I was born in Meerut in a Dalit family and I never knew what a caste was all about until the day I was called chamar. I failed to understand why I was called this. At school, few students discriminated for what we were. I still remember a brahmin boy asked  what my caste was? I told the truth: a Dalit. I still don’t understand why he wouldn’t believe me?He asked me to bring my caste certificate! it’s like they don’t believe that we can be good looking, fair or educated. On my father’s job retirement day my father was given no warm send off or a reception as compared to the other employee, who was also retiring on the same day. I felt a stab of discrimination as everyone was showering attention to the other employee and my father was standing there, with no one to join him. Someone even murmured ‘chamar’

- Nitin Verma

(all posts have been edited lightly for clarity)

I was born and brought up in Delhi. My father, who is now at a senior position in a government sector, was born in Delhi too, along with his siblings. My grandparents’ roots are from Uttar Pradesh. It was because of their hard work, and the business my grandfather started, that I consider myself as a ‘privileged’ Dalit. Until then he and all his family members made a living through our traditional occupation: washing clothes. Many of my relatives did that until very recently.

My father did well in school, and at work while helping out with our traditional profession. It was because of them that I could study and reach where I am. Even though I studied in far from satisfactory schools and colleges, I worked very hard on my language, knowledge, writing skills and most importantly, my confidence. It was because of my father, who valued education that I could study and rise on my own.

After working as a journalist for more than 3.5 years, I moved to the government sector on a contractual job. Castes and reservations are still discussed in private sector workplaces but in a disguised manner. However, in government organizations, it’s out in the open because of reservations in public employment. I was selected for this job without a quota. Since I had not made it public, my colleagues presumed that I belonged to the general category. Comments on SCs and STs acquiring jobs and big positions without ‘any talent’ were common. I remained perplexed about how to deal with such situations.  

Comments like “SC students just have to appear for an exam and they can get ANY job” were common. It hurt me because I did not get just any job without having to work for it and I knew it was not true. Had it been so, my entire family would have been an IAS, IPS, and on other senior positions. Whereas the truth is that my father is the only one in his family, who accessed higher education and secured a good position. My sister was the only know girl to graduate from my immediate and extended family until very recently.

One day I made my caste public. As expected, it was followed by intense arguments. I  was accused that I might be talented but I would not want other “really poor SCs” to compete with me.

I have not faced physical discrimination, i.e untouchability. But I don’t understand why it still haunts me. I can never tell my surname to people with ease. I never use my surname in my documents but then I decided to do it. It was a deliberate attempt to make my surname public. People never forgot to ask what my surname (read caste) was. I wanted to shut them up. This did not help much. Some asked openly “Aap kya ho”? Mostly I lied. I thought I should be proud of it. But…proud of something I don’t want. How do I do it?

        I recently cleared civil services preliminary examination and one of my good friends asked, “ Did you meet the cut off”? I had previously ‘confessed’ my identity to her because I did not want to hide anymore, as we were close. Another friend, who I had ‘confessed’ to, tried to make me feel guilty by saying “quota must have made a difference.” It is just endless. Some friends still do not know. I feel this burden that I must tell them. But how many can I go to and ‘explain’ my identity.

        Even if you want to forget, nobody lets you. I was doing an internship with the website of a news channel, and my boss, an educated and learned man, mentioned my caste while discussing something completely unrelated. Was it a coincidence? Clearly not.

One of my very good friends is a Dalit. She has never told me as I have never told her. Neither of us have the courage. I understand.  

        One of my friends was convinced that scheduled caste are more corrupt that upper caste. He quoted examples of Mayawati, A Raja etc. This friend is educated. I wonder what can be expected from those who are not educated.

My teenage cousin, who lives in Delhi and has dropped a year to prepare for engineering entrance exam, chooses to use an upper caste surname on Facebook because “it gives him pride and saves him from the shame and anti-reservation bullying.

My brother, who works as an HR trainee in one of the India’s biggest companies was asked by his boss, rather bluntly “Kis jati ke ho?” He had no choice but to lie.

I was telling a friend about another friend’s achievement and the reply came “Must be from reserved category.”

        In urban areas, the debate of caste is, especially among educated classes, revolves around the quota. While very conveniently, its other aspects - mental isolation, stigma, discrimination, bullying etc. are ignored.

