|
Reflections of a Queer Dalit
Ghana bargad ka peid: Ladai shuru hoti hai mujh se, lekin ban jaati hai sab
ki [A dense banyan tree: the fight begins with me but it becomes everyone’s.] 1
- Martin Macwan
Dalit refers to people who have been historically oppressed in
the Hindu caste system in India. It includes castes such as Chamar, Musahar, and
many others. Queer refers to those who do not conform to the norms governing
gender and sexuality and are victimised in a hetero-patriarchal order. It
includes same-sex desiring people, including those who identify as lesbian, gay,
bisexual, transgender (LGBT), hijra, kothi and many others.
In this essay I will
begin with an account of my own experience of being both, dalit and queer. I
will then reflect on some similarities and differences between the queer and the
dalit ideologies.
I A Queer Dalit
My jati (sub-caste) is Jatav, which comes
under the Chamar caste. In terms of caste prescriptions, Chamars are leather
workers.
I don’t know anyone in my immediate or distant family who works on
leather. My father was initially a Government employee and then he became a trader
of scrap iron. He was the first in my family to go to college; my mother, the
first woman in my family to be formally employed (as a school teacher). I am a
law professional. I received my education in Delhi, Bangalore and London.
As a
child, and with a naïve understanding of the caste system, I believed I belonged
to the Vaish (trader) caste because my father and my grandfather were traders.
It wasn’t until later that I found I belong to a Scheduled Caste. My parents
never told me. From their experience of being identified as dalit and being
constantly picked on and humiliated, perhaps they thought it better not to tell
me. They feared it might bring me an inferiority complex.
Far from telling me,
my parents gave me a fictitious surname, Nimbekar, to be able to pass off as a
caste Hindu. My parents never even applied for a scheduled caste certificate for
me, keeping me from a range of reservation benefits in education and in
employment.
Thus I remained a closet dalit all through my school and college.
I
cannot exactly recall at what point I learnt of my dalit origin. I suppose there
were enough hints all around me but I was not sensitive to decoding them. Yet,
the slow and gradual realisation that I was not a Vaish shook my very sense of
identity. Before that I might have been sympathetic or perhaps even
condescending of dalits. It was quite another experience to realise that I
myself was one. It stripped me of my make-belief identity and left me grappling
with a new one. No doubt my new identity as dalit filled some missing links in
my understanding of myself; but I was left with a sense of betrayal without
knowing who betrayed me. Was it my parents? Was it the social compulsions under
which they acted?
I came out as dalit the very first time at the age of 18, to a
room mate at my college hostel. He was surprised and said I don’t look like one.
I was momentarily pleased, relieved that I look as good as dominant caste Hindus
but it left me wondering what dalits look like. I asked my room mate. Hesitantly
he answered, pointing to darker complexion as an identifying characteristic.
This wasn’t entirely satisfactory. It is not only the colour of skin. There are
many other aspects of appearance and behaviour, like timidity, lack of
confidence, and the inability to speak fluent English (which was perhaps the
most important in my college).
More often though, caste is not a matter of
speculation or indeed coming out – as in my case. In a more localised context,
most people know what caste everyone else is. Like they say about Hinduism, it
is a way of life; a very disrespectful way of life indeed.
I will now switch
from caste to gender and sexuality.
My childhood memories of sexual excitement
revolve around the genitalia of men. I never told anyone. Not because I thought
it was abnormal to get excited at the sight of male genitalia. To me any
genitalia, male or female was a dirty thing and therefore not to be talked
about. I was never entirely gender conforming either. I liked dolls. I liked to
cook and clean. I preferred being with girls and playing games that girls
played. I liked to put on my mother’s saree. I wanted to learn some form of
dance but my mother said it’s for girls. My sisters hid their cook books from
me. My brother mocked me.
As I grew older, much of the sexual imagery in my mind
was around male bodies. I thought I was the only one because all the other boys
only talked about girls. I realised I was different in an odd sort of a way. I
rationalised it as a passing phase of adolescence. I thought when I turn 18 I
will magically turn into a man as a man ought to be. That didn’t happen. I
waited another couple of years for nature to take its course, but no luck. This
made me very anxious, worried and even tense. I lived with it, in the closet,
refusing to do anything but worrying about it all the time.
