#bahujans

[indizombie]

Savarnas often ask ‘would you go for treatment from a doctor who got medical seat using reservation?’ The whole narrative rests on testimonial injustice where the expertise of a DBA individual is discarded, despite having the degree and experience. Interestingly this argument will never be used for doctors who used EWS reservation or even paid management seats. The use of ‘Merit’ against reservation to undermine the intellect and capabilities of DBA community is the most popular example of epistemic injustice done on the community.

Pranav Jeevan, ‘Epistemic Injustice: Does Knowledge have Caste?’, Round Table India

[meetdheeraj]

"The only valid education available in the subcontinent until British came on our shores had been centred on Brahminical scriptures and ritualistic instruments, which were prohibited to the lower castes. The values introduced by colonial education - based on science, the English language, modern jurisprudence and the notion of progress - began to displace the older value system of the upper castes, which was based on the Vedas, the Dharmashastras, Sanskrit and the caste order."

Oh by the way the upper castes were and are small in numbers and Dalit Bahujans were and are the real majority - and this majority was deprived of education; their ideas and life were undermined by Brahminical order until British arrived. So the majority, and I don't mean the fake Hindu majority but the real non-Brahminical majority has lot to thank the British for.

Quote from "Hindu Hoax" essay from the Caravan Magazine

[indizombie]

When knowledge becomes an exclusive product under savarna domination, it creates an unjust system of power hierarchy where knowledge produced and communicated by DBA communities are either discarded or delegitimized without a second thought. The injustice done to a person in their capacity as a knower (producer and communicator of knowledge) is called Epistemic Injustice. This is a concept in social epistemology that refers to the unfair distribution of knowledge, credibility, or intellectual resources when someone is denied access to knowledge or is not believed, despite having relevant knowledge or expertise, because of their social identity, such as their race, caste, gender, class, or disability. The term was coined by a British philosopher, Miranda Fricker.

Pranav Jeevan, ‘Epistemic Injustice: Does Knowledge have Caste?’, Round Table India

[indizombie]

Hermeneutical injustice operates in caste through the lack of available language or conceptual frameworks to describe and articulate the experiences of people from DBA communities. Dominant cultural narratives and discourses do not have adequate means to capture their experiences and this makes it difficult for them to express themselves or be understood by others. Also, most of the scholarship on caste oppression is mostly written by the oppressor castes with a savarna gaze that portrays the oppression in a completely different light. The knowledge and cultural practices of oppressors are always considered classical, and the cultural and artistic products of DBA are relegated to the bottom. The discomfort and suffocation that a DBA individual feels when they enter savarna dominated spaces like academia or media is mainly due to the erasure of identity and cultural shock they experience by not being able to connect or articulate in the language or assimilate into the culture of savarnas. The way to battle hermeneutical injustice is by questioning the language, culture and scholarship created by savarnas, and expanding the vocabulary to be able articulate the experiences of DBA by more inclusion of marginalized groups into academia, media, journalism, law etc.

Pranav Jeevan, ‘Epistemic Injustice: Does Knowledge have Caste?’, Round Table India

[indizombie]

Exclusion is often experienced less as targeted or directly aggressive comments, but by the overrepresentation of majority views and the sidelining of others. Dominant-caste men often crowd the space with discussions that exclude people with different experiences. For example, Moulee, a gay activist from the Bahujan community in southern India, said that the ongoing conversation about marriage equality feels like a privileged one, since marginalized groups are still struggling for more basic rights like education, “and queerness is not the only reason why access to education has been denied.” Ruth Chawngthu, a bisexual tribal woman from India’s northeast, said she’s left most of the online queer spaces, including Harmless Social Distancing, because they didn’t represent her concerns. “I don’t want to be a part of them anymore,” she said. Admins say that groups are apolitical, but in practice what that means is they get to choose what political means.

Ankur Paliwal, ‘Why minorities are abandoning India’s trailblazing queer forums’, Rest of World

[indizombie]

Lost rights are never regained by appeals to the conscience of the usurpers... Because their conscience has to heed to their own needs, primarily. Brahmin-savarna and Bahujan needs don't converge; they'll always be in conflict. So how can the Brahmin-Savarnas and the Bahujans share any common goals, ever? They might, on rare occasions, intersect. But they mostly collide with each other, even at the intersections. So we can't appeal to their reason either. The Brahmin-Savarna Marxists are a good example. The places where Brahmin-Savarna and Bahujan needs intersect are those considered as 'modern': legislatures, government and other public sector institutions, universities etc. Places where reservations bring them together. The Bahujans in these places are not even a 1% minority among all Bahujans. But the Brahmin-Savarnas effectively use these intersections to camouflage the essential character of their relationship with the Bahujans: that of antagonism.

Naren Bedide, ‘Bahujans and Brahmins: Why their realities shall always collide, not converge’, Round Table India

[indizombie]

As old India dies, shouldn't the primary criterion to define classes in India, at least now, be recognized as control over the reins of production rather than just ownership of means of production? Because the orthodox Brahmin Marxist formula, which allowed the most orthodox Brahmins to lead and define 'revolutionary' struggles seems more and more farcical by the day. From Sitaram Yechury to Kanhaiya Kumar, even as their political freedoms seem to be sometimes curtailed, their social and economic freedoms are never affected much. As is the case of Mohan Bhagwat and Narendra Modi, or Sonia Gandhi and Arvind Kejriwal. But it's not the same for the Bahujans: they've to fight for political, social and economic freedoms all the time, simultaneously. They've to fight not just the top 1%, but all of the top 20% of Indians (mostly Brahmin-Savarnas) for their independence.

Naren Bedide, ‘Bahujans and Brahmins: Why their realities shall always collide, not converge’, Round Table India

[indizombie]

If privilege is interpreted as 'unearned advantage', it tells you only half the story. The untold part is that this unearned advantage was gained through expropriating concrete assets from those who 'lack privilege'. That the underprivileged paid for the unearned advantage. The discourse of privileges converts this antagonistic relationship into one of inequality. This has two insidious purposes. One, it places both groups, who are antagonists in reality, on one ground, thus introducing the suggestion that they're equal participants, and the only difference between them being one of degree: one is taller, another is shorter, one went to an elite school, while the other went to a government school and so on. All differences become relative differences. Two, it places the burden of bridging this inequality on the Bahujan, which by now seems like a very logical, natural solution if you fall in line with this train of discourse. She has to improve herself, reform herself, and work harder to reach the level of the Brahmin-Savarna.

Naren Bedide, ‘Bahujans and Brahmins: Why their realities shall always collide, not converge’, Round Table India