Amy Cohen:
Hello and welcome. My name is Amy Cohen. I'm a member of the Class of 1985, and also a member of the Brandeis Alumni Board, and the co-chair of the Brandeis Women's Network. It's my pleasure to welcome you here today on behalf of the Alumni Association, and the Brandeis Women's Network. Quickly, for those of you who don't know who we are, the Brandeis Women's Network is a relatively young organization. We have about 1,400 members on our Facebook group. Our mission is simple. It's women helping women, and especially Brandeis women helping Brandeis women. We do a variety of programming, such as today's webinar with Professors Singh and Sampath. I encourage you to find us on Facebook, if you're interested in learning more about it, searching BrandeisWomen, one word. Without further ado, I'm going to introduce our speakers today.
Amy Cohen:
Our first speaker is Harleen Singh. She is the Director of the Women's Studies Research Center and an Associate Professor of South Asian Literature and Women's Studies at Brandeis. Harleen co-founded the South Asian Studies Program at Brandeis with Professor Sarah Lamb, and served as its Chair from 2007 to 2016. Professor Singh also serves as a faculty representative to the Board of Trustees. Professor Singh's writing on novels from India and Pakistan, on Indian film, book reviews on hip hop music, sexuality, and feminism have been published in various leading journals.
Amy Cohen:
Her chapters on women warriors and South Asian women writers are included in seminal book collections. Her monograph, The Rani of Jhansi:... I hope I pronounced that right. Gender, History, and Fable in India, was published in 2014 and interprets the conflicting, mutable images of an historical icon as they change over time in literature, film, history, and popular culture. Her latest book, Contemporary Debates in Postcolonial Feminism, is being published by Routledge in 2021. Professor Singh's current book includes critical translation of Amrita Pritam's, and again please correct my pronunciation after this, seminal partition novel Pinjar and a monograph titled Half an Independence: Women, Violence, and Modern Lives in India.
Amy Cohen:
Professor Singh is joined today by Raj Sampath, Associate Professor of the Philosophy of Justice, Rights, and Social Change at Brandeis. He teaches in the Master's program in Sustainable International Development, and the PhD program in Social Policy, at The Heller School for Social Policy and Management. Professor Sampath is the Lead Investigator with the Program on Social Exclusion at the Center for Global Development and Sustainability. His current research includes Critical Race Theory, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Intersectionality. Professor Sampath has written extensively about The Persistence of Caste, and has authored several articles in the Journal of Social Inclusion, and in Brandeis, his very own Caste journal.
Amy Cohen:
A few of his works include... Oops, I'm so sorry there. Are a few of his works include A Commentary on Ambedkar's Posthu- I'm good. He's dead... Published "Philosophy of Hinduism" CASTE: A Global Journal on Social Exclusion, and Part II of A Commentary on Ambedkar's Posthumously Published "Philosophy of Hinduism" in 2021.
Amy Cohen:
Today's program will be moderated by Leon de Silva, who is a 2021 graduate of the Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department at Brandeis. We are delighted to welcome everybody here today, and without further ado, I'm going to turn it over to Harleen. Thank you.
Harleen Singh:
Thank you very much, Amy. I hope everybody can hear me just fine. Thank you so much for that generous introduction, and detailed introduction, to us all. Thank you to Allison, and Ann Menan, who is our tech person today, for organizing everything. To Leanda for serving as the moderator. Thank you, of course, Raj, for being in conversation with me. I'm really happy to be here. Good morning from my side. It's very early in the morning where I am, and good afternoon for all of you who are on the east coast. I am going to begin to talk about this, but topic for today is Dalitz and Women in India in the Margins. Before we begin to talk about the caste system in India, to talk about the alleged, to talk about women in India, a very short history of Hinduism, is in order. Because I think a lot of people have many misconceptions of the religion, of the ways in which it is formalized, or it is informal, in fact.
Harleen Singh:
I want to start by laying out a general background of many things. Unlike many of the other religions of South Asia, the world really. Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Jainism, where you really have in many ways, a profit figure or a particular moment of revelation, or a history, that tells you how the religion came to be. Hinduism has a far more amorphous background. A far more amorphous history, in that the idea of Hinduism emerges not as a singular religion. There isn't a moment at which one could say, "Oh, Hinduism emerged, or this is the prophet, or this is the person, or this is how these things came about." The Hinduism solidifies over time, from a diverse set of practices, of rituals, of gods and goddesses, all over South Asia into a singular entity.
Harleen Singh:
I would actually put that moment of solidification with South Asia's and Hinduism's interaction, with forces from outside. For example, it is when traders from the Arab country come to South India, that they began to think about the practices of South India and begin to call it a name. It is when the Dutch and the Arab traders come to Sri Lanka, that they look at the practices of Sri Lanka and begin to call it a name, in some ways. For example, even today, if you do a simple search for any of the gods and goddesses that you can see, you will notice that in fact, the same God... For example, everybody's quite familiar with the God Krishna. He's the God who's often playing the flute, and is depicted in many paintings in the art of South Asia for a long time.
Harleen Singh:
But Krishna as he is depicted in the Northern parts of South Asia, and Krishna how he is depicted in the Southern parts of South Asia, or in the Eastern, North Eastern parts of South Asia is a very different entity altogether. It's the same God, so to speak, however that God is depicted entirely differently. There's no consistency in the ways in which Krishna appears as a deity across South Asia. This is really important to understand for me, because it's one of the examples of the ways in which you have a really diverse set of practices all over South Asia, the Indian subcontinent, that then solidifies into one notion, or one entity, known as Hinduism. There are of course also particular moments. The ancient texts of Hinduism, known as the Vedas, have a particular moment in history to which they're dated. By the way, if any of you are interested, the earliest are dated as far back as 4th and 5th century BCE, these written texts.
Harleen Singh:
Those texts mentioned one group of gods and goddesses. Yet as time goes on, that Pantheon really expands to include many of the gods and goddesses that are not mentioned. For example, the god Shiva, who is known by many people across the world, is one of the iconic gods of Hinduism. Actually appears on seals, found seals by seals, stamps, gold seals found in the Harappan civilization, and the Indus Valley civilization, that goes back as far back as 6th and 7th century BCE. When I say civilization, I'm not just talking about people living together. I'm talking about planned cities, about traditions, of art and culture, sculpture, forms of governance, granaries, storage for grain. All of these things that are the marks of civilization, are the marks of a group and a community, really, that has a sense of development to it. This is very important, because the ways in which we talk about caste, the ways in which we talk about gender, and Hinduism, often has a seamless collapse. By which I mean, as in people seem to think tradition, Hinduism, women, caste, discrimination, all of this just happens because a form of religion exists, or a form of tradition exists.
Harleen Singh:
My reasons for giving you this very redacted, very short, very concise history of Hinduism, is to give you a sense that that history of Hinduism, that sense of Hinduism is just as dynamic. There is no 'a Hinduism'. There is no such thing as, "It's always existed. It's always been the case." The history of Hinduism is as dynamic, as shifting, as are the contours of caste, and gender, and women, and discrimination, in this context. That's very shortened. When we get into questions and answers, I'll be happy to talk more about it, or to say more in this context as well.
Harleen Singh:
Secondly, really thinking about the history of India, so to speak. There is of course, as you know, a geographic symmetry to the Indian subcontinent. A geographic reasoning, even, if one were to think about it in that way. That is, as a peninsula, the subcontinent of course has water on three sides, the Himalayas to the north, the Hindu Kush to the west with Afghanistan. You have in many ways, a natural geographic demarcation of South Asia, the land, from its neighbors in a way.