I am still not settled professionally and I am working towards securing a good job in government sector. I apply through general category usually, while there is pressure from my family to use the quota. I have lied to them about the category I have used. Here’s why:

1.  I feel that I must not acquire general category seat because that will be an injustice to ‘the others’ (ed: THIS IS HOW THEY MAKE US FEEL GUILTY)
2. If I get a seat through the reservation, then I will be accused of getting the job without having merit.
   
3. I will be discriminated against publicly. Which I will be even if I get a job through the general category.
   
4. I want to make sure that if I get anything in my life, it is through sheer hard work even if it is through quota. (ed: And then again, the stigma  reservation creates to  deny what’s rightfully ours)
   

Either way, it is not easy. I am trying to prepare myself for every taunt and argument. Just as my mother did. She happily told some of the neighborhood ladies that her son has got admission in this engineering college. The reply was “Aji aap logo ka to ho jata hai na”. In that one moment, all his hard work and good marks were ignored. Many times the argument of quota becomes a shield for those who fail to achieve marks of even reserved categories. They fail to see that quota is not revenge or a free dole or alms. It is a lending hand to bring congruity. To give an opportunity to those who were denied almost everything, even dignity, regardless of they were talented or not. This is what our history, sociology and literature tell us. All of them cannot be wrong and biased. 

I want the society, especially the youth, to understand this: It has not come for free. Some have paid a very heavy price for it for a very long time. They are still paying.

Whether quota remains or not, caste doesn’t go way. It is in our mythological stories; it is in our religion, cultures, food, habits, marriages, are decided on its basis. Whatever and however I achieve success, I will still be called ‘lower-caste’. 

Slowly, I am trying to get comfortable and accept my identity with pride. I don’t want my children to face this asphyxia. Your story gives me hope.  

- KJ 

(edited lightly for clarity)

My name is Manisha Mashaal. I am a grassroots anti-caste activist, orator, and singer. I am from a small village in Haryana and as a Dalit woman, I have overcome many hurdles to be where I am today. Now, I am a first generation learner in my family. I have two degrees: a Bachelors and Master of Arts in Women’s Studies. And it is from this experience, that I can tell you the battle for #JusticeForRohith is not over.

When I first heard about Rohith Vemula’s suicide, I was heartbroken. The more I got to know about him, the more I appreciated his strength and intelligence. For a courageous soul like Rohith, to commit suicide, it was not because of his “weakness” but because he had been pushed to a level of dehumanization at which he had no more tools available to fight anymore. I know Rohith’s story because it could have been my own. I too have been there. There were many points during my studies when I thought truly it would be better to die.

I want to share my own experiences in detail because we are at a moment where we are still unable to visualize the full extent of the violence of our casteist educational system of this country. People are still engaged in debates about the reservation and the lack of “merit” of the marginalized peoples. But I want us all to ask: What kind of education are we providing to marginalized students at all? An education that is a half-hearted attempt aimed at wounding and pushing us out?

Caste doesn’t just operate in higher education. It is everywhere in our lives and begins to rear its head much earlier in school. When I was kindergarten, I was told by my teacher than that I was “a lower caste” and that I should sit in the back of the class. He would bark, “ How dare you Chude (Valmiki) try to sit in the front? Go to the back! Why do you come to school? Why don’t you cut grass in the fields like you are supposed to?” This was how I found out what caste I was. At the time, I didn’t fully understand what this meant, but because of how angry he was, I realized that being Valmiki meant something bad. Having school teachers discourage you from learning is the reality many first generation learners like myself face. Our families do work in the fields. We are indentured through caste to landlords all through out India. To go to school alongside these oppressors’ children and then to be demeaned in front of them too - is atrocious. As a child, you can barely make sense of it.

The bullying continued for me through high school, the teachers would never address me by my name - Manisha. Instead, they would make up names for me like “late admission wali” or “bindi wali” to highlight my Dalitness and shame me. In contrast, the upper caste girls and boys were addressed by their proper names. After years of abuse, I had had enough. One day I missed school because of a serious incident at home, the next day the teacher hurled abuses at me I asked him “Why do you only reprimand me? Why not ask this upper caste girl who missed school yesterday as well? When I first asserted myself, the teacher could not handle it, he threw my bags and books out of the class and refused to teach me, grade me or allow me into his class ever again. But I did not give up. I came to school every day. I sat outside the class with my bags and books every day and listened in. Despite this, at the end of the school year, he failed me.

