Do caste experiences and untouchability really exist in India, particularly in urban and middle-class India?
The answer depends on who you ask although the usual newsroom tendency is to turn the nose away.
So, how do we find out beyond what we think we know?
In the first half of 2013, the mass-circulated Kannada newspaper Praja Vani, from the Bangalore-based Deccan Herald group, devoted its op-ed page to address the issue.
Christened Jathi Samvada, every Monday the op-ed page was anchored by two scholars: Prof Gopal Guru of the centre for political studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, and Prof Sundar Sarukkai of the Manipal Centre for Philosophy and Humanities.
Every week, for 24 weeks, the professors wrote and edited articles on caste and posed questions on various themes for public responses. The two scholars report their findings in the latest issue of Economic & Political Weekly (EPW) and why they took up the project:
“One, we felt that there was a continued disconnect between academic writing on caste and society, and popular narratives around it.
“Reading news reports on caste or watching the news reportage on issues related to caste might make one believe that there has really been no serious intellectual reflection on the dynamics of caste.
“The public discourse on caste in these mediums ignores the rich sociological literature on this topic.
“An objective was to bring this sociological literature to the attention of the readers, thereby doing two things: one, expose the readers to these theories and empirical results which might then have some impact on the naïve beliefs about caste and, two, make the readers challenge these theories about caste from the perspective of their own caste experiences.”
For the record, on the birthday of the Constitution maker B.R. Ambedkar in April 2012, the entire issue of Praja Vani was guest-edited by the noted Dalit poet Devanoor Mahadeva.
Read the full article: Publicly talking about caste
Visit the Praja Vani archives: Jathi Samvada
Image: courtesy Barefoot Philosophers
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