Harleen Singh:
India as an entity, and I always use this in my classes to say, India as a country, as a nation is very new. We can only date it to 1947, when India gains independence from the British, and becomes a nation. But India, as a land, as a country, as a culture, as an entity, is ancient and very old. Of course these natural geographic boundaries created a particular notion of India. Then later kingdoms, dynasties, conquests, colonialism, created its own boundaries, which then translated as independence took place for India partition, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and each of these countries came to be on their own. You have the current geographic, political, cultural makeup of what is known as South Asia.
Harleen Singh:
When I use the word South Asia, I'm really referring to India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, even in some contexts, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, all of these areas. When I talk about ancient India, and use the word India, it is not to collapse any of these boundaries, or these specificities, but to really talk about a prior historical moment in which these new entities were not so much in place. The idea of India was the ways in which the area was known as. It's really interesting to think about it in these ways. We also have, in many ways, as we begin to think about the history of India. It's the ancient notions, the cultures, the religions, the practices of India, then have to be interlaced in many ways with its modern history.
Harleen Singh:
For example, when I used the date 1947, when India gains independence with the British, that's really just one moment, or the point at which India becomes independent and becomes its own country. The British leave, or are kicked out, or whatever terminology you want to use in that case. The events leading up to 1947, go all the way back for a hundred years of colonialism. There's already at that point in time, almost 200 years of colonialism and more, but the rule of the British parliament begins in 1857. Before that, India is being ruled by the East India Company. It's actually being ruled by a corporation. It's a mercantile colony. It's only after the events of 1857, and the rebellion, that India then becomes a by the proclamation of Victoria in 1858, it becomes an actual dominion of the crown, and Queen Victoria becomes Queen Victoria of England, and Empress of India.
Harleen Singh:
It's from 1857 to 1947 that you have what are often known as the years of the Raj. The years of British dominion, British... I don't want to use the word investment, because investment also has a benign and benevolent ring to it. I want to use the word British presence in India, because that's really when you begin to see the colonial project come to being, at that point in time. You will note, I say so in my classes, I have a pass on whatever I want to say about the British. 200 years of colonialism allow me that. When I'm choosing words carefully, for how I talk about British colonialism in India, I'm trying to do my best to have professional clarity and professional decorum. But the words sometimes come with difficulty to me.
Harleen Singh:
This history is important, because as the British begin to govern India, and begin to create rules about how India must be governed, one of the factors, or one of the areas in which they really begin to have many incursions, is Indian cultural life. As they create laws, they create laws about marriage, divorce, births, rights, inheritance, et cetera. Now all of these laws are governed until there is... Of course at the time of the Mughals, there's a singular administrative entity at place. Many other kingdoms and dynasties as well. When the British tried to implement a sense of law in India, they're faced with a diversity, which is really bewildering.
Harleen Singh:
Hinduism in the north is practiced in a different way. Hinduism in the south is practiced in a different way. Hinduism when it has been in contact with Islam, with Judaism, with Buddhism, with Jainism, with Sikhism. All of these different religions, and all of the different practices across India, have really, as I said, a bewildering diversity that cannot simply be compressed into one law. This is when the British began to rely upon scribes, scholars of Hinduism, to come up with the best version of Hinduism. You'll note that my reasons for telling you this history, is because most of the scholars of Hinduism, in that given period of time, come from the highest caste of Hinduism; Brahmins.
Harleen Singh:
When they rely upon these scholars to give them a sense of what Hinduism is like, what are the laws of Hinduism, they're really relying upon the upper most caste of Hinduism for these laws, for these interpretations, for these versions of Hinduism. What they then begin to consolidate, and codify, into laws under the British administration, a really aversion of Hinduism that come for the upper most caste of Hinduism. Even under colonial law, even under what is known as egalitarian, or singular British law, the laws that begin to be codified as Hindu practice, are not laws that reflect the diversity of Hinduism, as it is practiced all over South Asia.
Harleen Singh:
They reflect the Hinduism that is interpreted as the gospel, so to speak, of the Brahmins. It codifies a particular upper caste Hinduism, even in what is known as non-religious law. This is very important for us because of the ways in which inheritance, marriage, birth, death, begin to be recorded, which has a very strong impact on gender, and women especially. The ways in which property is inherited, disenfranchises women all over India, even in matriarchal societies, where women had inherited property to begin with, before these laws came into place.
Harleen Singh:
That kind of singularity, that unification of law and practice, into one administration, flattens out the diversity that is in South Asia. It also in shrines a particular kind of upper caste Hinduism as the de facto cultural mode of be. As the struggle for independence takes place, as Gandhi's nationalism, Gandhi's various movements begin, you then have again a reliance by Gandhi on a version of Hinduism, which he mobilizes in the struggle for independence. Now, Gandhi has some interesting interactions with women, and caste, as far as that moment.
Harleen Singh:
I'm just going to move here from the turn of the century, about 1895 to 1947. Because before this, of course, as I'm talking about how the British enshrine law, and Hindu law, into their administration, please remember that the diversity of cultures, and regions, and religions around South Asia, have it so that not all of South Asia is patriarchal.
Harleen Singh:
There are many different forms of practices, and cultural practices, that exist in South Asia that are matrilineal, that are matriarchal. Women also, in Hinduism for the longest time, had very essential roles in Hindu rituals, in Hindu ways of being, in life. Even in Hindu mythology, if you read the Vedas, if you read the epics, actually read them. Don't just have a cursory sense of the Ramayana, of the Mahabharata, the great epics of South Asia. I should say the great epics of the world. Mahabharata is the longest poem ever written. Yes, much longer than the Iliad, and not too many people know about it. All of these texts of ancient India, these ancient texts, written in Sanskrit. If you actually read them, not just read redacted versions of them, what you have are very complex staging of gender, of women's roles, of the ways in which they are actually a part of the cultural life of South Asia.
Harleen Singh:
They are learned. The women in these texts are educated. They're learned. They have very strong positions in their families and their communities. They are, of course, like many of the women in all our ancient texts, often not given their fair share, or their lot in life. Really depends on what the men in their family are doing, but yet they have very strong positions. That is something to remember, because all of that changes. This idea that somehow ancient religion, or ancient culture of India, was far more restrictive, or was far more somehow... Not only restrict, but limited in thinking about gender and women is actually incorrect. There's a greater complexity in the ancient religions. What I'd like say is that in fact, it is the encounter with colonialism, and then the encounter with the modern forces of economics and capitalism, and a competition for resources, that codifies, caste, and gender, and women's roles, far more than any notion of the ancient does. So as Gandhi begins to really put together his struggle for independence, and his passive resistance, and nonviolent movement against the British, he relies upon particular notions of caste and women, as well. So for example, Gandhi believes, Gandhi's earliest works, Hind Swaraj, and many of the other works that he writes, Gandhi's core philosophy, in some ways, is to think about the ways in which the individual first has to gain independence in themselves, before they can look for independence as an entity, as a community, as a country. So Gandhi really focuses on an inward independence, and an inward discipline. Right? An inward austerity, before he says one can really ask for a outward recognition of us, as people, as beings, who are responsible and able to rule themselves.
Harleen Singh:
So in that notion, of course, Gandhi really thinks about the social evils, as he calls them, that beset Hinduism. One of them is caste. Gandhi's notion of caste is not to do away with castes. So for example, in all his writings, in all his conversations about caste, Gandhi never says, "Let's do away with caste." Gandhi says, "Just because caste exists, it isn't a reason to discriminate." Right? So step back a little bit. What is caste? Now, people have assumed that caste, also, is naturalized a priory, always exists in Hinduism. But scholars have pointed out, that in all probability, caste emerged as a system of differentiation of labor. Right? That it was really a division of labor, of the ways in which there were people who were artisans, people who were scholars, people who were warriors. And it was really division of labor, with greater mobility between the castes.
