People talk of caste as a controversial thing.Caste as a subject is not inherently controversial. It only becomes so when you oppose it . There should be nothing controversial regarding humanity.It is absolutely normal to boast and flaunt your caste but controversial when you say “Caste pride is not ok” . People preach about caste violence but get offended when we talk about inter-caste marriage. My journey with caste conversations has been very interesting.
I went from a circle of caste-hating “anti-nationals” to “So I am a brahmin” being someone’s self-introduction. And I did not hear these from those “caste-preaching” oldies but rather from an 18 year old. Never have I ever seen such open caste-branding from a bunch of teenagers. You question, they say “you are too woke” (well that’s because you are in a coma and refusing to wake up and acknowledge reality).
I was recently in a conversation with my friends. When one of them opened up that she is an SC candidate and decided to say that people don’t believe her when she says this because she doesn’t look SC enough. She later explained it’s because she is fair skinned and SC’s are dark and dusky. While I was still processing this another one said “dikta toh hai” (We can see). While in a different setting someone said her daughter does not like her college because all of her batchmates are dark like SC’s. People think it is completely fine to joke about an entire community’s existence.
Speaking of which, we had our document verification in our university where obviously our category was discussed. Later one of my friends who is upper caste commented on my other friend saying “Don’t you think it is ironic that she is an OBC but she has a macbook ”. Reservation is not a poverty alleviation scheme and your income does not earn you respect in the society. Dismissing a person’s achievements and hard work by saying “oh but like they had quota” just shows a degraded mindset. You can’t talk about merit in a un-fair society that measures your merit by your societal caste status. My Brahmin friends say no one sees caste nowadays and the next moment rejoicing after finding out one of the fellow classmates is a Brahmin. They want to enjoy the caste privileges but refuse to acknowledge the caste discrimination. They are full of caste stereotypes and refuse to unlearn it.
Our movies,our media and our society does not help much either. Tamil movies push caste prejudice. Refusing to cast Tamil women in movies produced by a group of tamil-protectors.
Marking them as un-suitable to look luxurious enough for the cinema screen.This is something that stems from casteism.People usually separate colourism from casteism. But the latter is a part of casteism that plays a huge role in setting up narratives and prejudice against the marginalized communities.Getting women from neighbouring states to act like Tamil women says a lot about Tamil men and Tamil society as a whole. When you just ask a Gen AI to create a Tamil woman, it’s creating an image of a Mallu woman. Because Gen AI also creates images from the existing database which is skewed and misattributing mainly because of Tamil cinema.
When you are bringing white women from the west to act in your Tamil movies, why can’t you bring Tamil women from Hollywood. Hollywood gives representation for Tamil women but Kollywood is embarrassed to cast their Tamil women. That is why it’s catalysing a whole bridal make-up industry to show beautiful dusky Tamil women into a white painted dolls. You need Tamil women to carry your stories, traditions, culture and patriarchy forward but you will do it by lowering their confidence so that they never question you.
Tamil movies must be made with Tamil women or else Tamil cinema will never make it into the bigger picture.Until then Tamil movies and Tamil audience are just a celebrity worshipping cult. You might be wondering what my caste is and I am leaving it open for your caste imaginations. As Ambedkar says that, “ Caste is a state of mind. It is a disease of mind”.
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Writer’s Note
Surya is an undergrad student who strongly believes in equality. She is a passionate star gazer and Astro photographer. She is an obsessive coffee and cheese cake lover. She loves to travel and explore the world. She also crochet sometimes when she is not reading books.