Dalit children go through truly toxic casteism before they even land anywhere near the door to an institution of higher education. This is in addition to the social torment our families are subjected to. So it’s fair to ask, do the policies of reservation even begin to neutralize the enormity of oppression that students like myself have had to cross to compete with other students?

As I graduated from high school and began to think about college, I knew it would be difficult. I struggled with preparing myself for the social and economic hurdles. However, I knew that if I didn’t make it to college, my options would be restricted to an early marriage and working in a brick kiln or cutting grass. I knew I was meant for more. I wanted to be a leader who could change the situation for my peoples. So with great difficulty, I enrolled at Indira Gandhi National College in Ladwa, Haryana.

One the very first day of college, I quickly realized that in India’s abodes of higher education, untouchability ran silently rampant. Most students immediately split along caste lines. Upper caste students asked me the name of my caste before they asked me my own name. When they found out I was a "quota” (reservation) student, that was all they wanted to do with me. They refused to talk to me, share notes with me, study with me or eat with me. The three other Dalit girls in my class had the same experience. We stuck together and stayed within ourselves.

The discrimination I was subjected to in college ranged from subtle to direct. During an NSS (National Service Scheme) camp, we were asked to do our own chores, cook, and clean-up. When we were sweeping, an upper caste girl complained that she was being made to do “ the work of ‘Chude’ and 'Chamars’ ”. I was deeply hurt by the bluntness of her abuse and I accused her of casteism. As our argument escalated, professors reprimanded me for being argumentative but did not even attempt to warn the upper caste girl. That day, one Dalit professor took me aside and consoled me saying “Manisha, our battle is larger than this. There’s much we have to do. We have to strategise. Let this go.”

However, I didn’t have the bandwidth to process these instances or explore them politically because, for me, striving to meet financial needs dominated most of my time and energy. While I was surrounded by upper caste upper-class students comfortable in an urban setting, I was struggling with the new set of burdens. Even with scholarships, my family and I had a lot of difficulties paying the fees for the second year. My brother had somehow managed to take out loans to pay for the first year but we did not have enough money for proper clothing, a good bag or even books. The situation was so tough that each day after college, I would rush home to have time to wash the suit to be able to wear it the next day. Some of the students began to call me “phoolon wali suit” (the girl with the flowered dress) because I wore the same suit so much.

At the end of the first year, I thought that like many other Dalit students unable to pay fees, I too would have to drop out. During this time, my uncle told me to go see Assistant Deputy Commissioner Sumita Khataria. Ms. Khataria was a Dalit woman who had struggled hard in her life come up in life through education. When I met with her, I think she may have seen her own younger self in me. She offered to pay my fees and even bought me some books and a bicycle. Even as Ms.Khataria was helping me, I knew that she faced a lot of criticism from other colleagues and upper caste educators who accused her of working along caste lines. But this act of loving empathy from a fellow Dalit woman actually allowed me to have a real chance at higher learning.

But why I was the “lucky” one? I fought through an oppressive society to be educated. Is that not enough by itself? To really address the casteism in our society we must address the casteism in our schools. Otherwise, we will be unable to end this system. Luck should not be the guarantor of success. We should systematize support for Dalit students like myself to help us not only get admission but to thrive.

My experiences in college represent the experiences of a vast section of Dalit students who do not go to “elite” schools in India - the JNUs or IITs. We go to small state and private institutions close to our hometowns. These colleges, including my own, don’t have any state-of-the-art labs or centers. In fact, they often have a very poor infrastructure and insufficient faculty. Dalit students suffer further loss of access due to discrimination. Teachers and administration make it difficult for us to obtain of everything from entry into labs, library books, scholarships to job opportunities. We are made to run around from one office to another for the signatures, for scholarships to be released, for food and everything else. I always felt we were deliberately kept in desperation mode right at the edge of meeting our needs.