Harleen Singh:
So you didn't have to be born into one caste, and stay there. But as the upper castes gained control over Hinduism, both as cultural practice, and as a way of governing the nation, right, this form of division really begin to become codified into something that could not be broken. So the ways in which caste functions in our recent history, is really a closed system. So in Hinduism, you have four castes. Right? You have the Brahmans, which are the scholars, the priests, the scribes, so on, and so forth. The Kshatriyas, who are the warriors. Right? The Vaishyas, who are the trading class. Right? They are people, shopkeepers, traders, moneylenders, everybody who is involved in business, in some ways with money. And the last caste is Shudra, which are the artisans, carpenters, farmers, blacksmiths. People who work in some ways with their hands, with some kind of labor that has to do with being workers and artisans, of some kinds.
Harleen Singh:
And then, you have, who are known as, in English, or at least in colonial terminology, as the untouchables. The Dalits. Now, I'm going to talk about the ways in which these terms developed. So the word untouchable, really comes into English from the ways in which colonial language recognized how these people, who were really outside the four castes of Hinduism, were being treated. As in, they were being treated as people whose shadow, even, was considered polluting. Right? So this notion of purity and pollution is very much at play, in thinking about caste. So all of these things come into play, and you have, really, the untouchable as a figure, or all of these groups of people. And now, the untouchables are people who work with leather, people who work with clearing out toilets. All of these jobs that were considered beneath the dignity of the four castes. The term untouchable, then becomes, in modern India, scheduled castes, which is because they come under the constitution under a particular schedule.
Harleen Singh:
And so then, they become to be known as scheduled castes. And in recent years, with a lot of Dalit scholarship, and a lot of Dalit activism, they've taken on the word Dalit, which simply means the oppressed, to talk about this. Okay. Now, I'd like to invite Professor Sampath here, to really join me in thinking about his version of caste. Because as you know, I've tried to bring it up to the point of Gandhi and independence, because of course, as Gandhi is coming up with these notions of caste, as I said before, he never really says, "Caste is bad." He never really says, "Let's do away with caste." He says, "The practice of caste, and the ways which we treat people who are outside the caste system, who are untouchables, who are the Dalits, who are the," what he called, "Harijans, the Children of God, is bad."
Harleen Singh:
It's the practice of caste that is the bad, but not caste itself. Right? But Gandhi is at that time, surrounded by people like Ambedkar, who has a PhD from Columbia, who is pointing out the fact that even Gandhi's version of Hinduism, right, is a version that continues to enshrine caste as a discriminatory tool. Okay. And I just want to segue here, to Professor Sampath, because of course, my upbringing, and my history, and my scholarship, in many ways, is rooted in my growing up as an Indian in India. Right? And Professor Sampath's upbringing in the United States, also gives him, I think, very particular insights into the ways in which caste, and Hinduism, and his own scholarship on caste, his work on the journal Caste, that is being published by Brandeis, and his work on getting Brandeis to include caste, as a part of it's non-discrimination policy.
Harleen Singh:
Right? I think, really brings us to thinking about caste at its current stage. And I'll end with, actually, a quote from Ambedkar. Ambedkar says, at one point in time, he says, "All of you scholars, and all of you people, who look into Hinduism and find in it," I'm paraphrasing a bit, "and find in it, this ancient and wonderful diversity, and this wonderful history of religion, and spirituality, and mythology. Do not look at it from the point of view of someone who has always been an untouchable. He says, "From my perspective, all I can see in it, are a chamber of horrors." So at that moment, I'd like Professor Sampath to come in, and help us on with this conversation. Raj?
Rajesh Sampath:
Thank you so much, Harleen. I have to say to the alumni, first of all, it's a pleasure to be with you, and to be with Professor Harleen Singh. And again, thank you Amy for the support. And then, Alyson too, for the production of the event. And looking forward to hearing Lee Younger's closing remarks. It is a very difficult act to follow, when you hear Professor Singh. The breathtaking sweep. The distillation of the history. First of all, the South Asian context, and how Hinduism fits within it. I don't want to reproduce that with such eloquence, and grace, and insight, that are truly profound. I have so many notes here. I wish we can have an offline conversation, about how we can interpret the context. But all of your insights, Harleen, are so fundamental, to not only understanding the birth of the Indian nation in the mid 20th century, but where are we today, two decades into the 21st century?
Rajesh Sampath:
And as Harleen said, I'm very interested in the term intersectionality. And a lot of people think that could mean a confluence of multiple strands, that interconnect and create a complex identity. But for others, it can mean that when you try to synthesize so many different elements of diversity, the irreducible diversity that Harleen spoke of, the antiquity that had the fluidity in Hinduism. And then, the British colonial period. And then, the economic division of labor. And the need to create a sex-based hierarchy in a domestication privatization of women. That's more of an outgrowth of maturity, as opposed to something intrinsic to the patriarchy of Hinduism. Because every religion has its own form of patriarchy, and it's something that evolves. But intersectionality, for me, is when you think of these strands that come together to form an identity, sometimes there are margins. There are gaps in which you cannot really conceptualize what you're looking at.
Rajesh Sampath:
And so, I want to use a couple of examples that resonate with our domestic context, here in the United States. There is a history of how caste and race were brought into dialogue. And as Harleen and my colleagues knew, Ambedkar, the great figure that was the first, arguably. He had a predecessor, Phule, in the 19th century. But to argue that caste is something that needs to be displaced. It's interesting to compare that with the legacy of slaving and segregation, on the basis of black oppression. That grabs black oppression. And the long duration of that suffering. 500 years. 1619. So when you look at our own constitutional evolution, and you think about 1865, and the abolishment of slavery, and the granting of the vote, first to black men. Women didn't get to vote until the 20th century. And then, segregation is a legalized system of separation in the public space. And then, it's overturning. And then, the birth of civil rights.
Rajesh Sampath:
When we talk about, in our constitution, that there should be no discrimination on the basis of race, even though that occurs on a daily basis, the constitution does not say, "We are banning racism." It doesn't use that language. And as Harleen said, if you look at the subtleties of the Indian constitution, which, during independence, drew from the American, British, and the French, it says no discrimination on the basis of caste. Didn't wait until 1965. It said that at the inception. But as Harleen said, because of its founding moment, due to a very complicated set of factors, not just one individual, but Gandhi's movement for liberation, but the legacy of the British parliamentary system, that the Indian constitution says, "There'll be no discrimination or caste." But it doesn't say something like, "There will be no casteism, or a caste system." So what that really speaks to, is for humanists like Harleen, I'm trained in the humanities and dialogue with social scientists.
Rajesh Sampath:
What are we talking about? Caste is not something that appears on your face. And therefore, you can't speak of it, in terms of the construction of race, or ethnicity, or even a tribe, or a clan. It doesn't sit on you. You can't, there are no simple identify, at least for the outsider. Inside the system, there are ways to identify. By name. By region. By ritual. By dialect. By language. By name. I think I might have mentioned that. But it's not something that's visible. That's the whole point. And so, when I think about it, and I think about in comparison with race, there are attempts now, but within black intellectual history, to try to not collapse the categories of race and caste into one group. But on the other hand, they seem to share similar features. And if you look at the recent work by Isabel Wilkerson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, who has spoken on race, and is really a epiphenomenal figure in our national discussion today on race. The title of her book is Our Caste, even though she's speaking about race in America.
