CASTE CASTS A LONG SHADOW FAR FROM ITS HOME

By SHAGORIKA EASWAR

Our son looked up from the kitchen table where he was enjoying an after-school snack while I prepped for dinner.

“Oh yeah, mom, I almost forgot, Mr D said to ask you about the class system,” he announced, setting off a series of questions in turn.

“The class system? What on earth is that?”

“I don’t know, he said you guys would know,” he said, clearly not happy at having been singled out for an assignment his peers had escaped.

“Isn’t Mr D your Social Studies teacher? Could he have meant the caste system?”

“Maybe, what is that?” shrugged our clueless son, clearly ready for a bullet point response that he could then present to his grade 8 teacher.

He had no idea what he was in for. For even the shortest answer on the caste system is not short, nor pretty.

I turned off the stove and sat down with him. I explained how it had originated, eons ago in ancient India, the division of people into categories based on their occupations. That it used to be a porous system, those born in one specific caste could move to another based on knowledge and skills acquired. And that it wasn’t discriminatory.

Not in the beginning.

Over time, the castes got set in stone, every generation born in one remained in one. And the horrific discrimination began. Huge swaths of people were not allowed to draw water from a so-called “upper caste” well, barred from entering temples, not allowed to walk on their streets lest their shadow defile them, punished brutally for accidentally coming in contact with someone from a higher caste. Matrimonial ads with caste specifics were witness to the fact that inter-caste marriage was taboo.

Demeaned, diminished, dehumanised. All in the name of a religion that did not decree any such thing.

He sat quietly for a while, ruminating over all this information.

“Wow, heavy stuff!” he said, heading off to his room.

From where he emerged just a few minutes later.

“So what caste are we?” he asked, anticipating Mr D’s next question (and assignment).

And so I had to sit him down again and explain the somewhat complicated situation of our mixed caste family..

The next day, while he was at school, I replayed this conversation for a friend in India and she was outraged.

“No one follows that anymore, you should complain about your son’s teacher, he’s clearly racist.”

I didn’t think so. Mr D was just covering a time and place in society and had picked the sole South Asian in his class to help shed some light on it, perhaps from lived experience.

But I didn’t have one. Like my friend, I had not experienced any discrimination. Being part of the educated, professional middle-class lifted my parents and thus us out of the morass.

We didn’t experience it and so we relegated it to “Of course it happens, but not here, and it’s on the decline” territory.

As I grew older, I became more aware of just how pervasive the caste divide remains in India. In a clip that I came across recently, actor-director Nandita Das was talking about the same issue. Just because she had not experienced any didn’t mean it didn’t exist.

“Just because I led a privileged life doesn’t mean I can brush it aside,” she said. “Can you imagine what it’s like for someone experiencing it every day of their life? Would they say there’s no caste system?”

Just as old desi settlers took yoghurt culture dried on cheesecloth to start a new batch on distant shores, we bring other things in our cultural baggage too.

This became evident when reports of IT professionals in the US experiencing caste discrimination surfaced. Imagine that. A group of highly motivated super intelligent adults, an exclusive club of the best-of-the-best, and yet, there, those from “upper castes” were nasty to those from “lower castes”.

And now we’re learning of it rearing its head in our schools in Canada.

Recent media reports point to cases of caste-based discrimination in schools in response to which, TDSB became the first to take steps towards banning it.

The Ontario Human Rights Commission has been approached to study the situation and provide a framework to address the issue.

The move has many supporters who are hailing it as historic. There are, as always, also detractors, who fear this will only fuel division, as Isabel Teotino wrote in the Toronto Star.

Those calling for change cite “documented cases of discrimination” while others are asking for proof of the same, which, apparently, is thin on the ground.

While shocking though it was, I could see caste-based slights playing out among adults at elite IT firms. I’m flummoxed, however, to learn of it in our schools.

Kids can be mean and bullying is not to be taken lightly. But do they know enough about caste, care enough about it to be mean to other kids based on this?

Are you and I going to be asked by our non-desi neighbours if we discriminate against fellow desis or whether we’ve been discriminated against? Am I going to subject my non-desi friends and neighbours to the same lecture I gave my son all those years ago?

Are we being too thin-skinned, imagining slights where none exist? Are we picking at old scabs? Or are we second-guessing ourselves, using logic to explain, to brush away certain acts? “Why would he do that? I must be wrong.”

Whichever the case, if enough numbers are feeling pain,  it’s time to face the facts. It’s time for some introspection.