Like my dalit
identity, I cannot exactly recall at what point I learnt I am queer. I was of
course always conscious of my non-conformity with the norms governing gender and
sexuality. Yet I believed I would somehow grow into a different adult, an adult
who is perfectly compliant with hetero-patriarchal dictates. Far from accurate
information about people like myself, I was fed negative and false information,
like homosexuality is a sin, a disease. It took a lot of courage to acknowledge
who I am, and to adopt a new identity. No doubt my new identity as queer filled
some missing links in my understanding of myself; but I was again left with a
sense of betrayal without knowing who betrayed me. Was it my family or friends?
Was it the social compulsions and the misinformation under which they acted?
I came out to my family at the age of 24. I came out more
openly a year later to my friends and colleagues while I was
in London. Coming out since then has been recurrent.
II
Some Similarities, Some Differences
The element of coming out could well be
common to both, dalit and queer identities, as in my case. Unlike race or
gender, caste and sexuality are not always obviously visible.
Both are pan
identities that include many sub-identities within. As a Jatav I am dalit, so is
somebody else belonging to the Musahar caste, or Kumhar or several other
scheduled castes. I identify as gay, and therefore consider myself queer, but so
does a woman who identifies as lesbian or bisexual.
People belonging to either
or both may not necessarily identify as queer or dalit. They may instead prefer
to identify exclusively with their respective sub-identities. For example many
Hijras (transgender people) may not even know of a pan identity like queer and
may identify as Hijras, not queer. Equally, many dalit people may refer to
themselves by their caste or subcaste, not as dalit.
Often there is strict
segregation amidst different dalit castes, on similar lines as between dalit
castes and dominant castes. Some dalit castes look down upon other dalit castes
as inferior to themselves, thereby setting a hierarchy within. On somewhat
similar lines (although not entirely systemic as dalit hierarchies), many gay
men look down upon transgendered or bisexual men, many kothi men don’t like
being called gay, many men who have sex with men (MSM) don’t like to be
identified with any sexual identity at all.
Many queer people remain closeted.
To avoid stigma and discrimination, many people do not own up to being queer.
Many dalit people (especially those who are educated and well employed) do not
own up to being Dalit. Some adopt fictitious surnames to appear to be dominant
caste Hindus or convert into Christianity, Islam or Buddhism; thereby forsaking
their dalit identity.
Women are singularly absent in both the discourses.
Lesbian women find themselves struggling to find space and visibility in the
queer discourse. Women’s issues are often neglected in the dalit discourse.
Class plays an important role in both. It multiplies manifold the elements of
vulnerability and humiliation. There is a chronic and systemic reason why
majority of dalits languish at the lower ends of class hierarchy. They are twice
victimised, by caste as well as class. Of the queer people, the most obviously
visible are the Hijras and the Kothis. Their obvious transgender appearance
takes away their privilege of coming out. In a sense, they are the most out
there. They bear the brunt of hetero-patriarchal oppression. In this manner,
class takes away the negotiability of both, dalits and queers, by highlighting
their visibility and making their vulnerability and humiliation almost
inevitable.
It would be interesting to enquire into the caste and class
background of Hijras and Kothis. Most of them are from the lower ends of the
class hierarchy. Their caste background is a matter of speculation but given the
close link between caste and class, it would not be surprising if many of them
are actually dalits.
As ideologies, both are responses of resistance against marginalisation and oppression. Both have been consciously and politically
claimed as terms of empowerment in glorifying precisely that which was
previously condemned or served as a basis for oppression. Dalit literally
translates as downtrodden, queer as odd. There is a sense of empowerment in
calling ourselves what we are, recognising and being conscious of our status or
that which is ascribed to us anyway.
A significant difference between dalit and
queer identities is on the lines of mobility. A queer identity is a subject of
some amount of fluidity. For example, a woman may self identify as mostly
heterosexual, but occasionally bisexual; a gay man could get married to a woman,
thereby appearing to have moved from a homosexual identity to a heterosexual
one. Such fluidity of identity is not available to dalits. Caste identity is
fixed at birth. Once a dalit, always a dalit.
