Tag: lower caste representative

A Letter to Kangana Ranaut On Caste and Reservation

‘In cinema, not a single big name is from a marginalised community. If modern Indians have rejected the caste system, what explains this?’

Dear Kangana,

I hope this letter finds you well. I wanted to write to you about your tweet.

On August 23, Shekhar Gupta, the founder of The Print, shared an article by journalist Dilip Mandal titled “Oprah Winfrey sent a book on caste to 100 US CEOs but Indians still won’t talk about it.’

In a reply, you wrote: “Cast system has been rejected by modern Indians, in small towns every one knows it’s not acceptable anymore by law and order its nothing more than a sadistic pleasure for few, only our constitution is holding on to it in terms of reservations, Let Go Of It, Lets Talk About It (sic).”

You continued: “Especially in professions like Doctors engineers, pilots most deserving people suffer reservations, we as a nation suffer mediocrity and brilliance finds a reluctant escape to The United States.. Shame (sic).”

I come from the Dalit community. I’m the first woman in my family with an M.Phil. My parents were manual workers, and my mother continues to be. In the peak of the summer heat, she carries loads of sand and stone for construction projects.

Also read: Sub-Classification of Scheduled Castes: Why the Chinnaiah Judgment Must Go

Neither of my parents are educated, but they found ways to ensure all their children would be. Among my siblings, I’ve studied the furthest. At an early age, I promised myself that I would keep studying as long as there were higher levels to achieve. I had yet to learn that the ladder I would be climbing was covered with thorns on every rung.

You believe that modern Indians have “rejected” the caste system. But even in the most progressive-liberal space of an international media organisation I found modern Indians who practise casteism. They couldn’t stand to see me as an equal, working in the same team. I no longer work there now, and the reason, I believe, is my being Dalit.

In the cinema, not a single big name is from a marginalised community. If modern Indians have rejected the caste system, why is this?

To even begin to understand what it means to reject caste, you could first reject your own Rajput pride. Those of you who are so proud of your identities have turned even the names of other communities into words of abuse. Do you remember what modern Indians like Salman Khan, Shilpa Shetty, Sonakshi Sinha and Yuvraj Singh have said about looking like a “bhangi”? Actual people have this name, and are abused for it.

This is the case in every field across the private sector. Of the 31 judges in the Supreme Court of India, there is one judge from a Dalit community, and two judges who are OBCs. There isn’t a single Adivasi. Not a single editor in the mainstream media is a Dalit. The only area where we have been allowed a foothold is in the government, because the government’s hand is forced by reservations.

Also read: Alienated, Discriminated Against and Few in Number: The Bahujan in the Indian Newsroom

It’s only because of my experience, having grown up in the metropolis of New Delhi, that I can tell you about the importance of reservations. Crores of Dalits and members of Backward Castes fear to even speak before savarna ‘upper’ castes – forget getting education, or accessing the benefits of reservations.

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Ms Ranaut, have you ever asked the castes of those who clean your sewers? I’ll tell you – they are all Dalits. Why aren’t any so-called upper castes doing this work for you, living and dying in those inhuman situations? Learning about these realities of our society isn’t very hard. If you are still not convinced, pick up any daily newspaper – I guarantee you will find at least one report of a caste-based atrocity.

Murders are committed because of caste. Some are “institutional murders”, where students like Rohith Vemula and Payal Tadvi are pushed to suicide by casteist society. I have been on the path to joining that list of names. ‘Modern’ Indians miss no opportunity to harass and demean us. And even when we survive these pressures, society keeps plotting to steal success away from us.

Also read: When Will India’s Educational Institutes Have Their ‘Dalit Lives Matter’ Moment?

Recently I read Waiting for a Visa by Babasaheb Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. He describes seeing his degrees, his qualifications, his competence, his education, all brushed aside because of his caste. Those experiences ensured that reservations were enshrined in the constitution. If not for that, marginalised communities would never have been allowed to step forward as we have. It is only because of reservations that I’ve been able to come this far. We are because he was.