Rajesh Sampath:
And what she tries to argue, is that, is caste something like a system, that allocates privileges to people, like access to resources? But ways in which we encounter one another, or communicate with one another, or how opportunities may open or close, or how people get constantly reproduced or stereotyped, as not being capable of accessing other opportunities. So it's the perpetuation stereotypes about certain groups. So it's a very fluid system, which reminds me of the language that Harleen was using. Meaning racism in America is like a caste system. But then, what are the differences? In America, you can have the first black American president. But then, you can see all the egregious rates of poverty, and crime, and the criminal justice system, and the lack of representation in many aspects of our society, including higher education. When we think about the necessity to increase black representation, at all levels of leadership in our society, we still have a tremendous way to go in our society.
Rajesh Sampath:
So in other words, it's hard to compare race and caste. But it is something that, in its mechanism, reproduces privilege. For me, I try to find, within the resources that you'd mentioned, Harleen, when you go back to antiquity or the various traditions. If you bring them into dialogue with Western intellectual history, and Western philosophical resources, are there ways to enter into the South Asian experience over time, and try to create a respectful dialogue, of avoiding initial judgment of a system that we're not a part of, let's say, from a Western perspective? But on the other hand, trying to form coalitions, where we can create some baseline to discuss human rights. And that actually is occurring now. And it's really phenomenal. It goes in two directions. There's Indian scholarship, and Indian dialogues, Indian journals, in touch with the diaspora, and others who engage in South Asian studies, to create that dialogue.
Rajesh Sampath:
And inversely, there is an attempt to suggest that there are limits, to what we call, to use fancy language, and philosophy, and social theory, epistemological limits. And by that, does that mean there's a limit to be able to understand another context, if you're not from it?
Harleen Singh:
Yeah.
Rajesh Sampath:
Before I transition back to Harleen, just in two more minutes, I want to give one example, which I think might bring it back to gender and sexuality. The other quick example I wanted to present, was the legalization of transgender, or a third gender. That was in the Indian Supreme Court, as a decision in 2014. Even though there is a legacy of decriminalization of homosexuality, or at least the stigma against it, there isn't an open society in which queer people can be free, not to mention with legalized positive rights, like the right to marry. But to legalize a third gender in a secular democracy, using the instruments of their constitution to draw from those ancient religious epics, you'd mentioned the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, as a justification as to why this is a basic right, to me, shows you that we're talking about a complexity, that we should not be too quick to try to represent within our own categories, here in the west.
Rajesh Sampath:
And if I were critical on this issue, the west, we may have had in our binary monotheistic framework, this and that, good and bad, good and evil, sacred and profane. These are far more fluid in the Indian context. But in the Western context, let's just say the Western, and then predominantly Christian Gentile context of Europe and the United States, to try to imagine in binary terms, that we can legalize gay marriage. And yet, you see what's unfolding in front of our eyes today, which is a really horrifying presentation, of the question or the issue of transgender rights. And quite frankly, the rolling back of their potentiality to achieve full rights, in all aspects of the society. So I'll pause there, because I want to know, we want to get to a conversation then.
Harleen Singh:
Well, Raj, I agree with you on all aspects of this. And I think the key figure for me, here, as you talk about human rights, of course, are, and you talk about transgender rights across the world. But key figure for me, of course, as I point out, is also women. Because just in terms of race and the United States, I think, in all the various permutations of race, black women in the United States occupy the lowest rung of the ladder, in terms of the ways in which rights have actually come down. So that if it isn't racism, it's patriarchy, and patriarchy within communities as well. And similarly, for me, this is the... I so appreciate you underscoring the point of complexity, because as you point out, there are transgender individuals in the Ramayan and the Mahabarat.
Harleen Singh:
And in fact, in India. But this is our conundrum. Right? This is our big puzzle in South Asia, and Hinduism in India as well. Because on the one hand, you have, so for example, transgender people are given protected status because of the ways in which both the Ramayan and the Mahabarat, both epics have transgender individuals. And they're blessing individuals. They're blessed by the gods. They have very important roles in both of these epics. So on the one hand, there is a recognition and a cultural place for transgender, or third gender individuals, in the Hindu cultural milieu. On the other hand, the actual social, political life of transgender people, and their actual social existence, is pernicious to say the least. They're at the lowest rung of economic development, of social development. Often have only access to jobs like sex work, and others that nobody, that are not necessarily jobs that are first choices for many people around the world.
Harleen Singh:
So that's our big conundrum. Right? On the one hand, you have this large pantheon. And for example, I want to say, we are of course talking about India and South Asia. But this is the case for the ancient epics of the Greek world. We talk about Western civilization, and we talk about the Greeks and this notion of the classics. But the classics are rife with slavery. The classics are rife with discrimination against women, against people from different parts of the world, as well. Right? So this is really our challenge, in some ways. Right? How do we talk about this notion of an ancient complexity, in which there are spaces for many people, and many individuals, and women. And women have a really strong role. Right? So women are worshiped as goddesses, all over South Asia. But does that translate into their actual work?
Harleen Singh:
Right? So for example, women are often the targets. The first targets of all kinds of violence, and gender violence, and sexual violence, in any given eruption of caste, community, religious, regional violence that occurs. Right? Riots that happen, differences, ethnic riots, religious riots, et cetera. And women become the first targets. From the time of partition and before, to now. Right? Dalit women often, are the ones who are targeted by upper caste men, as a way of telling the castes to stay in place. Right? So for example, just to bring the conversation to current India, in the 90s, there was a case, Raj, in Rajasthan. A case called, of a woman named Bahveri Devi, who was actually from the lower castes, and a social worker, who was actually being trained by NGOs and social workers, to go from house to house, to tell people not to marry off their children.
Harleen Singh:
She worked against the marriage of girls who were underage. And she was raped by upper caste men, as a signal to her, and to the NGOs, and to the lower caste, to stay in their place. Now, having been trained by the NGOs, and being someone who was savvy about the legal system, she actually took her clothes as forensic evidence. She went to the police. She registered a case. All of this was done in a way, that the perpetrators would be punished. The rapists would be punished. When the case went up to court, the judge actually ruled in the favor of the rapists, by saying that he could not believe that upper caste men would defile their castes, by touching an untouchable woman, and raping her. Right? So that even the legal system, in modern India, this is a case from the mid nineties, where caste becomes such a virulent part of the ways in which women's bodies and gendered violence is being thought of. Right?
Rajesh Sampath:
I think that's such a cruel-
Harleen Singh:
And it's the case in the United States for black women.
Rajesh Sampath:
... Absolutely. I think the comparison is so on point, because it was black women, historically, throughout the 20th century and prior. But most recently, in terms of when we think of critical race theory and intersectionality, those were the works of black women, that brought them into the mainstream, to their respective fields. And the law, with Kimberlé Crenshaw. And sociology, with Patricia Hill Collins. But with that last case you mentioned, Harleen, it gives us so much insight into this question of purity and impurity. Because the facade is to maintain this notion of purity by caste, while the everyday reality is one of patriarchy, and misogyny, and violence against women's bodies, of the lower cast, who then don't get the justice. It reminds me of Kimberlé Crenshaw's article from the 90s, on mapping the margins, in which you look at the history of constitutional in the United States. And to bring forward a claim, by black women, that's sexism, through that lens, you're not going to see the dimension of racism, or if you bring it through racism, you're not going to see the patriarchy and the oppression. And so the court can say, "Well, look, I don't see what you're talking about," because it doesn't have this multi focal lens to look at the nature of the complexity.
Rajesh Sampath:
But maybe as we transition, Harleen, one thing we can do is to compare the two contexts. This may be really very relevant for our audience. To me, it was breathtaking and I'm an ardent feminist in supporting the continuous attention to the problem of sexual based violence, sexual harassment, and misogyny in the US context. It wasn't just the election of Trump, but the Me Too movement from Hollywood and Anita Hill's great work now in terms of the commission to draw attention to something in our very midst that has a long privileged history, a type of cast, which are a system of Hollywood, but the treatment of women within that system. From the beginning, the attempt to enter into the system by the time they leave, the horrifying stories that could be unearthed as to what one has to experience. The rollbacks potentially of title nine issues or abortion access in terms of our courts.
