Yahoo Movies Vandana Katariya And A Very Casteist India
“We were upset after the loss. But the team went down fighting. We were proud of that,” women’s hockey team star Vandana Katariya’s brother told the media. “Suddenly, right after the match, we heard loud noises. Crackers were being burst outside our house. When we went outside, we saw two men from our village — we know them and they are upper castes — dancing in front of our house,” he added.
He highlighted how the men used “casteist slurs” and insulted the family, saying how the Indian team lost because “too many ‘Dalits’ have made it to the team.
From Mirabai Chanu to Lovlina Borgohain and the women’s hockey team, Indian women athletes may have been scripting history at the ongoing Tokyo Games but that’s not the only reason why they have been dominating news headlines.
From being hailed as the “perfect” women by social media’s custodians of patriarchy to being subject to sexist and racist trolling, now casteism, too, enters the ‘trending’ list on social media.
“They went on, saying that it’s not just hockey but every sport that should keep Dalits out. Then, they took some of their clothes off and started dancing again … It was a caste-based attack,” reads the complaint lodged by Kataraiya’s brother.
As reported, the police have detained one of the two upper-caste men, but are yet to file a first information report (FIR).
The shocking incident unfolded in Katariya’s hometown at Roshnabad village in Haridwar, Uttarakhand. The news surfaced when her family was subject to “casteist slurs”, soon after the Indian women's hockey team lost the 2020 Tokyo Games semi-final against Argentina, on August 4.
Captained by Rani Rampal, the Indian women’s hockey team created history in Tokyo by becoming the first women's hockey team to reach the semi-final of an Olympic event where they lost against Argentina 2-1. Katariya herself became the first Indian women’s hockey player to score a hat-trick. She scored three of India's four goals against South Africa in the final pool A hockey game in Tokyo.
The sordid story of casteist abuse
In present-day India when New Delhi is burning with the news of a forced cremation of a nine-year-old Dalit girl, allegedly raped and killed by a Hindu priest, it is perhaps telling that caste system is endemic to how the Indian social order functions. From rape to mutilation, crimes against minor Dalit girls and women are not new and more common than ever reported. Violence against women has been legitimized by upper-caste men as a “punishing” tool, to teach girls and women belonging to depressed castes a lesson, to send the message that caste transgression will not be tolerated.
As shocking as the news of Katariya’s family being subject to casteist slurs, or Katariya herself being verbally abused and insulted as a ‘Dalit’ by upper-caste men, let us not pretend that this is a standalone case. Gender and caste are not independent entities; they intersect. As do caste and class. And, caste, class and gender.
The chain called caste system has till today survived on the Brahminical and upper-caste constructs of ‘purity’ and ‘pollution’. This binary has systematically oppressed and demonized people and communities. Imagine the impunity with which the upper-caste men displayed their manliness, stripped and danced, mocked and abused an Indian hockey star and thought it was okay to thus attack her and her family with casteist slurs. This impunity comes from India itself where love and marriages are still approved by caste custodians and revolting couples are honor-killed. This impunity comes from India itself where during the coronavirus outbreak, domestic laborers were discriminated against and blamed for bringing the virus to clean, upper-castes homes owing to caste-based prejudice where members of suppressed castes are automatically perceived to be ‘dirty’ or 'unhygienic'. The term ‘social distancing’ has only accelerated ‘caste distancing’, as several news reports in recent times have indicated.
Such practices stem from a deep-rooted caste-based hatred where upper-caste members are unwilling to acknowledge the victories of members of suppressed castes even if it is someone like Olympic star Vandana Katariya. Casteism is so ingrained in the Indian imagination that every time dominant caste members see a member of a suppressed caste scripting history, upper-caste propagators want to punish ‘Dalits’ for their revolution. The upper-caste enablers of prejudice and hatred other ‘Dalits’ as either pitiable or pliant, never shapers of destiny.
A history of ‘othering’ and radical identity
Officially abolished in 1950, the 2,000-year-old Indian caste system continues to ghost the country’s social order routinely marginalizing communities at the bottom rung or falling outside the four-fold varna or caste system. Historically denied access to equal education, employment and opportunities of growth and forced to survive on menial jobs, Dalits, formerly referred to as ‘untouchables’, are today at the vortex of evolving and radical identity movements.
Translating as “broken” in Sanskrit, the term ‘Dalit’ signifies those who fall outside the Brahmanical social order. During the Indian nationalist movement, Mahatma Gandhi recognized the doctrine of “untouchability” to be a “stain” on Hinduism.
In his seminal work Annihilation of Caste, the founding father of the Indian constitution, B R Ambedkar is critical of this Gandhian thought and Gandhi’s adoption of the term “Harijan” or “children of God”. The Ambedkarite thought rejects Gandhi’s vision of the upliftment of “untouchables” within the Hindu social order.
Aligned with the Ambedkarite “self-respect” movement, several Dalit rights groups and activists have in the recent years spoken in favor of reclaiming the term ‘Dalit’ with its radical political thrust that has sought to give agency to depressed classes in place of the constitutional term ‘Scheduled Castes’. But, the term is only radical when reclaimed by members of the communities and not when hurled as an abuse by upper-caste members, men or women, who are historically the oppressors.
The casteist abuse directed at Katariya is blatantly at odds with the warped and much publicised ‘Bharat ki Beti’ narrative; the hypocrisy is too stark to ignore. Every time there’s a caste crime, caste-privileged members of society tend to gaslight it as owing to this and that, too shy or disgusted to use the word ‘casteism’. In India caste is present everywhere, so let’s not pretend at the next Zoom meeting that it’s not about caste.
(Edited by Amrita Ghosh)