By the time I enrolled in Masters (Women’s Studies) at Kurukshetra University, I realized that in many ways, survival at these institutions required both resilience of personality and the empowerment of Ambedkarite politics. I was elected chairperson of DASFI (Dr. Ambedkar Student’s Front of India) and became deeply involved in Dalit women’s activism. But, even as women - Dalit women’s politics are at odds with upper caste women. When Nirbhaya happened, I pointed out in class that these cases of sexual violence happen all the time to Dalit women and are never paid the kind of attention that Nirbhaya received. I referred the case of the young Dalit woman who was raped and killed in Jind, Haryana. The whole class and the professor began disagreeing with me vehemently, arguing that rape is a “gender issue” not a “caste issue”. I thought to myself that this was the rotten level of understanding in a Women’s Studies program. Being women did not mean much when they could not even empathize with the vulnerabilities of a Dalit woman who had succumbed to severe violence.

Because there is not a proper structure to accommodate our acts of stepping out of the caste order, getting an education presents many everyday practical problems. For example, Dalit girls in Haryana don’t have many hostels. When there are hostels, we don’t have the means to pay for them. This means that we have to travel long distances. I used to travel nearly 100 km every day by bus, 50 km each way. To avoid this commute, many Dalit men stayed at dharamsalas for days at a time. But we women had to run back home before it gets too dark. This often meant that that we had to board a particular bus at a particular time. As a consequence, there was then no time to visit the library for reading or take part in extracurricular activities. When we get back home in the evening, the day doesn’t end. We have to wash, clean, cook and see to the care of our siblings and family members. We have to do ALL this and STILL perform well in college. I often ask - is persevering through these conditions, in itself, not meritorious enough?

These problems discouraged Dalit parents from wanting to send their daughters to universities. Many times, they would express that they preferred their daughters alive and uneducated than educated and dead. After, my master’s I started visiting the families of these girls. I convinced their parents that they could stay at my office in Kurukshetra and go to university. That way they weren’t making long and dangerous trips everyday and could focus on their studies. At the office, I walk them through the bureaucracy of the university and give advice. I allow them to accompany me as I go about my activism. By watching me, they learn to be bold. I teach them what I understand about Babasaheb and their constitutional rights. If I start to see a change in their demeanour, they are speaking up, then I know they are beginning to feel more empowered and activated. Truly, I believe this is the real education they get, not the farce they are administered at our universities.

This country is often embroiled in debates about the reservation and “merit”. They want to ask many questions about brothers like Rohith. Without shame, they question his merit too. I want to ask where do upper castes derive their merit from? From their superior abilities or their “superior” caste? Dalit men and women like myself face enough oppression in our lives to scorch any so-called upper caste to a bent and broken down a pile of bones. And still, we not only persist, but are constantly glancing behind us, to lend a hand, to raise another sister, another brother, a mother, a lover - even as we are immersed in the battle to slay the feudal fascist monster on our path. End your false debates. I pronounce, that there is no soul more meritorious, than the radiant Dalit student.

Jai Bhim. 

- Manisha Mashaal, Dalit activist and the Haryana state coordinator of the All India Dalit Women’s Rights Forum (AIDMAM). She has a Masters degree in Women’s Studies from Kurukshetra University. 

Translation credit: Pushpa Yadav and Arvind Shesh

Editorial inputs: Valli Karunakaran

Published with permission from Round Table India 

http://roundtableindia.co.in/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=8496%3Aagainst-the-wind&catid=119&Itemid=132 (for a hindi translation)

I grew up in India and completely relate to your story! The only difference was I never talked about my family background. Just a week before Rohith’s death, I heard about his fight, from folks in Boston who were organizing a protest. And a week later I heard about Rohith’s suicide. 

This was also the first time in my life that I came out on Facebook about my Dalit background. I always lived in fear of discrimination. But this incident shook me. I want to live a life of dignity. I am choosing to lose my fears. Friends who might judge me based on where I was born were never friends anyway. Good riddance I would say. From telling a few close friends in Seattle to declaring it to the world, it was a big step. A close friend of mine said that my coming out doesn’t change our friendship. And I know a lot of others in my friends’ circle won’t feel the same. But I think it’s about time I face those fears head on.

- Anon.

(all posts are edited lightly for clarity) 

I grew up in urban south India, relatively not exposed to caste discrimination at school. My dad, a government employee, faced caste discrimination but shielded us from it by not talking about it in front of us. In general, we were taught, trained to ignore these things and move on. During my undergraduate days, there were the occasional snide remarks or casual casteist jokes but I took it in my stride, mostly because it was never direct or in my face. 
The first time I faced public humiliation was unfortunately at one of India’s top B-schools, where I should emphasise, I secured an admission as a general student (not based on any caste reservation!) for an employer-funded management program. In the Corp Fin course, there was an accounting concept that I could not get my head around and I asked the teacher for assistance. The very matter of fact response was, “oh you folks with X surname, I don’t expect you to get these concepts easily. Why don’t you ask some of these Iyengar and Aggrawal fellows here if they can help?”
The entire class laughed at the “joke”. But that was the day I realised that no matter how qualified I am, my identity finally boils down to my apparently lower and therefore “incapable” caste.

- anon.

I often read comments, that say that no one cares about caste these days, these Dalits just want to make an issue out of it and so on.  Here are some very recent examples of discrimination around me!

1. My husband’s and my family have known each other since years. The relations were hunky dory till my husband revealed to his folks about his intention to marry me. They very clearly told him that though they agree that the girl and family is educated and cultured and are absolutely fine with a ‘friendship’ with having Dalits as a part of their family is totally unacceptable. They tried to make him understand about what will people say etc. Finally after a prolonged heart-wrenching battle with his family, my husband got married to me but his folks did not attend our wedding nor they kept any communication with us. And this was in year 2008.

2. My uncle was posted in Zhasi on a managerial designation. My grandma died at his house. Forget about paying last respects, not a single person from that locality came forward to give ‘kandha’ to her. Even my uncles juniors and peons hesitated. My dad and relatives took two full days to reach Zhasi from Nagpur due to some train issues and only after that  her last rites were performed. This was year 2007.

3. Two of my upper caste (UC) friends were looking for grooms and their parents agreed to consider guys from other castes too. Being a close friend I accompanied them to marriage bureaus where community wise 'groom registers’ are maintained. They asked me to help them scan the resisters and if I come across guys with xyz criteria show it to them. I was  having fun shortlisting the guys till I showed them one particular guy. Thier excitement died when they saw the register with the heading 'Buddhist grooms’. They told me clearly, please don’t see registers from this community. Only I know how I felt at that moment.  This was year 2009.

4. I was born and raised in a Dalit locality. Though it is in the midst of Nagpur city, very few people know its name. During school, my friends parents asked me where I lived and the moment I explained how to reach there (since no one knew my localities name) I could see the difference in their facial expressions. Never did any of my friend came (or rather were allowed) to come to my house. This was 90’s.

5. When I had applied for my first passport I had to visit the nearest police station for a verification. When the officer saw my address he smirked at me. “Why does a girl from xyz locality need a passport?” ( wish I remembered his name so that I could show him that this Dalit girl is now a globe trotter)

6. Very often we see that even if when an Indian moves abroad they carry and maintain 'Indianess’. When I moved abroad, during the first get together with the Indian community, our host who has lived here for last 22 years played the infamous 'surname game’ with me (the one which brahmins play with UC hindus  and UC hindus play with lower caste hindus and Dalits ) and then majority of us know the aftermaths. I was taken aback but not shocked. This was year 2013.

7. Every Dec 6th, Dalits flock to Mumbai to pay homage to Dr Ambedkar at Chaitya Bhoomi Mumbai. Every year (I remember even when I was in an engineering college) my friends cringe about the difficulties they have to face on that day due to these 'ghati’ people.  “Pata nahi kyu aatey hai, kya milta hai inko is din yaha bheed karke”. But these same friends of mine enjoy the crowd, the gulal and the noise on ganesh utsav and gokulashtmi (big Hindu festivals). This 'ghati’ slur, 'jai bhim waley’ comments from my friends, for the people of my community hurt me a lot, made me angry but I never retaliated  for one simple reason – to confirm to the standards (but now i regret why I didn’t)

8. I was born and raised in Nagpur till I was 17. Every dusshera Buddhist dalits from entire India especailly rural India come to Deekshabhoomi to celebrate 'Dhamma Chakra pravartan din’. My school friends never failed to comment- “Kya ye log aate hai ganda karte hai, pura trafic jam hota hai, gawar log.  Whereas on the same day, Ramnavmi is celebrated in other parts of Nagpur. There the sophisticated UC people gathered to burn the Ravan effigy, enjoy the food and other stalls and of course to litter too. The next day my friends would  happily discuss how they enjoyed their holiday. I could never tell them that I too enjoyed but at  Deekshaboomi. I could never tell them that I am a part of that crowd whom they call 'gawthi’.

