Everyday casteism and their masks

Kaleidoscope is born in a world where he is encountering caste every now a then. He knows caste predisposition is there and it often determines a lot of other things. The peculiarities lie when apparently unrelated things are linked to caste.

Some prominent discourses:

"There must be a bunch of poor performing students coming from Scheduled Caste background!" - caste-performance interface (yes, loaded!)

"Whom to teach? we have taught such an elite class of students, these students are not in a position to take what we offer!" Class - caste - quality- class-position of teacher (loaded again!)

"You know this service is now more open towards rural counterparts - people are coming from different corners of the state and about their quality - the less said, the better!" rural/urban, elite/subaltern(?) interface (ethnic cleansing, perhaps!)


"The problem with them is that they are coming from nearby areas - they are first generation learners - it is difficult to make them understand what we teach!" elites facing failures (Narcissism!)

"You can't be sure, Das can be SC or Genral (smiles) chowdhury is even more confusing - you know what I mean" uncertainties (template failure, elites need extra effort to even judge as a person)

In the name of positive (?) discrimination:

You have good number of students and you need to know who belongs to what category? You need ease of governance, mark the students as SC/ST/OBC and so on in the attendance register. Therefore, Kaleidoscope is reminded again and again who is who, what is what and hence it not only eases the governance but also helps you to judge their performance!! Medusa, Kaleidoscope's friend has tried to white-ink those categories in another workplace  - but Kaleidoscope knows as others too, white-ink gives you even higher prominence perhaps. Medusa has been successful to stop its recurrence, a success indeed!

Disappearance of identities and further consolidation

Kaleidoscope makes frequent field visits and when he tries to understand the people's caste affiliations, since 2004 onwards he is encountering identities as SCs, STs, OBCs and not any of the traditional caste identities. This was there as early as 2004 and this has become even more profound now. Educated youngsters doesn't even know their traditional caste names, at best they know their clan name! Yes, clan matters in life-cycle rituals, therefore, it is surviving. 

What lies next?

Kaleidoscope knows there would be even stronger identity consolidations as his world will continue to see, discuss and judge people through a casteist lens and those would rather be administrative categories and not the diverse categories. 

Frankly, Kaleidoscope doesn't know what will happen next, but he knows the discourses, their judgements and apparent masks of education - leadership and perhaps even expert opinions!

Next time you encounter a discourse where you find people sympathetically discussing people's failures related to family background, location, etc. keep no misconception - these are dangerously close to casteist judgements. Perhaps there are masks to encounter, masks to tear apart - Masks that Kaleidoscope finds sometimes within himself - and he hates that!

Image source: http://kathmandupost.ekantipur.com/news/2016-03-13/caste-away.html

What should you wear in an emergency?

Kaleidoscope's neighbour has an one year old girl. In a sad incident today the girl fell on a half cooked and still boiling fish curry. It was a sudden accident that attracted about fifteen people to gather and to instruct. The most significant question that came immediately after the decision of taking the child to a hospital nearby was what should her mother wear? She was in a nighty- a popular form of informal night dress which one is supposed to wear while remaining inside the home.

It was debated among the spectators and she was not given the privacy to change her clothes as the family has only a couple of rooms. She could not say a  thing but left hesitantly in her nighty.

When she came back in the afternoon. The discussion was how rational it was for her not to change her clothes, and that no one would mind, not even the men at roads who watched her on her way. This discussion continued for hours with an addition that it was an emergency otherwise you should not wear a nighty outside and how embarrassing it is to go out like that even in an emergency. 

P.S. The girl is fine now with some second degree burns on one of her legs which will take some time to heal.

I do not know about the woman and her feeling about the clothes and the discussion, whether this 'embarrassment' would ever be healed.

Ride to a Time Machine: from Kolkata to Pakur!

When Kaleidoscpe was making a long journey from Kolkata to Pakur to attend one of his close to heart colleague turned friend's marriage, he had a feel of everydayness of the country. Not because of the scenic beauty at both sides of the railway track or because of the over crowded compartments but because of an event of ticket checking. Kaleidoscope was trying concentrate on trees and their running shadows on the empty crop fields or the alien looking harvesters at work, suddenly a woman cries out for forgiveness and mercy.

Ticket inspector and the penalty:

A ticket inspector found out that a) the woman was carrying a local train ticket in an express train for two passengers, and b) that she was travelling with two more kids without ticket. She was emphasising on her inability to differentiate between an express train and a local train - a logic which the inspector and frankly others too found laughable. When this logic failed she argued "because I am a woman, I am weak and I can barely recognise the difference... I do not travel much..." (She was constantly sobbing). The inspector replied "now a day there is no difference between a man and and a Woman... you could not differentiate/ or intentionally ignored the difference is your fault and you have to pay the penalty." The cost of the penalty was about a thousand rupees. Which, of course the woman was unwilling to pay. The negotiation process continued for sometime and ultimately she paid Rs. 200/- as a penalty and took the receipt.

As the inspector went out, she started to make fun out of the railway system and felt proud to be able to negotiate so hard. As she was smiling Kaleidoscope could not hold himself and asked her kids about their age. The smallest one who has started preparing for getting admission to a secondary school replied that he is 2 years and 9 months old. The woman smiled "I told them to tell a lie, otherwise I had to buy a ticket."

The division within the Penalty:

Just when Kaleidoscope thought that he  had enough of the early stage of socialisation process, making his countrymen hypocrite, a man came and started to discuss about the receipt which the women had got. He asked for that receipt, and told her to hand it over to him as soon as she gets down from the train. It was needed and he agreed to pay fifty percent of the fine amount, i.e. 100/-. He needed that because he had bribed the inspector with Rs. 50/- which did not earn him a receipt. Since the woman had a local train ticket, as soon as she could get down from this train at the station, she would not be charged again. On the other hand this man somehow believed that there may be a second round of checking and if he could manage the receipt, he could escape further hazards. 

The woman happily agreed and took away Rs. 100/- before getting down from the train saying: "I must buy a lottery today." Both of them looked happy.

Even when Kaleidoscope is writing he can feel those worlds somewhere being pronounced like a mantra "I told them to tell a lie, otherwise I had to buy a ticket." 

Yes, Kaleidoscope on his journey from Kolkata to Pakur actually had a chance to ride on a time machine which started with the kid and perhaps (never)ended with the grown up man who took the receipt...