A marked life

A compilation of stories, some autobiographical and some fictional, details the agony of living in the shadows and the genuine challenges of breaking free from one's caste identity

Concealing Caste: Passing and Personhood in Dalit literature

Authors: K Satyanarayana and Joel Lee 

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Pages: 196

Price: Rs 1,895

Caste is among the ugliest and most stubborn stains on Indian democracy. It is reform-resistant and dehumanising and despite the abhorrent nature of its practice, caste still looms ominously over all aspects of social and political life in the country.

What does it mean to live in the shadow of caste, especially in a country that calls itself one of the most advanced civilisations of the world? It ends up negating the experiences of a large part of the population and reduces the Dalit world to a jumble of percentages and quotas. 

That, however, is the glib answer. The truth is that caste is corrosive and invasive. It slips soundlessly into everyday routines and institutionalises an unjust and unequal way of life. Caste, like racism, poisons the roots of society and, as this book lucidly illustrates, the two follow similar trajectories in the way they were perpetrated and resisted.

Back in 1946, Bhimrao Ambedkar is said to have written to American civil rights activist, W E B DuBois that, “There is so much similarity between the position of the untouchable in India and the position of Negroes in America that the study of the latter is not only natural but necessary.”

Living in a caste-ridden society has many consequences. One that this book focuses on is the act of concealing one’s caste. Editors, K Satyanarayana (Department of Cultural Studies, EFL University, Hyderabad) and Joel Lee (Department of Anthropology and Sociology, Williams College, Massachusetts) use a mix of fictional and non-fictional narratives to trace the impact of concealment  and  illustrate how it mimics the practice of “racial passing” in American society.

Passing is a term that emerged out of American literature (from the 1929 novel Passing by Nella Larsen, about a light-skinned African American), which in turn, draws upon a slave-era practice of issuing passes that let slaves travel alone. The “pass” was seen as a ticket to freedom by slaves and it lives on as a symbol of White supremacy today. Passing describes a practice whereby an individual deliberately keeps one’s identity a secret from the outside world and is, therefore, perceived as someone belonging to a different social or racial class than the one to which they truly belong. Caste concealment is similar and it was also developed by the Dalit community to be free from the tangle of discriminatory practices around their existence.

The stories in the book, some autobiographical and some fictional, detail how Dalits want to erase their caste identity to escape bigotry, prejudice and violence. A story by Baburao Bagul, translated by Jerry Pinto for this collection (“When I hid my caste”), about railway workers in newly independent India holds a mirror to the brutality that dogs Dalit existence in the country.

The protagonist hides his Dalit status by dressing and speaking like other “upper caste” workers but not only does he live in constant fear of being found out, he is also beaten within an inch of his life when his “true” identity is discovered.

Another story by Omprakash Valmiki translated by Joel Lee (“Dread”) is set in a middle-class colony of workers somewhere in North India and it talks about a family that is desperate to belong in a neighbourhood of Brahmins and Kshatriyas. They abandon their old gods, abjure time-honoured old sacrificial rituals of their community and give up eating meat. Until one day, it all gets too much for the matriarch of the household. She declares her desire to conduct a puja the way her ancestors did, sacrificing a pig to the goddess and cooking a royal feast of meat dishes. What may have been a joyous occasion otherwise, turns into a painful ordeal of playing hide-and-seek with the neighbours and, not surprisingly, ends tragically.

The stories are chilling, because such acts of concealment are not located in the distant past. They are found even today—whether it is among the Dalit community, Muslims, transgenders and other minority/ marginalised poor in the country. Many are being forced to discard or hide their true identities to escape harassment and at times, a fate worse than death.

For those cocooned in the safety of an urban, privileged existence, caste may be a relic of the past and they may struggle to find the connections with racism. But outside such blinkered existences, there is no escaping the likenesses. This is not to say that caste and race are the same. There are differences  and Messrs Satyanarayana and Lee write that their intention is not to dismiss the huge variance in context and culture that mark the two trends and neither do they want to “package the less-studied phenomenon (caste concealment) to fit the analytical framework the better-known (racial passing) has generated.”  Even so, it would be criminal to ignore the resemblance.