Rajesh Sampath:
And then the subtle propagation, because as you said, dialectically, it's one thing to see an acceleration of progress. It is for me, brilliant to see the first woman vice president and that a woman of color, but to see the ascendance of women in the highest levels of leadership is really kind of an accelerated moment. If you even trace it back to Hillary Clinton's attempt in 2008, there's been an acceleration.
Rajesh Sampath:
And yet inversely, there is this deterioration of the potentiality to close on the wage gap. Quite frankly, the tenured system in higher ed. How can we have a majority of the young women be the undergrad and therefore future graduate students, arts and sciences, business schools, law schools, med schools. How can they be the majority now for at least for the undergrads 20 years for the last five years graduate schools, including our own. And yet there's this sort of gendered apartheid with regard to the ability to get all the benefits in place so once real potential is realized.
Rajesh Sampath:
These have to do with the overwhelming explicit and implicit biases that favor men. So I guess my question to you is how can we contrast that with the social energy that's being unleashed in India by young people on drawing attention to rape, increasing the prosecutorial rates, dealing with the legacy of the dowry system, the son preference culture, female infanticide and sex selective abortion, they still occur. The constitution bans it. We're looking at two different contexts here, and you cannot overlay them or conflate them, but I see some eerie resemblances. What do you see in terms of the two contexts?
Harleen Singh:
Absolutely. And it kind of goes back to that same point a bit. These discriminations, this bigotry is not ancient. So what we're seeing right now is actually the rise of a particular kind of the exaggeration of misogyny, of sexism, of racism in the modern context. That's kind of what I was trying to allude to in the beginning. It's very easy to talk about gender violence or rape in India and talk about in terms of, "Oh, it's because of the tradition. It's because of the ancient views of women, et cetera."
Harleen Singh:
In fact, I'm arguing the opposite in my work, which is to say that it isn't the ancient that is restrictive. I'm going to have to cross my arm to do something, to say this as a humanist, because it's actually economics. It's actually the modern pressures of economic, the access to economic resources, to political representation that are exaggerating, exacerbating the existing misogyny, patriarchy, racism.
Harleen Singh:
So for example, we had, yes, you said the first black president, but it's no accident that while we had the first black president, white supremacy in this country grew at an unprecedented rate. Yes, we had Hillary Clinton running for president, and now we have Kamala Harris as the first vice president, woman vice president, first woman of color, first Asian, of South Asian background and of Jamaican background as well to be, and the daughter of an immigrant, first-generation immigrants to be the vice president. And yet as you were pointing out, patriarchy and misogyny and chauvinism is growing at an unprecedented rate.
Harleen Singh:
We foist all this upon the ancient as a way of cleansing our own hands. It's a little bit like washing your hands off as you do something because it's easy to say this is enshrined in the ancient. It's tradition. How are we going to go up against hundreds of years of tradition? And what I'm trying to point out in my work is that's a cop-out, both in the US and in India. That's a, cop-out. It isn't ancient. What we're faced with right now is current. It's now. It's contemporary, and it has to do with access to economic resources. It is economics pure and simple.
Harleen Singh:
The rate of gendered violence that has grown within the last 20 years or 30 years in India at the same time at which the Indian economy has liberalized, and you have so many women in the workforce competing for some of the same jobs, competing for the same workspaces. The same ways in which the multinationals coming into India then create a kind of workspace in which suddenly upper costs find that they're working in the same space as untouchables, as Dalits, as people that they considered beneath them in many ways, but who now have access to the same jobs are multinationals. Puts a greater pressure on the fissures that have always existed.
Harleen Singh:
So people always point out I remember when 9/11 happened, and we were talking about this and people said, "Oh, 9/11 has allowed racism to emerge against particular people or particular forms." And I remember thinking, "No, racism has always existed. Certain moments just make it okay for you to be racist. They just make it okay for you to perform racist acts or sexist acts."
Harleen Singh:
So I think that this is the thing it's the use of, especially in the context of India, which is also, as you point out, kind of exoticizing. It's also about Western I would say civilization, in Western enlightenment modes as well, where we have this notion of somehow the past as both the repository of wisdom but also as the repository of all that is bad about us. And I want to point out that this is dynamic. That this continues to shift. And in fact, what we're seeing right now is a racism and a sexism, which is vicious and virulent in the ways in which it is rooted in the modern.
Rajesh Sampath:
That's right. Even the most extreme versions of the alt-right throughout Western Gentile Europe and the Gentile majority of whites in this country with the surge of anti-Semitism, with Islamophobic post 9/11, and that can bring us back. Is there a plan, Harleen, for us to transition, or how do you-
Harleen Singh:
Absolutely, yes. So Alyson had suggested we talk to one, which we have about three minutes, and then we would call Liyanga to ask questions, but I'm happy to move now, Raj, if that's okay with you. We can bring Liyanga into the conversation and we'll have some time with Bianca before we open up for questions to everybody else in the audience.
Rajesh Sampath:
Great.
Liyanga de Silva:
Hi, well, first of all, thank you to both of you for such a great conversation, for letting us listen in on all of those complexities. I guess I'll just start with a couple of more questions and then I'll move on to the audience questions. So I'm wondering, you talked about this a little bit, but how does this linear narrative of history or development, one that's pretty based on Western development as a concept and that moves from conservative or traditional toward progressive and "modern". How does that really erase a lot of this history and these complexities and the relationship between gender and the codification of uppercuts, Hinduism, and hierarchies more broadly?
Harleen Singh:
So can I just say before we answer the questions, how proud I am of Liyanga, by the way. Liyanga just graduated from the women and gender studies program with a master's and wrote her thesis with me. And it was just such a pleasure to read all her work and to see her develop over this last year into finishing up her master's and becoming an expert in the field. She's truly the best of what Brandeis produces. So I'm so proud to share this moment, this screen, and this conversation with you Liyanga.
Liyanga de Silva:
Thank you so much.
Harleen Singh:
Raj, would you like to go first, or I'd be happy...
Rajesh Sampath:
Please start, Harleen. I can respond to your comments.
Harleen Singh:
No, so Liyanga, you're absolutely right. That's part of what I've been trying to break down and Raj as well today is that there is this almost not retrograde, but almost a kind of ways in which we think about history, especially in our Western training as a linear project. And we always move from the bad to the good. That somehow progression and progressive measures are always in the current, down the timeline, moving ahead while the ancient is the one with all the problems.
Harleen Singh:
And part of what I think both India and I think in fact, even the US is pointing out, is that we need to look at the ways in which it is both. It's circular. It's not linear, but it's also has these troughs and this ebb and flow that we have a danger of slipping back. And that's why I think that we shouldn't rest on our laurels in some ways, especially in the US to think about, "Oh, we elected a black president. Oh, we have a woman of color now as a vice president." I mean, one head of state does not do away with hundreds of years of racism and sexism. That one figure does not undo a history. And of course these figures are so very important and such proud moments for all of us. And yet we have this slippage in which we look at this good because one person emerged. It's a narrative of immigrant exceptionalism as well.
Harleen Singh:
Those of us who come from the Asian minorities in the US, we know about minority exceptionalism, the idea that somehow, "Oh, look. Look at these people. They are educated. They do well. They have degrees, et cetera, versus those people who don't do well." And we know that these kinds of narratives play immigrants against each other, play people of color against each other. They also rely upon exceptionalism as a way of doing away with what we know are economic, social, systematic ways of enshrining discrimination. So I absolutely agree with you. I think that the linear needs to be disrupted as does this narrative of exceptionalism. No one of us makes it on our own. We all have systems behind us that help us get where we are.
