So you say you don’t see caste. What’s up with that? Do you need to pay a visit to the optometrist or do you just blissfully turn a blind eye to everything around you as long as it doesn’t directly bother you?
I’m sorry to burst your utopia bubble, but when people say shit like “I don’t see caste,” this is what it translates to:
1. They don’t see that they condition their domestic help to sit on the floor and eat/drink out of separate utensils.
2. They don’t see that their gated community doesn’t allow domestic help and blue-collar workers to use their elevators and has separate entrances for them.
3. They don’t see the casteist slurs embedded into their daily tongue.
4. They don’t see that Dalits still can’t enter temples.
5. They don’t see that marginalized communities are excluded from predominantly upper caste areas.
6. They don’t see the massive lack of fundamental facilities such as electricity, sanitation or water supply in lower caste neighbourhoods.
7. They don’t see the struggles of Adivasis to preserve their land and culture.
8. They don’t see the Dalit cooks being fired from schools because upper caste children refuse to touch the food they cooked.
9. They don’t see Dalits being slaughtered for sitting on a chair or sporting a moustache or riding a horse.
10. They don’t see that the number of undertrial prisoners in India are disproportionately Dalits.
11. They don’t see the rise in crimes against Dalits in recent years.
12. They don’t see how they’re disrespecting lower caste communities by rejecting the history of gory violence and painful humiliation they have suffered over the years.
If you are caste-blind, 9/10 chances are you enjoy the privilege of being upper caste and thus are not privy to the discrimination and mortification our SCs and STs have been victims of their entire life. Acknowledge your ignorance and stop saying shit like “eradicate reservation, casteism doesn’t exist anymore.” Open your eyes, it does.