Society tells my community that we have no rights to dream. Even if we get educated and secure a good living, ‘modern’ Indians conspire for our downfall. I was one victim, but I don’t fear to speak this truth, because of the strength I get from Babasaheb’s Constitution.

For reservations to end, it is from you and your so-called ‘upper’-caste communities that the change must come. I hope all the responses you have received will help you think about that.

Yours truly,
Meena Kotwal

Meena Kotwal is an independent journalist.

Birds of Brahmanical Feather Flock Together: How MPs Reinforce a Casteist Network on Twitter

Caste continues to be a consistent measurement of whom upper-caste MPs choose to interact and connect with online.

The recent California State vs. Cisco case has pressed a nerve of discrimination in the liberal, modern workplace, one that was viscerally experienced by lower-caste persons for a long time.

The key allegation of the Dalit employee was twofold – their caste identity was made public without their consent, and following their complaint, they, faced isolation and professional exclusion in the company. Such experiences at work are not new for lower caste individuals, but the lawsuit has brought to fore an important, under-examined form of caste relations: networks.

Reports emerging from this case point to a practice of exclusion enabled by upper-caste networks, which dominate high-paying professional circles and where implicit and explicit bias operates as a “virtual noose” around lower caste people. Who you are connected to, and how reciprocal these relationships are, determine how you access resources and opportunities in a community.

These network effects of caste relations are well understood among lower caste communities who face various forms of an embargo as a result of gatekeeping of valuable social capital. The discreet nature of these networks and interactions has led to these important issues being ignored, foregrounded by a burden of proof to “show” socio-legal exclusion based on caste.

The role and performance of networks are critical, especially in positions of power. One setting to observe caste-based fraternising, where individual actors can both act and enact power, is in the parliament. We studied Twitter networks of members of an institution which represents a diversity of caste identities – the Lok Sabha.

Also read: Cisco, Caste Discrimination and the Endurance of Denial in Overseas Indians

In the years since the 2014 general election, social media is increasingly the preferred means of primary communication by major political leaders – a place for them to manage their brands, communicate policy, and perform politics without the mediation of professional journalists. What politicians do online – who they communicate with, follow, or retweet, are integrally tied into the ways they perform and reciprocate relationships with their networks and their electoral base.

To understand caste-based networks online, we undertook a study using information on the castes of members of parliament (MPs) from the SPINPER project and compared it to their following and retweeting behaviour on Twitter. We found that caste has a significant relationship with the centrality, connectivity and engagement of an MP in the Lok Sabha network. The higher the caste of an MP, the more likely they are to be important in the network, the more likely they are to have reciprocal connections with Lok Sabha members, and the more likely they are to get retweeted by a higher caste Lok Sabha member.

Figure 1 shows two groups of MPs, BJP and non-BJP, with measures of importance between MPs of each caste. Those with green cells indicate a significantly higher score of importance for the caste on the row than that on the column. The importance here is determined by three things: how well followed an MP is in the network, how parsimonious they are with their connections, and how well connected one is with other important or well-followed MPs.

The more followed an MP is in the network by important MPs, and the less generous they are with whom they follow, the more important they become. For example, as can be seen in the left figure, upper caste MPs (Brahmins, other upper castes and intermediary castes) in BJP all have significantly higher importance on average than Scheduled Tribes or Scheduled Caste MPs in the network. Intermediary castes are traditionally upper caste but are fighting for a change of status to lower caste for access to reservations, like Jats, Patels, Lingayaths, etc.

Figure 1: Green cells indicate that the median value of caste1’s importance in the Lok Sabha network is higher than caste2.

When we looked at how “following” of MPs from different castes is reciprocated in the network, we found a trend favouring upper caste MPs over lower caste MPs. Figure 2 shows that if a scheduled caste MP from BJP “follows” another MP on Twitter, their chances of being followed back are significantly lower to an upper caste MP regardless of party. Lower caste MPs, particularly scheduled tribe MPs, are less likely to be heard by other MPs in the network. This offers a view into how exclusion can be performed in politicians’ social network, even at the highest levels.