As ideologies, dalit is
comparatively older than queer. Dalit came about in the first half of the 20th
century; queer in India came about in its very end, in the late 1990’s. Also, the
former has a much larger support base in terms of numbers, and in terms of
political power. There are political parties like the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP)
that chiefly represent Dalits. There is no such equivalent for queer people. The
queer ideology in India is new and emerging, with very few people who identify
as queer. That is because the queer discourse in an urban, English speaking
discourse that is not always embraced by all.
III Conclusion
Articulation and mobilising around issues of social justice, oppression and discrimination
appears to have its own hierarchies. It is as if certain kinds of suffering are
more worthy than others. To the left, class as an institution is pivotal; to the
feminists it is gender; to the dalits it is caste; to the queers it is
compulsory heterosexuality. There appears to be a tendency to prioritise
different axes of social injustice. Issues of class and poverty appear to be on
the top, next comes caste, then it is gender, and so on. Sexuality is low in
this scheme, if it is at all there.
Social reality is rarely ever neatly
organized into perfect sample types. A dalit woman combines the dynamics of
caste and gender in her single identity. A dalit muslim woman carries another
axis of religious minority. A disabled dalit muslim woman carries another axis,
of disability. A disabled dalit muslim lesbian carries yet another axis, of
sexual orientation. Thus caste might connect with gender, gender with race, race
with caste, caste with sexuality, all together, and so on and so forth.
A sample
of such interconnections, my conversations with my mother have fuelled my
interest in the dynamics between caste and sexuality. In my attempt to share my
life with her – she as a dalit woman and me as a queer dalit – I often draw
analogies between casteist and hetero-patriarchal oppression.
Perhaps most
important about the voices of the subordinated speaking for themselves and to
each other, as in the case of conversations between me and my mother, is that it
offers a common ground for dialogue and debate. It offers an opportunity to
affirm stigmatised identities and restores value to what was previously
perceived as abominable. Thus the identity of dalit or queer end up affirming
what was previously considered with derogation. Perhaps the best example of the
affirming voices lie in the slogans Black is Beautiful or Gay is Good; both of
which try and turn an identity which was previously stigmatised into the
identity of a human person to be treated with dignity.
At the moment there is
little to speak of any alliance between dalit and queer but it is of immense
interest to me to speculate on how the two might relate with each other. I
wonder if there could there be an alliance from which both could mutually gain
and draw strength from.
I hope that a more democratic political/social culture
may emerge around certain shared values, such as the common humanity of all
people oppressed on account of identity.
It is with this hope that I have
written this. The subject has rich potential for further enquiry, dialogue and
debate.
Acknowledgments: I am grateful to my mother for giving me the
opportunity to explore the commonality between our lives; to my friend and
fellow activist, Arvind Narrain for sharing one of his draft papers on the
subject; to the Indian Institute of Dalit Studies (IIDS) for letting me use
their library; to the South and Southeast Asia Resource Centre on Sexuality,
where I work, for allowing me office time to work on this essay; to my friend
and former colleague, Richa Singh for useful discussions; to Pramada Menon,
Radhika Chandiramani, Nivedita Menon, Umakant, and Martin Macwan for their
general guidance and encouragement; to Prabha Nagaraja, Arpita Das, Dilip
Simeon, Jaya Sharma, Lesley Esteves, Mario D’Penha and Janette Sunita for their
inputs on draft versions. The responsibility for the way the arguments are
shaped and possible errors is of course mine.
1. Macwan, Martin, Meri Kathaa:
Dalit Yatna, Sangharsh Aur Bhavishye, Translated by Ramnaresh Soni, Vani
Prakashan, New Delhi, 2006, p. 21.
Sumit Baudh works on sexuality and law. His
areas of interest include the human rights of queers, dalits, and undocumented
migrant workers in India. Sumit obtained his LLB from the National Law School of
India University and his LLM from the London School of Economics. An Advocate
(Delhi Bar), and a non-practising Solicitor (England and Wales), he has worked
with the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) and the AMAN Trust, both
NGOs based in India. Sumit is presently located at the South and Southeast Asia
Resource Centre on Sexuality, in Delhi.
|
