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?
You are blind for sure if you can see the sun in the sky but cannot see Castes in India
— Harshal Priyadarshi (@TheJaiBhimWala) July 13, 2022
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.
Seen in Delhi metro: Mother and child take seats while the child’s nanny sits on the floor on a fairly empty train. Caste/class discrimination really is space-agnostic. pic.twitter.com/cawsIU2zWs
— Sanya Dhingra (@DhingraSanya) January 20, 2018
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.
Yuvraj Singh was arrested yesterday for using a casteist slur but got an interim bail almost immediately. The union govt could have manufactured another episode of prime time drama like in Aryan Khan case but they didn’t want conversations around caste, unlike drugs & Bollywood.
— Siddharth (@DearthOfSid) October 18, 2021
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.
#Uttarakhand | A Dalit woman lost her job after authorities decided that norms were allegedly flouted in her appointment
— Hindustan Times (@htTweets) December 23, 2021
Her appointment as a cook in a government school had earlier sparked a boycott of midday meals by “upper caste” students
Full story – https://t.co/m3I6i0jkw9 pic.twitter.com/bHv82cCQB7
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.
#NCRB2019 shows that prisons disproportionately hold Dalit, Adivasi & Muslim persons. https://t.co/9YBYXSXt2p
— Detention Solidarity (@detsolnet) September 1, 2020
11. They don’t see the rise in crimes against Dalits in recent years.
Raise your voice for #Save_Unnao_Ki_Beti but please ask yourself
— Mohammad Salman (@writesalman) February 18, 2021
Why all such heinous crimes are on rise ?
Why most of the victims are from Tribal, Dalit & minority communities ?
Did I genuinely cares for victims ?
What I am going to do in this fight for dignity & Justice ? pic.twitter.com/0yIVjSXDri
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.
A thread on Dalit massacres in independent India. pic.twitter.com/5Kgf0qt7CE
— Lokesh (@lokeshbag67) July 14, 2022
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.