To be upper caste/to be a victim

ABSTRACT

By treating the upper caste as an ethnographic category, this article shows what an endeavour of flipping the ethnographic gaze away from Dalits and onto the upper caste looks like. In studying upper caste victimhood, this article sees how being a victim acts as an important tool of mobilization and collectivization among upper castes. In interweaving cultural analysis and ethnography, I engage the complex relationship between regimes of affect, power, and caste as they implicate the production of a twisted, weaponized form of vulnerability. When contemporary Indian politics is saturated with narratives of upper caste pain, which thereby stand as a testimony to what it means to be a human, I understand upper caste affect via their wound to highlight the simultaneity of upper caste's humanity and their inhumanity. I argue that we should take seriously and examine upper caste ‘woundedness' as it helps us better understand the embodied nature of caste and its relationship with violence. In doing so, I re-create modes of citation and knowledge production using a language which doesn’t imagine the marginalized body to hold the burden of doing the work of pain, trauma, and violence.

KEYWORDS:

• Caste
• affect
• victimhood
• woundedness
• reservation
• India

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Arnika Fuhrmann who read the earliest draft of this paper. Her interventions and comments are invaluable for my work. A special thanks to Lawrence Cohen, who has an unparalleled potential to make infinities possible; Lucinda Ramberg whose insights give me strength, hope and most importantly, a desire to uncover unexplored ideas; Joel Lee, whose generosity and humility continues to inspire dalit students; Shreshtha Das, whose comments made me re-think ideas in this paper. I thank the two anonymous reviewers and the editor at Contemporary South Asia for their suggestions and provocations. I presented few bits of this paper at ‘Sexing South Asia: Law, Activism and Sexual Justice Conference’ at O.P. Jindal Global University in 2019, ‘Vienna Anthropology Days (VANDA) Conference’ at University of Vienna in 2022, ‘Body Politics: A Graduate Student Political Anthropology Conference’ at Harvard University in 2023 and ‘The Politics of Emotions Conference’ at Azim Premji University in 2024. I thank the audience member's responses to my conference presentations.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The reservation policy (or affirmative action in other contexts), as provided by the Constitution of India, was set to benefit dalits/low castes [legally and administratively categorized as Scheduled Castes (SC)] and adivasis/indigenous tribes [categorized as Scheduled Tribes (ST)]. In 1990, in addition to SC and ST individuals, reservation was given by the State to castes recognized as Other Backward Classes (OBC), i.e., castes that have historically been below the upper castes but above dalits and adivasis within the caste hierarchies practiced in India. In 2006, the government in power at the time introduced reservation in private education institutions (it was earlier applicable only to public funded universities) and in 2019, reservation was extended to economically weaker groups (categorized as EWS – Economically Weaker Section) among ‘general’ category (all upper castes who are not SC, ST or OBC). For a more detailed history and analysis of reservation in India, See Anand Teltumbde, Republic of Caste: Thinking Equality In The Time Of Neoliberal Hindutva (New Delhi: Navayana, 2018).

2 Josh (Hindi) translates to enthusiasm and energy. Joshilay could refer to a person or a collective who embodies immense enthusiasm. I have chosen the word Joshilay also for its play with a popular brahmin surname ‘Joshi’, which is a brahmin community mostly settled in north India.

3 This research has been reviewed and approved by Cornell University's Institutional Review Board for Human Participants (IRB).

4 Politics of caste citational practice and accountability demands from us to name and point the exact caste location. Pathak is a brahmin surname and my interviewee's real, legal surname. The only way I could make sense of hate in my field was by protecting myself through Bollywood. I take the name ‘Raja Hindustani’ from a popular 1996 Hindi-Bollywood movie called ‘Raja Hindustani’. Raja (Hindi) translates to ‘king’ and Hindustani (Hindi) translates to ‘Indian’ symbolizing king of the country, someone's whose love is tied with the very essence of a lovable country. One of the most iconic Bollywood songs from the 1990s is from this movie called ‘Aaye Ho Meri Zindagi Main Tum Bahar Ban Ke’ which translates to a lover singing to another lover – you have brought spring/happiness into my life/you have entered my life. During distressing situations with Mr. Pathak, I would ironically imagine this song to have the opposite effect on me. That is, Mr. Pathak did not bring bahaar (spring) into my life. An appropriate name for Mr. Pathak who would never stop repeating his love for the country.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Wenner-Gren Dissertation Fieldwork Grant, Wenner-Gren Foundation [Gr. 10122].

Notes on contributors

Akhil Kang

Akhil Kang is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at Cornell University where they are writing their dissertation on upper caste victimhood and woundedness.