Figure 2: Green cells indicate that the median value of caste1 being followed back by an MP on Twitter is higher than caste2.

We also found that the odds of lower caste MPs getting retweeted by upper caste MPs in the network were low. Figure 3 (right) shows that for Brahmins from non-BJP parties, the odds of being retweeted by other upper caste Lok Sabha members is about 12 times higher than scheduled caste MPs.

Figure 3: Odds of caste1 getting retweeted by an Upper-Caste MP on Twitter vs. caste2. Darker color means better odds.

These trends point to a form of ‘birds of a feather’ scenario where upper caste MPs not only follow each other more on Twitter but that they stay important by engaging each other more. For instance, Brahmin MPs are 3.5 times more likely to be retweeted by an upper caste MP in the network than a Scheduled Tribe MP.

Indeed, the BJP has a well-oiled social media machinery, thus connections and engagements may be better coordinated, and we see these numbers are much worse for other parties where scheduled caste MPs are 12 times less likely to be retweeted by an upper caste MP in comparison to a non-BJP Brahmin MP. One’s odds of getting followed back by another MP in the network as a Brahmin MP is almost always significantly higher than scheduled caste or scheduled tribe MPs, regardless of party affiliation.

These results indicate that equal opportunity of representation for scheduled caste and tribe communities through reservations in Lok Sabha has not ensured their integration with the upper-caste Twitter networks of MPs. Despite the messages of equality under a single “Hindu” banner, the way upper-castes choose to interact with lower-caste MPs on Twitter gives a window into how, in practice, the latter continue to face implicit bias. The significant advantage that Brahmins and other upper-caste MPs seem to have in BJP over almost all the lower caste MPs is indicative of a Brahmanical order within the party that effectively keeps the latter out of the circuits of information and importance in the network.

The findings for non-BJP MPs do not offer encouraging trends either, especially when it comes to how important and central an MP is within the network. While OBC MPs seem to do better in some non-BJP cases, the overall chilling effect on scheduled caste and scheduled tribe MPs is similar to BJP. While more nuanced analysis of these trends is necessary, we find that exclusion of lower caste MPs from upper caste networks of Lok Sabha seems to be a problem not just limited to BJP. Claims of equity-based on religious secularism in other parties, like Indian National Congress, too seem to fail lower caste MPs when it comes to inclusion in practice, albeit a little less than the ruling party BJP.

Also read: Now That Twitter Knows Just How Resilient Casteism Is, It’s Time to Act

Twitter may not be representative of how exactly these interactions take place offline, but it is a window into something that is otherwise difficult to capture. Politicians are “performing” their caste online through the networks they exhibit. While echo chambers of party or political ideologies are well known in the online world, the caste factor remains under-examined in these online interactions. Caste continues to be a consistent fault line in whom upper-caste MPs choose to interact and connect with online.

Caste discrimination can be covert and implicit in the way we interact and choose to engage with others. We tend to think of caste discrimination as casteist slurs or explicit casteist statements that exclude someone, but the biggest transformation of caste as a marker in the 21st century has been the process of invisiblizing it yet keeping it alive through tacit practices of ‘sticking to your kind’. Caste is relational, and looking at both our personal and professional networks can be a way to understand how caste plays a role in them. Representation of an underrepresented group is only the first step in the journey to right historical discrimination, it does not ensure inclusion.

The Lok Sabha is already more representative of caste diversity than private institutions by virtue of reservations. Yet, when we look at how people choose to fraternise within the network, their online coalescence is an uncanny enactment of the same cabalistic behaviour that has upheld caste-based exclusion for centuries. It’s a case of inviting someone to a party because you’re obliged to, but never actually talking to them.

We are grateful to the SPINPER project for the sociological information on LokSabha members that made this study possible.

Palashi Vaghela, Ramaravind K. Mothilal and Joyojeet Pal are researchers on society and technology.

‘The Blue Janeu’: As Critics Cry ‘Casteism’, Twitter Ducks for Cover

The lack of transparency in the way accounts are ‘verified’ or blocked has raised the spectre of the digital marginalisation of already marginalised communities.

Is Twitter casteist? The question has been raging on the social media platform for the past four days as an overwhelming number of people have joined anti-caste activists and academics in questioning the platform’s handling of users who have used their accounts to criticise casteism and Hindutva politics.

On November 2, academic Dilip Mandal’s account was locked by Twitter, which led to an outcry among his followers for his reinstatement. This followed a similar vein of protest in support of advocate Sanjay Hegde, whose account was locked twice in two days in the preceding week for posts that would not ordinarily be considered offensive in the spirit in which they were being used.

Mandal’s account was reinstated but his brief suspension triggered a wave of complaints accusing Twitter of casteism. For the past few days, hashtags like #TwitterHatesScStOBCMuslims, ##बेशर्मजातिवादीट्विटर (‘shameless casteist Twitter’) and #casteisttwitter have trended, with critics speaking of a structural inequality implicit within the medium.

At the same time, hashtags like #JaiBhimTwitter spoke to the movement of anti-caste solidarity that was taking the platform by storm. One hashtag – #SackManishMaheshwari – sought to take the Twitter director directly to account, but mysteriously disappeared within hours of reaching the number three spot on the platform.

A company spokesperson was unable to comment on whether Twitter had manually removed the hashtag – an ability it confessed to having when it said last week that it had removed an offensive hashtag calling for the boycott of Muslims because it was in  violation of Twitter rules.

Twitter has been accused of insensitivity towards the victims of caste discrimination since 2018 when its CEO Jack Dorsey inadvertently held up a poster saying ‘Smash Brahmanical Patriarchy’ only to apologise for doing so when the site’s pro-Hindutva (and caste Hindu) contingent vehemently protested. The protesters, incidentally, included a senior IPS officer who was so shocked by the message he said it had the ‘potential to cause communal riots’.

The new sacred thread

This time round, the platform faces a different criticism – its use of ‘verified account’ blue ticks as a means of classification in the Twitter universe. The hashtag that occupied first place on November 6 was ‘#CancelAllBlueTicksInIndia.”

One of the issues that has been raised by those trending this hashtag has been the manner in which the blue tick is allocated. As a badge of verification, it signifies that the individual’s account is one that is of digital value – an exclusive, handpicked club of people who are public personalities.

Also read: It’s Not What Modi Is Tweeting – It’s What He Is Reading

Dilip Mandal pointed out that the number of people who have these blue ticks tend overwhelmingly to be upper caste, relegating the mark to the digital equivalent of a ‘neeli (blue) janeu’ – the sacred thread that caste Hindus wear. He also said that as a result of the lack of transparency in the process, people like Jay Shah, the son of Union home minister Amit Shah, with 27 followers, had a blue tick while major Dalit personalities like Pa Ranjith did not.

According to a Twitter spokesperson, the blue tick programme was shut down publicly last year, but exceptions have been made on a ‘case by case’ basis to include people who are ‘active in the public conversation’ on Twitter. The process includes working with governments to ‘verify candidates, elected officials, and relevant party officials around the time of elections’ – and also possibly at arbitrary times when they are under pressure.

Prakash Ambedkar campaigning in Maharashtra in October. Photo: Facebook/VBA

Mandal was eventually granted a blue tick (unasked for) when he pointed out the representational skew. On November 5, accounts like those of Chandrasekhar Azad (leader of the Bhim Army) did not have a blue tick, but as of today, he does.

However, Prakash Ambedkar of the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi, an important presence in Maharashtra politics, does not.

The methodology by which accounts are punished for an infringement of the Twitter guidelines is also murky.

While the guidelines themselves are straightforward, they are contingent on ‘offending’ tweets being reported to Twitter. ‘Being reported’ is a passive way of structuring accountability – who are they being reported by? This is not something that is put into the public domain, allowing targeted harassment of minorities by established right wing troll groups to go unchecked.

The protocol that follows the reporting of tweets is also at this point unknown. All that a Twitter spokesperson was prepared to say was, “We have ongoing efforts to provide local market context when developing and enforcing our global policies. We extensively cover gender and religion (including caste) in our trainings, to provide reviewers with the local context they need to evaluate content. Our Hateful Conduct Policy prohibits behaviour that targets individuals based on protected categories (including caste).”

Photo: Twitter/@dilipmandal

Anti-caste scholar Ratan Lal’s account was also locked, but Twitter says this was for violating the guidelines of making explicit the personal information of a third party. According to Lal, however, the third party in question was a friend who was in need of a blood donation, whose consent had been taken to put out the message. He calls the blue tick situation a ‘modern Varnashram dharma’.

“Ultimately Twitter is a multinational corporation that makes profit – they have to follow minimal transparency,” he said. “The criteria [they follow] needs to be made transparent – the sons of politicians, of capitalists, of celebrities, male upper castes get blue ticks. So the people with blue ticks can give sermons, while the majority of the country – SCs and STs and OBCs – have to listen to those sermons. This is the 21st century and this cannot stand.
We are the consumers – Twitter will need to decide whether this male dominated, patriarchal and casteist organisations are the ones they want to work with, or they want to be democratic.”

On November 4, members of the Bhim Army went to the Twitter office in Mumbai and organised a lock-out. Udit Raj, national chairman of the All India Confederation of SC/ST Organisations, in a video message posted on Twitter explained why. He talked about how the vast amounts of negative attention that activists working for the marginalised get on Twitter often forces them to leave the site itself, while those who are organising and participating in this harassment get off scot free.

Twitter has been a battleground for digital ideological warfare, but while the company goes out of its way to insist that it respects the sentiments of its users and is committed to diversity and equality, the fact remains that the platform reflects the same oppressive mores that its user base does.

Purported BJP supporters often routinely harass and send death and rape threats to public female personalities, and a sizeable number of hate accounts are followed by ministers in the Modi government, if not by Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself.

Also read: Ministers Follow Hate Accounts That Made Call to Boycott Muslims a Top Twitter Trend

NDTV’s Ravish Kumar, The Wire’s Arfa Khanum Sherwani and freelancer Swati Chaturvedi – all of whom face intensive harassment on the platform – are of the opinion that these are organised ‘troll armies’ . 

Interestingly, when the Twitter hashtag ‘TwitterHatesSCSTOBCMuslim’ began to trend, a counter hashtag began as well – saying #ट्विटर_पर_राज_हिन्दू_का – ‘Hindus Rule Twitter’.

Ratan Lal says that while the BJP might have troll armies to mobilise, the hashtags being trended by anti-caste activists are not fuelled by anything but outrage and determination. “This is a completely organic movement. The people who are pushing these hashtags to trend – we are people who have to worry about our salaries lasting the end of the month. We don’t have the money to pay people to tweet for us.”

Lal says this is a question of representation. “In India, in media, regardless of whether it is an international forum, the people working there come from upper castes. Those who learn respect from the beginning, will have respect for what we want. We know that top institutions are monopolised by caste Hindus. Twitter will need to decide whether it wants to invest in diversity in their organisation, so questions like deciding whether or not someone gets a blue tick get democratised. This is just the beginning.”

On its part, Twitter insists the criticism is misplaced. Said a spokesperson, “Any time we are hosting an event, we ensure a diversity of perspectives and that voices from marginalised groups are represented. Many of our partners routinely host #TweetChats with voices from marginalised communities. We launched an emoji for Dr Ambedkar’s birthday in 2017 and prior to our public verification process being closed, we verified public figures from different caste and tribal groups, civil society and academia.”  

It remains to be seen whether an emoji will be enough to assure Twitter users that the platform is not perpetuating casteism with its opaque ways.