9. On numerous occasions my domestic help in Mumbai passed nasty comments about 'Jaibhim waley log’ in her slum. On one occasion my husband told her that your madam is also a 'Jai Bhim wali’ and for the first time in my life the situation was hilarious for me and embarassing for the so called UC person.

10. My first cousin is currently pursuing her BCA in Nagpur. Her late father was an unlicensed coolie at a railway station and her mother is a daily wage worker in packaging factory. She studied in a vernacular medium in a corporation school but always cherished a dream of working in a company and supporting her mother financially. Despite all odd conditions at home, she scored distinction in SSC.  She is the first person in her family to even read and write. She needed financial help and encouragement to go ahead in life. I am helping her with the financial needs. BUT what she needs at this moment is to get her self-confidence back, which she has completely lost after she went to college. She was continuously mocked by her classmates with comments like 'quota wali’ and 'jai bhim wali’. Her corporation school education did not equip her with English language skills, her uncouth family background never allowed her to understand the importance of self-presentation. For this, her classmates singled her out. Is it her fault? In a way yes because she was born in a Dalit family who had never known in last 1000 years what education means, what culture means. (ed: THIS!!!) She is faring badly in her studies. [By the time I realized her mental agony, she had already lost the drive of doing well in her life. Now I talk to her over phone regularly to pep her up]. 

UC people don’t know that it is a privilege to have a cultured and educated family which starts defining your personality from the day you are born. Think before you ridicule other underprivileged. Had she been treated equally, maybe not a class topper but,  at least, she would had the zeal to study like she initially had. She even dreads going to college. This is the year 2015

- Chetna Kamble 

(all posts have been edited lightly for clarity)

Rohith Vemula, the Dalit scholar from Hyderabad Central University who took his own life on January 18^th, wanted to write about the stars. His mind was a ‘glorious thing made of stardust’, whose proof he left in his last letter to the world. In life, his education – a chunk of it financed by his mother’s earnings as a tailor – was an act of rebellion. In death, he blazed a trail on Dalit rights, whose brightness refuses to be ignored. By the media, by the bureaucracy, by the Internet and by me.

I was born in a Dalit family in Ajmer, Rajasthan. And I grew up learning to hide it. My convent school education, a non-Dalit sounding last name, and a skin color that was ‘dusky but still not dirty’ eased my passing as a non-Dalit. “Beta, what caste are you from?” “Aunty, Brahmin.” A lie I spoke so often and with such conviction, that I not only fooled my friends’ mothers but even myself. But I couldn’t fool the shame that spread my face each time someone mentioned ‘caste’, ‘reservation’, ‘bhangi’ – the common slur, which loosely translates to a human scavenger and the name of my exact caste. ‘This time, they’ll find out’, I had thought when the undergraduate college I attended tucked my name under the SC/ST quota or when I submitted my birth certificate for my first job at an ad agency. Some did find out, some didn’t. Most didn’t care. The ones who did (a friend who along with her parents witnessed my first public admission of being ‘low-caste’ at 15) stopped being in touch. But I always cared. I cared enough to lie about my caste and to create elaborate backstories to protect that lie. I conveniently forgot the last name my grandfather dropped to allow him to pass, almost 60 years ago – Nidaniya.

Until today when I visited Rohith Vemula’s posthumous Facebook page. And realized that he had sent me a Facebook request ten days ago, which I had promptly ignored. Maybe he saw some Dalit right groups I had liked and wanted to reach out.

And reach out he did. He made me ‘come out’ to the people I grew up hiding from, wanting to fit in with. He made me recognize that my history is one of oppression and not shame. He made me acknowledge that my great grandfather learned to write by scrawling a stick in the mud because the higher caste schoolteacher forbade him from holding a slate. And he made me proud.