Rajesh Sampath:
Thank you, Harleen. Thank you, Liyanga for proposing the initial question. It's a great question. And maybe by way of comparison and contrast, just within the West, there is a history of the philosophy of history and its most modern iteration would be the late 18th century, which is also a pivotal epochal point for Western history, which by then colonialism was already spreading. So we can think about the entire global context, but at least within the Western European context, the birth of the industrial revolution, the birth of democracy, the birth of individual rights, the secularization, at least the beginnings of it, of the public sphere, the ability to dispute questions of authority. Oh wow, all these great achievements that founded the maternity that many countries now that are democratic can enjoy it.
Rajesh Sampath:
But the West also engaged in virulence self-critique right when that great story of progress was being born, beginning with Marx, one can argue, and eventually- on the moral systems that people were degenerate within the Western world would produce a nihilistic sense of the future because they can't square that dialogue between the ancient genius of creation with modern skepticism. From Marx's part, it for us may seem like a simple structure of moving from antiquity, a slave economy to the fetal ages, which was the Western version of cast in terms of hierarchy and occupation, birth based assignment occupation, intergenerational debt, the whole cosmos and hierarchy of the middle ages then gives way to this great modern age of democracy and capitalism, which of course he'll subject to a critique.
Rajesh Sampath:
But as Harleen had taught us earlier in the first segment, first of all, the dialogue between ancient and modern is almost omni-temporal. It's not that it starts there in the Indian country. You just have to go to the country and live and see that the continuous reproduction of time. It is fascinating for the outsider, trying to just understand the complexity, experience the complexity.
Rajesh Sampath:
But more concretely what, Harleen, you'd said, let's do away with this notion, this orientalization that somehow, which Marx also helped to produce the oriental, that the Eastern, non-western, non Judeo-Christian structures are going to have a very difficult time engaging in the movement of these epochs get to a stage beyond capitalism, or let's just say inequality.
Rajesh Sampath:
But, as you said, Harleen, which I completely agree, well, what if in the Indian context, you're looking at the real culprit not only being the West with British imperialism, but the transference of the structures of privilege beyond that in a post-colonial context. How does privilege get reproduced given the legacy of that system? That then creates all types of hierarchies on the basis of cast, gender, sexuality, et cetera.
Rajesh Sampath:
So in other words, in Indian context, the temporal horizon, or let's just say in a South Asian context, many Asian contexts that face colonialism, that were subjected to colonialism, you can't even speak of what Marx speaks of, a primitive accumulation that predates capitalism in which one part of the history tells you like, "Hey, feudalism died and the freedom to contract and to sell labor in a peaceful manner where everybody benefits but few people get rich capitalism." There's a peaceful transformation. He's like, "No, it actually sits on an invisible history of death, violence, genocide." He hasn't even gotten into colonization. He's just talking about in the heart of the origin of capitalism is this tremendous horror and violence.
Rajesh Sampath:
We have to come to grips with that beyond him speaking about the Western context to see how violence is inscribed in the origins of Indian modernity. One level of history can tell us something, but the sub alternate or the other alternative is to suggest that no, there have been many facets that have come together that would take a lot of research and a lot of people are working on this now to explain the rise of the right wing and nationalism and majoritarian politics. And for some of the Arden critics, not the same fascism in the 20th century, but fascism meaning when you want to ground the power of one group on some primordial identity of being Hindu. But as Harleen taught us, that is not something that was determined from the past or quite frankly, through the British colonial period or the founding moment in 1947, 1948. It's a very contemporary phenomenon. And it's frightening, which means we all have to work collectively to try to critically dismantle it.
Liyanga de Silva:
Thank you. Both of those answers. I just have one more question. That's kind of overlapped with some of the questions in the chat as well, but what is the importance of the diaspora in these movements toward legislative and cultural change regarding cast and gender and how they overlap? I'm just wondering how the attitudes of NRIs, non-resident Indians and the diaspora just general has an impact on activists working in India toward this kind of change.
Rajesh Sampath:
Please.
Harleen Singh:
Okay. Thank you. You're very kind Raj, to let me go first every time. I think, Liyanga, the importance of the diaspora cannot be overestimated. I mean first of all, I think it's really important for our audience to know that the south Asian diaspora isn't just the tech industry in Europe and the United States. I mean, there've been many stages to the Indian diaspora. The earliest immigrants to the United States actually came at the turn of the century and before. In fact, I'm currently reading on some of the earliest race riots in the country that happened in the early 1900s in Washington State, the Bellingham Riots in which Indian laborers in the lumber mills were run out of town by the white workers because they were afraid the Indians were taking their jobs.
Harleen Singh:
So it's very important to remember that even the diaspora in not just in the American context has an old history. It isn't just the tech workers of the last 20-30 years and in the higher sectors. There are many different stages to the diaspora in the US as well. And of course, the South Asian diaspora isn't just the US and Western countries. Under colonialism, South Asians went to Africa, to Fiji, to the Caribbean, to Suriname, to Guyana, to Trinidad, to Nigeria, to Kenya, Mauritius, Maldives, all of these different countries around the world. And these old histories of diaspora might make it so that there are also a very potent economic force.
Harleen Singh:
And I think that even as we talk about the ills of modernity and capitalism, we also have to realize that capitalism and economics are a very potent force in the world to be able to do good and that the diaspora has both economic force and now political and cultural capital as well to be able to impact what is happening in South Asia.
Harleen Singh:
So for the longest time Indians abroad or as you mentioned, non-resident Indians, et cetera, or even if you took citizenship, you could not have dual citizenship in most countries in South Asia. But now India has what is called the OCI, overseas citizen of India card. So that allows you to actually be able to have many different things. Though it doesn't allow you to vote and other stuff or hold office. But the diaspora can do so much because the diaspora is also a place in which I have seen as an immigrant or as someone who grew up in India and came to the United States, that the diaspora was far more conservative as far as gender was considered, as far as culture, sexuality was relevant.
Harleen Singh:
I mean, I remember my cousins in the United States saying to me when I came here as a college student, "You wear shorts," or, "You wore shorts to play soccer? You played soccer?" Because the vision of India that they had from their parents or from the notion of culture that was given to them was a notion that was far more restrictive. But India is just as complex as its representations. That modern India had people wearing and playing and doing all of these things just as it also had these restrictive policies in place. So yes, I wore shorts to play soccer, but I also know that in 115 degrees Fahrenheit, our coach asked us to put long pants on because a group of boys came to watch the soccer match. And we were told to put on long pants and play soccer in them.
Harleen Singh:
So all of these things co-exist, but I think they co-exist all over the world in some ways, but that's part of the kind of exoticism or the crime of exoticism I want to point out. That oftentimes these contradictions are not allowed for places like India. Where India is supposed to only represent one way of being and not have the complexity that we think exists everywhere else in the world.
Rajesh Sampath:
I think, Harleen, that was a perfect segue because I was forming a thought about the multilayered nature of society, but given everything you've said about the importance of the diaspora. And Liyanga had been looking at the Q&A questions, and I've just sort of monitored the chat as well. So I'll try to speak to some of what I've seen so far. The question of the diaspora.
Rajesh Sampath:
One of the questions, Harleen, was about can we find the less prevalence of cast when you don't have Hinduism as a predominant majority? As a predominant majority of the society, 800 million, at one point three, but there are 200 million Muslims. There's millions of Christians and chains of books and secret. Then you mentioned the kind of synchronistic dialogue that's been going on pre-colonial and post between them. It's very hard to negotiate between them.
Rajesh Sampath:
But to answer that particular question, which does relate to the issue of the diaspora here in the West, for example, or the UK or Australia, New Zealand, I can speak more to those experiences because I come from that part of the Indian diaspora here in the United States. The stigma of casts even after conversion, if you were born as such into cast within Hinduism, you leave it for Islam or Christianity, oftentimes the stigma of that background in the rural community carries over. Even though those religions, in particular, might promise egalitarianisms and equality and brotherhood, sisterhood, fraternity, et cetera, no distinctions between people, which is the anathema to cast.
Rajesh Sampath:
So why does that... That's because there's a cultural propagation. Therefore not intrinsic to Hinduism. It's not intrinsic to another religion. It's something else that propagates it. And that's what we have to look at. I would say the fundamental propagated, and that's what we have to look at.
Rajesh Sampath:
I think the fundamental promise, and it's interesting, I saw an article about how the Indian government is a bit weary currently of the intervention of Indian diaspora, Indian American, Indian European voices because maybe here we're engaged in what they think is group identity politics. We're leveraging this notion that certain groups have been under duress, and therefore publicly, vocally need to fight for their rights within their democracies.
Rajesh Sampath:
Well, we have a 200 plus year old democracy, and only 150 years since slavery ended. So it's not that we're a long history as well, but it's much longer than 1947 to now. So their sensitivity on the Indian side to say, "Wait a minute, you folks can talk about group identity politics. That we need to fight for this group and this group." But as Harleen is saying, please understand the complexity and the diversity of trying to make a 1.3 billion people with a 73% registration vote pattern in a democracy, it takes five months to decide the parliamentary leadership and the prime minister. So the election sequence. Trying to manage a decentralized system in 27 distinct languages with gazillions of dialects. I should know how many states, and then the caste system.
Rajesh Sampath:
On the one hand, a lot of us are pretty zealous, maybe overzealous about trying to go into the cultural context and say, "You know what, we're going to fight for queer rights. We're going to fight for the Dalit liberation cause, for the tribals. We're going to look at the Hajira or the transgender and the third gender communities and the religious minorities, the Christians, the Muslims who maybe under duress." That's easier said than done. That's my learning here.
Rajesh Sampath:
So I'm very cautious about where does it make sense to speak about the group identity politics here in the United States. I got conversations with Asians who come as international students who maybe weary of what they might see as the American version of identity politics on all kinds of issues, even the use of pronouns. Most certainly the question of race, to be identified, that's an American experience is that we get categorized as race. We grew up with the trauma of that, and then we identify ourselves in the basis of it.
Rajesh Sampath:
Well, that way of thinking and existing doesn't occur everywhere else, even with the global south, the post-colonial condition, which you'd think has that legacy or hangover of European white supremacy. Something else is going on in the construction of race in other parts of the world. It's not the same as here.
Rajesh Sampath:
So my suggestion is that we have to be careful when we try to bring these dialogues together.
Liyanga de Silva:
Wonderful. Let me move on to a question by Patricia Collins. She asks, "Could you say a bit more about the contemporary activism of Dalit women in India in response to gendered violence? What are they arguing and how does that inform their actions?"
Harleen Singh:
By the way, in the introduction to begin with, Amy had mentioned that I'm the director of the Women's Studies Research Center at Brandeis. My research project at the research center in the coming years is going to be focused on gendered violence as a global phenomenon, looking at countries as diverse and maybe as different as Indian is, Israel, South Africa, the United States and more. I just wanted to say Allison will put this in the chat as well that given that it's June 30th and the end of the fiscal year that if you'd like to support any of that work, please do go to the Women's Studies Research Center website, and there is a very simple link to make a gift to support this very important work that is being done at the center as well. So having talked about economics is such a potent force that allows us to do our work, I just want to make this one pitch for my scholars and for the work we do at the center as we move forward.
Harleen Singh:
But as we talk about Dalit women... Even as I make this pitch for the Women's Studies Research Center, Liyanga, the question about what Dalit women are doing, it brings home to me the vast gap between the work and activism we can do here in the US and the resources we have and the work that we can do, even with our scholarship, and the ground reality of what women in India have to deal with, and especially Dalit women in India have to deal with, which is not just discrimination as Dalits in the Indian cultural sphere but also within their own communities and within their own families.
Harleen Singh:
Of course, part of this as a scholar, for me, Patricia, the question that you asked. As a scholar for me, what is really important is actually the fact that a lot of Dalit scholars, both men and women, are actually looking at history, looking at literature, looking at the ways in which notions of identity, culture, gender, sexuality have been produced in order to give a different perspective. As I said, I just like the Brahmin working for the British, I mean, the stories we tell help us make sense of who we are and the people around us. In some ways if those stories only come to us in one version, we are at a loss on what to do.
Harleen Singh:
So along with activism on the ground, there is a real consistent effort by Dalit men and women to not only look at laws, to look at constitutionalism, to look at legislature, but also to look at the cultural products of our world, history, culture, literature, music, films, and think about the ways in which the Dalit voice is absent from them or that it is only represented as this abject object, as someone who can only be pitied, never has any kind of agency, never has any kind of dynamic role to play in our world. So that's how I would say.
Harleen Singh:
Liyanga, I think we don't both Raj and I don't need to answer every question. I think for the interest of time, it might be that I can take one question, Raj can take the next one, I can take one, then Raj can take one unless we have a burning desire to contribute to something there.
Harleen Singh:
Is that okay, Raj?
Rajesh Sampath:
Yeah. As we move to that phase, I was just going to suggest there's another resource I put in the chat box about Brandeis' journal on caste. The second issue was dedicated to gender and caste. But I would love to get back to the comparison of Black feminist contributions with the Dalit feminist contributions to date. At some point, I thought there might be some interest in that dialogue.
Rajesh Sampath:
But yes, Liyanga, if you want to move the other side of questions and whoever you want to pose them to.
Liyanga de Silva:
Yeah. I can segue to a question that is pretty related to that from Thipa Rice who says, "Often I see arguments about caste and people say, 'Reservations exist. Why change anything?'" So they ask, "What sort of parallels do you see with the arguments between reservations and affirmative action in the US?"
Rajesh Sampath:
Harleen, should I start with that one?
Harleen Singh:
Sure, please. Go ahead.
Rajesh Sampath:
Because I have been looking at the constitutional law here in the United States regarding affirmative action. Now that we have three conservative justices appointed by Trump and the fact that an affirmative action case maybe coming up in the future that will be pivotal. If I were to summarize the current legal landscape here in the United States, race was recognized as part of a category that can be used on the decision on admissions that would be beneficial to a school or a university. That's because America's diversifying. So we're assuming that as you become more diverse, the greatest talents and attributes and leaders of our society will come from that diverse pool. Therefore, we should have a vested interest in the usage.
Rajesh Sampath:
But it's under what's called strict scrutiny, meaning it cannot be the overriding example, and it cannot be prejudicial towards other groups. How are you supposed to achieve the goal of diversifying your pipelines of the most underrepresented, here for us would be Black, LatinX, Native American in many of our graduate programs, and also abide by this constitutional principle? So there are debates on both sides, liberal and conservative as to how do we stay within the confines of our current juris bridge?
Rajesh Sampath:
A lot of us though think it's inadequate. We also fear what a conservative reaction would be to the great progress that still needs to be made on Black, LatinX, and Native American representation because you go into undergrads, like many of the alumni, you go to graduate school, then you join the faculty like Harleen and myself. If you look at the landscape of higher education in the United States, there's still immense disparities that we're dealing with.
