Dalit consciousness

der aae, durust aae

Growing up in Karachi, Dalit consciousness came through a series of avoidances, intuitions and not-being-able-to-look-the-other-ways:

1. The awareness of how a devout Muslim society can so comfortably outsource its scavenging tasks to the non-Muslim others (caste is never mentioned).

2. There is Urdu Ashrafia poetry which is almost engineered to evade caste (I touch upon it here and here).

3. A dominant egalitarian Eurocentric understanding of the world that reduces all ills to ‘class’ (this reduction has got a strong pushback in recent years from the Global South).

4. Personal

   1. A November 2024 trip to villages in Sindh where Bhitai and Kabir were juxtaposed in cognitive-dissonating ways.

   2. The Surti-Bohra light-hearted dalliance with Brahmanism.

   3. A nagging intuition that our community was happily churning out ