Maïka Sondarjee is a teacher at the School of International Development and Global Studies at the University of Ottawa. His first essay, “Perdre le Sud”, was published by Éditions Écosociété in August 2020.
On April 2, British Columbia became the first Canadian province to recognize April as Dalit History Month. In 2013, Dalit rights activists Sanghapali Aruna and Thenmozhi Soundararajan came together to create this month of commemoration to highlight the struggles of this heavily discriminated caste in India. Inspired by Black History Month, April is now used for this purpose in dozens of places around the world.
Who are the Dalits?
The official Indian government term for them is “scheduled castes” (scheduled castes) and they represent 16.6% of the Indian population (about 200 million people). The Dalit diaspora is present all over the world, but especially in South Asia.
The caste system in India, as a system of social engineering based on divisions, has four main categories: Brahmins (academics and priests), Kshatriyas (warriors and rulers), Vaishyas (merchant caste) and, at the bottom of the scale, the shudras (the peasantry). Outside this categorization, far behind this scale, are the Dalits.
The pejorative term “untouchables” was used before, in order to dehumanize these people who are assigned the most thankless tasks. Traditionally, it is those who clean for other castes, who take care of the waste and who are, figuratively and literally, ‘dirty’. They work in particular in cremation centers, which has increased their insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic.
This hierarchical system still organizes large parts of social life in India, preventing Dalits from mixing with other castes through marriage, or from sharing Hindu temples, schools or even neighborhoods. They are sometimes forbidden to drink from the same water fountains. In the sense of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Dalits are subordinates of subordinates.
The principle of “untouchables” was constitutionally abolished in 1950. Inspired by a Gujarati poet, Mahatma Gandhi then began to call them Harijan or “people of God”, but this term was never widely used by Dalits. , who view him as condescending and paternalistic. The Supreme Court of India also pointed out in 2017 that the term Harijan was offensive.
The term Dalit means one who has been “crushed” or “broken”. It was first used by Indian activist Mahatma Jyotiba Phule in the 1880s, then revived by Dalit leader BR Ambedkar in the early 1900s. The Dalit Panthers group, formed in 1972 by Namdeo Dhasal and JV Pawar , helped popularize the term. Constituted six years after the Black Panther Party in the United States, the latter recognized and supported them as fighting alongside them against oppression and discrimination.
A Dalit story to tell
After quotas were obtained for positions in government administration and educational institutions in 1950, a law “against atrocities against scheduled castes” was passed in 1989 to legislate against caste violence against dalits. In 1997, Kocheril Raman Narayanan became India’s first Dalit president.
BR Ambedkar’s struggle in the 1930s and 1940s to eradicate “untouchability” is fundamental to Dalits. This jurist, one of the first Indians to have been able to study in the United Kingdom, attacked Hinduism by accusing it of encouraging caste divisions. Unlike Gandhi, who fought against the marginalization of Dalits but without necessarily attacking Hinduism, Ambedkar proposed to Dalits to convert to Buddhism. He even organized a collective conversion session a few months before his death. The Dalit conversion movement is still present today in India, either towards Buddhism in order to follow the philosophy of Ambedkar, or towards Islam, a religion considered to be more egalitarian.
The mobilization of women textile workers in Tamil Nadu in the 2000s is also a remarkable trade union movement. Textile factory owners then used hiring techniques based on sumangali, a view of Hindu femininity that restricts women to their roles as wives and mothers within the caste system. In order to get cheap labour, they promised poor Dalit girls to give them the equivalent of C$500 (Rs 30,000) as their dowry if they worked for three years at a wage. 0.75¢ per day (45 rupees).
This low pay was permissible, as these women were defined as “apprentices” rather than full-fledged workers, and their working conditions approached modern slavery. By mobilizing, they managed to collectively bargain and improve their working conditions and salaries.
The Dalit Women’s Self-Esteem Tour was organized around the world in 2015 by activists such as Manisha Devi, Sanghapali Aruna and Asha Kowta. It was a solidarity event to raise awareness of caste violence. Beyond their belonging to the most discriminated caste, these women campaign against their marginalization from feminist circles (in India and North America). The marginalization of castes is moreover an aspect of the intersectionality of oppressions which is not always taken into account in Western feminist movements (and theories), although it affects nearly a billion and a half people in the world.