I know I am not alone to feel this. There are many of us whose experiences of growing up Dalit and navigating a society that forces us to feel shame, need to be told and heard. That’s why I am starting Documents of Dalit Discrimination. A safe space for conversation about caste that needs to go beyond ‘reservation’ and ‘merit’ and voices that echo the hurt so many of us suffer silently. Let’s hear stories of pride, of history and ownership against the emotional, personal, physical and mental toll of the caste system. Let it be known that Rohith’s birth was no ‘fatal accident’.  

- Yashica Dutt (Nidaniya)

courtsey: Rohith’s posthumous Facebook page 

I have not faced discrimination first hand as some have mentioned here but it doesn’t matter because it’s like a hanging sword, you never know when it will fall. But there are a few incidents I would want to share.

I was in the fourth standard when a friend of mine pompously declared that he was a JAT and asked me what my caste was? Although, I knew the answer, I questioned him sharply “what if I said I was a Meghwal (similar to chamar in some parts of Rajasthan)? He behaved rather erratically and started telling everyone about it. I was a good student and people often copied my homework, so nothing much changed. But that alone made me want to hide my caste.

Eight years later, I went to Kota and realized that everyone seemed to only be talking about the reservation and how it was damaging ‘merits’. It made me so self-conscious that I couldn’t make a single acquaintance, let alone a friend, from my coaching class. Soon after, I got selected into the IITs and everyone in the family was very happy about it. But the only question that bothered me was that whether I will be able to make any friends? From being the popular kid in school to the having a fear of fitting in, this is what caste can do to you. Fortunately, I made some great friends after overcoming my initial hesitation. On one other occasion, in college, a batchmate told me, “You don’t look like an SC because you are fair (I am wheatish, far from fair). It is so absurd that all of these upper caste people somehow think that we are look hideous.

- Vivek Gothwal 

A common and very prominent form of discrimination I hear around is the use of  lower castes  names as abuses. I often hear my friend calling each other “bhangi-chamar” in a derogatory sense. Bhangi- the cast of rag pickers- and Chamar (to which I belong to)- the caste of leather workers- both belong to the scheduled caste. Even without my realizing, how this affected my confidence.

Last night, I was travelling with my friends in a cab. Someone brought up the topic of reservation. I got into a debate while defending my rights. Then I realized this stunning fact. All that they cared about was the economic aspect, with no consideration being given to the social aspect! This was because of their  own well ‘fortunate’ social status. Most worrying is their consistent denial to accept that the casteism still exists.

- Devavrat Walinjkar
Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, India

I grew up in a middle-class family. I started working at an early age, at a pav bhaji stall and I finished school from Cardinal Gracious High School. I never faced any real discrimination till the 12th grade. Soon after, I sought admission for BMS degree in a college, where I got a fee concession. My mom and dad stayed at home and didn’t have enough money for my college fees.  So I worked at a BPO and took up odd jobs to pay my fees. College authorities made me feel like I was begging them for money or they were having pay me on their own, not what the government had allotted to me. They made me run around, almost 1000 times for different forms, but I never complained because that was the only to keep going and get my degree.

I was dating a girl whose father was a doctor. She would always tell me about how much her grandparents hated our caste. So much that they would bathe every time they even came in contact with someone from my caste. For them, even our presence was polluting. We are not treated as humans but just ‘dalits’. We eventually broke up after her parents said that my family wasn’t financially well off. Is it my fault my ancestors were oppressed and never got an opportunity to grow, study or earn money?

Now, I work at a chemical distribution company and I often visit different cities for client meetings. Recently I was in Aurangabad in Maharashtra. There I came across gates of some colonies, which declared the castes of those who lived there: Backward Class Dalits!! How is it fair to segregate people as a backward class? Is that our identity? I asked the driver (whose rickshaw I was in) about it and he said that it is mandatory for them to declare their caste. How is that okay? And who is making this mandatory?

- Akshay (identifies as Buddhist)

(all stories are lightly edited for clarity)

ed: If there are any India-based journalists following, you might want to verify the Aurangabad story. It could turn out to be true.