I write this letter for them:
Dear Malayalee people,
Get a grip. This is Tamil Nadu. You must know by now that caste names
have been painted over, whitewashed and legislated out of existence in
this state. Caste cannot be named any longer, except in matrimonial
columns and rental ads (Don't ask me why. Parents arranging marriages
and landlords are the torchbearers of caste apparently). It has been
driven underground in the public sphere – you might be allowed to say
the 'Gounder-votebank' but that is about it. You cannot stand up in a
public meeting here and say 'this person is of the Nair community'. I
have seen this happen in Kerala. No kidding. People were introduced
caste-wise with a noble intention (to show that the group was
inclusive and diverse) but it still left me gobsmacked. You might find
the co-existence of caste hierarchies and the left ideology charming,
but the rest of us think it beyond weird. We do not use caste names if
we can help it. Yes, there are some Thevars and Nadars and Gounders
and Chettiars out there who hold on to their caste names like they are
badges of pride. There are also some of them Iyers (not to forget the
Aiyars) and them Iyengars, all of whom we will glare at with polite
loathing. However. Walking around with your caste affiliation clinging
to the backside of your name, like some smelly rem(a)inder of
centuries of discrimination is so last century. Get with it.
Yours condescendingly, Malar.
P.S. Dear Reddys, Consider yourself implicated in this shit as well. Snarl, M.
Once upon a time, a Brahmin Tamil teacher asked us, her class six
students, "All the upper caste students, please stand up." This was in
an elite school, the most progressive one in Madurai. The Brahmin
daughter of the head-mistress stood up. Then another guy. After some
thought, I stood up. I had no clue what caste was – I only vaguely
knew that my father owned a car, unlike those of some of my
classmates. Another girl, who actually knew that she belonged to the
same caste as my family, stood up. I told my parents, they went up in
flames and called up the principal and our teacher never so much as
mentioned the word 'caste' again. But I never had any trouble
afterward if I told her that I had not finished my homework. "Never
mind, child," she would say indulgently, when before the standing-up
census, I would have been summarily dismissed from class.
Now, in Chennai and after my stint at The Hindu, I understand anew the
impetus of the non-Brahmin movement. This city has the highest
concentration of English-speaking Brahmins in the state. I have had my
share of them in Madurai – the ones that served coffee to my family
and to their family in different tumblers at a golu, the one that
walked into my house and said "Oh! I have never seen a Christian house
that was kept so clean!" (I fought down my impulse to bash her on the
head with the ugly brass vase stuffed with the artificial flowers that
my mother so favoured). In Chennai, their concentration is
mind-blowing. Astounding numbers of rental ads for Mylapore, Adyar,
Thiruvanmiyur, Triplicane, Nungambakkam and other expensively Brahmin
ghettoes will state that they want 'vegetarian' tenants only. I have
been asked my caste by several landlords while house-hunting in the
city. I have been told off for contacting landlords who wanted only
Brahmin tenants. The TamBrahms also have their own communal theatre
groups and performances inside their private little Sabhas in their
own private dialect that they claim is Tamil infused with Sanskrit
(though the rest of suspect it is just another ruse to be able to tell
the twice and the once-born apart. Do they say 'say' or 'shay'?).
Staying with the dialect theme, some of my colleagues at The Hindu
could talk to everyone in one standardised Tamil. There were other
specially-anointed twice-born who could switch effortlessly between
TamBrahm and standardised Tamil, depending on who they were talking
to. On the phone to a government official, this side to another
twice-born, on the other side to the former water buffalo. It's quite
something to watch. How do they do it? Is there a filter in their
heads that is going Brahmin/non-Brahmin all the time? There would be
these conversations that I would not be able to make head or tail of,
let alone participate in – about special poojas and maamis and rituals
and all the insider jokes about the music season. For some days, the
blog of an anonymous Brahmin woman poking fun at her caste's many
rituals became all the rage inside The Hindu office. Everyone was
talking about it. I could not understand the damn blog. It was talking
in an alien language about a culture I did not know. Oh, the ways in
which exclusion functions.
Also, the arts that were stolen from the Devadasis and re-furbished
for respectability and are celebrated every December? The arts that
have been shrouded with impenetrable layers of holiness and technical
detail? Yeah, those arts now function as another ruse to separate out
the normal-food eaters. The twice-born and the occasional once-born
would gather in warm little groups to discuss the ins-and-outs of the
season each time it came around. The rest of the once-borns were left
out in the Margazhi cold, typing forlornly at stories about the
increased chill factor and what two-wheeler riders should do to take
care of themselves. The music reviews that would appear in The Hindu
did nothing to dispel the impenetrable air of mystery that surrounds
these forms. When Nalli Kuppuswamy Chetty lost to The Hindu's own
Murali for a post in the Music Academy, some of the staff came around
distributing sweets. What were they celebrating? That the sacred
domains continue to stand in the face of attacks from the once-born?
My only brush with the Music Academy happens when I have to cross the
signal at that junction – I always curse the place for taking up so
much space for parking while the pavement on the RK Salai side is less
than 30 cm wide. It used to be 20 cm. Then they generously demolished
and rebuilt the wall to donate a little less than 10 cm for the
welfare of pedestrians.