Rajesh Sampath:
I'd like to hear from Harleen on this because I don't know enough, but my feeling is that the Dalit feminist scholarship is becoming more visible. There is disputes about the appropriation of Dalit feminist scholarship from what would be upper caste allies. So the analogy here is that there's a tremendous amount of work on white allyship, what's even called critical white studies as an outgrowth of critical race theory. Are there limits to middle class, mainstream, center democratic white women attempting to engage in anti-racist work when the legacy of first wave feminism going back to the 19th century as Angela Davis has showed us, was drenched in the racism of its time. So if you look at the debates between the first feminist. Fredrick Douglas, it was the shift of the battle to general patriarchy as opposed to being concerned specifically about the question of racial hierarchy and racial injustice making it an either or, which goes against intersectionality.
Rajesh Sampath:
So similarly, there are debates about who gets to speak in this space, and yet it's a chicken and the egg, which is well, the people who can speak within this space should come from within the space. But if they're not as visible as other groups, well, who will speak with them or try to disseminate the voice? I'm deferring to Harleen here because I'm just very curious how that's going to be received here in the United States or here in the Western academy. So I don't know if Harleen, if you want to take on that.
Harleen Singh:
Raj, I can talk about it, but for the interest of time, I'm just wondering if we should move on to some of the questions as well.
Rajesh Sampath:
Yes.
Harleen Singh:
Liyanga, I looked at some of the questions and I wanted to address a couple of things that maybe... There's a general theme through some of the questions, and maybe just a theme of religion I just wanted to very quickly say. People have asked what'll you do in supposedly casteless systems or where the caste is less relevant, in places where there are more Muslims or Jainism, Buddhism, et cetera. I just wanted to point out that this is the pernicious hold of caste in India or across South Asia that even when casteless religions like Hinduism... Sorry, not caste Hinduism. Sikhism, Islam, Christianity, Jainism, and Buddhism exist, caste still makes its way into it.
Harleen Singh:
So just as an example, one example I'll give you is for example, Christianity in India... And by the way, there's more than 2.5% of 1.3 billion people who are Christians. It's one of the most sizable Christian populations in the world is in South Asia by the way. So in Christianity, for example, in South Asia, Christianity doesn't have caste. However, there are many different demarcations and identifications for Christians in India, but people still recognize those who converted from the untouchables to Christianity and continued to discriminate against them. And in many ways, those communities are really at a loss on all sides because they lose protection under the constitution because they're no longer seen as Dalits or as untouchables or as schedule castes because they're seen as Christians. But in Christianity, they continue to face the discrimination that they would've faced as if they were demarcated.
Harleen Singh:
So they have no constitutional legal protection as Dalits, but then they do not also have full enfranchisement as Christians. So I just wanted to point out that even though we have casteless religions, caste still makes its way into these different religions.
Harleen Singh:
One person pointed out that if our last names weren't Singh or Somput, so I'll let Raj speak for himself. But I want you to know that the last name Singh doesn't tell you anything because the last name Singh comes from Sikhism for me, and Sikhism actually adopted the last name Singh for everybody for men, Cor for women in order to do away with caste so that you could not actually tell a person's caste by their last name. So I just wanted to reference that question to say this.
Harleen Singh:
Liyanga, back to you. Sorry to take that over. But I just saw a bunch of questions on that, and I wanted to collapse it.
Liyanga de Silva:
No, thank you so much for doing that. That helped me out a lot. I think we probably have time for one more question. One from Lina who says that they're a former student of yours, Professor Singh, from 11 years ago. They ask how do Dalit women activists frame their messaging, and how do they frame their messages in order to build allies of Dalit men?
Harleen Singh:
I think this goes back to Raj's question too is how do we... This is the thing. I think this is the large challenge for all of us. On the one hand, do we frame all of these questions as human rights? Do we frame them all as human rights, which is what they are? The rights of women, the rights of untouchables, the rights of people of color. All of these should be human rights and not specific to one identity. On the other hand, then we risk collapsing and losing the specificity of the ways in which each of these systems of oppression work. So that it's very important for us to speak as women, as Dalits, as immigrants, as people, all of these different identities that we have.
Harleen Singh:
Raj, as you pointed out in the question of Dalits women's activism and Dalit people's activism is also complicated not just by appropriation and appropriate allyship with people, but also language. So for example, most of the work of scholarship for us is done in English, and in these so-called elite universities of South Asian, it is done in English as well. Not everybody works in English, and what English does then is collapse the very richness of the vernacular languages and what they produce.
Harleen Singh:
In many places, for example, I went to a conference where one of the women said, and they were speaking from a context where they come from what is known in India as [foreign language]. We would call it tribal, but that's too loose and too I think problematic a term for me. But she said, "How do I talk about rape because to me rape is colonialism. In our languages, there is no word for rape because women in our communities have full control over sexual choices." Now I don't know how much that is true or false, but she said, "But the word rape to us comes from other languages and is not existent in my own language. So then how do I talk about this as a Dalit or as an Adivasi woman who wants to frame rights but has to frame these rights in the language that comes from colonialism to me?" By then, she's referring not just to British colonialism but to the colonialism of the Indian state in the current frame.
Harleen Singh:
So I think Raj, it's not just a question of, and Lee who asked the question, it's not just about how do we become good allies. I think we just need to support the work wherever we can and however we can. But it's also about understanding that not all our systems give full voice to the specificities and diversities in which people want to speak them.
Rajesh Sampath:
Liyanga and Harleen, I think that might be a great way to perhaps give one last remark to the last question at the bottom of the chat and then that will round out our session.
Rajesh Sampath:
To just echo what Harleen had just said, it's not just a question of how do we support and ally? But how do we speak on behalf of or interpret, but how do we support? How do we encourage? That could mean inclusion of more people in journals. It could mean the cultivation of fellowships and scholarships for more doctoral work for people of Dalit background.
Rajesh Sampath:
That points to the last question about identity. If identity is not rooted in DNA or name or any other signifier that's visible, why can't people just throw off the caste system and say that? Well, Ambedkar at the end of his life, after struggling against Hinduism, studying it from all angles as a scholar, maybe one of the greatest of the 20th century, led a group of people, 10,000 Dalits in a mass ceremony to convert to Buddhism. That was his final act.
Rajesh Sampath:
So it raises a very interesting question, and I think again about my context here of race. When Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Clarence Thomas say the best way to stop talking about race is to stop talking about race, and that's how you make it go away. And more nuanced in Clarence Thomas's choice words, "Don't expect a person of color, don't compel them from a free speech perspective, to speak on behalf of a race that they belong to because then they're inviting the stigma of prejudice and racism back on them when they get into a higher position." In his case, a justice on the Supreme Court.
Rajesh Sampath:
So in other words, you just stop talking about it. Well, again, easier said than done because we wouldn't, as Harleen said, had a Black president and very quickly following that the overwhelming reaction to that now 10 years in the making in terms of this resurgence of white nationalism. So we have a long way to go.
Harleen Singh:
I could not agree more, Raj. I could not agree more. I think we're faced with the challenges of our time. And just to the last question, I just want to say it isn't so easy to do away with. I think it's easier for us in the US where the legal systems are easy enough, I can change my last name. You could change your last name, things like that. But on the other hand, in India, your last name, certificates, paperwork, the system doesn't always work for you. It isn't so easy to change your name or to do away with it. Caste is in many different aspects of your life. It isn't just your last name, where you grew up, who you grew up with, your community. Those who are savvy to caste can point caste out even when names are changed. So I think that that's something to understand as well.
Amy Cohen:
We're at the end of our program, and I wanted to thank Professor Singh and Professor Sampath and Liyanga de Silva, our moderator, for what was a most meaningful and thought provoking discussion and a discussion that's so important to be having.
Amy Cohen:
Thank you all for joining us for the final program of our virtual alumni college. We hope you found the programs enriching and informative. We look forward to seeing you at more events, and again, many thanks to Professor Singh and Sampath for this conversation. Everybody be well and be safe and have a safe Fourth of July. Thank you.