I was born into a formerly untouchable caste that has clawed its way
up the caste hierarchy to backward caste status, possibly with the
help of commerce and strong intra-communal networks. My mother pointed
to the ubiquitous palmyra trees that line highways across Tamil Nadu,
sometime after the standing-up census, and said that our ancestors
used to climb those trees and make arrack for a living. Some of them
converted to Christianity and, so, we found respectability, she
claimed. I didn't believe her. I knew Hindu friends of the same caste
had similar socio-economic standing. But, because I was not born
Hindu, the changes and the homogenising in the majority religion are
starkly visible to me – Vinayaka Chathurthi beginning to be celebrated
in Madurai in the 90s, the stripes of saffron with tinsel edging that
I see commuters tie to their vehicles in increasing numbers, the
appearance of a BJP flag at a street corner in Chennai – all cause my
feeble minority heart to tremble for its very existence. The
twice-born, on the other hand, will always find it easy to ally with
the right. When another internal censor at The Hindu casually
announced that he had voted for the BJP because he did not want to
vote for the Dravidian parties, I could only gape at him.
Just to make that loud and clear: The Hindutva brigade threatens my
existence and questions my right to life – I am unable to understand
or engage with them – I only think of them as propagators of hatred –
I do not understand how anybody can vote for the BJP.
The many articles I have read about representation in the media, about
the absence of Dalits in the media, all make much more sense after
working in an overwhelmingly Brahmin newsroom and studying in a
overwhelmingly Brahmin institution.
Kancha Ilaiah faced incomprehension and hostility when he presented
his opinions about Brahmins and their gods at the Asian College of
Journalism (ACJ) when I was there. Which is not surprising at all. The
entrance exam to this esteemed institution is an excellent example of
the utter meaninglessness of entrance exams. I got in exclusively on
the strength of my English. I doubt if I got full marks on even one
question in the general knowledge paper. I know, dear Media
Development Foundation (of which the blue-shirted god is a trustee),
that you chose me for the money my father had and his ability to send
me to a posh school, in short, for my skill with English. So, it
logically follows that a substantial portion of your intake will be
twice-born. I slipped in somehow – damn this 69 per cent affirmative
action in Tamil Nadu, huh? Lets in all the wrong sorts. The ACJ is
entirely progressive in its teaching and practice. But how much can
you teach a preponderantly twice-born group?
Inside the computer lab once, a male classmate started off a giggly
discussion, "What is your gothra?" These barbaric Hindi-speakers are
beyond the pale, I thought to myself, while struggling with the
intricacies of page layout. Then the TamBrahm girls also joined in. I
fought down the impulse to stand up and say, "How nice! I'm so happy
for all of you. Shall I arrange your marriages right away or do you
want to keep it for later?" I might have also chosen to keep my peace
because I was among the two once-borns in a group of around ten. I
continued struggling with my page layout. Then the twice-born bimbo
next to me leaned over and switched off MY computer, instead of hers.
Ok, her's was next to mine, but it was still a bloody stupid mistake.
My layout was lost. She gaped at me out of cow-like twice-born eyes
and said, "Oh."
One of those girls later made a presentation on utilitarianism and
vegetarianism – apparently vegetarianism made sense because it was a
utilitarian thing to do. Right. During the discussion, I wanted to
know why she had not discussed caste at all, when the concepts of
normal and vegetarian food were so closely tied to caste in India. A
professor told us at the end of that class that the aim of asking
questions was to get information, not show off how much we know. It
might have been directed at the class in general, but seeing that he
was (also) a Menon, I decided to take it personally. Sir, I want to
put it on record that I was deeply hurt by that statement. Thank you
for understanding. Ah, ACJ, ACJ. The place where a Brahmin girl burst
into tears when she realised she had eaten beef (I did not understand
the concept of retroactive grief, she had not even realised she was
eating meat while she was actually eating it). Where a stylish Mumbai
girl said, "I don't eat beef, I am Hindu", where other Hindus would
head for the beef biriyani down the street with much gusto. And have
you considered the complications of eating out when certain elements
of your cuisine are anathema to your friend? The faces they can make
are quite frightful and can put you right off your crispy fried beef.
Please don't write 'awesome piece' in the comments section. Write your
personal narratives of your experience of caste, if you can. That
would be so much more useful than sniping about 'merit' and that one
rich dalit student you knew who was living off the largesse of the
state while the poor FCs have to slog it out for the few remaining
seats – I cannot begin to count the number of times I have heard this
ridiculous claim – if there were really so many rich Dalit students,
The Hindu will not be the den of the twice-born that it is today. What
are the implications of running a media organisation for over a
century with an overwhelming number of twice-born? What are the
implications of creating a feeder organisation (read ACJ) to 'train'
more twice-borns for this work? What sort of training can an
organisation run and taught almost exclusively by the twice-born
offer? How can you maintain this obscene proportion of twice-born
employees in a state that is a trend-setter in affirmative action? And
how many of you who loved and shared my last piece will share this
one?
P.S. The internal censor I have ripped into in the first paragraph is
the man who made me cry by belittling the work I had done for three
years, when I asked to be paid more than freshers. So, yes, you could
read this as personal vendetta. He might be a nice guy otherwise. To
quote the last lines of an article that I read as an adolescent in The
Hindu's Sunday Magazine and was profoundly marked by: "Question
everything. Even this."
- Malarvizhi Jayanth aka. The Water Buffalo aka. எருமை மாடு
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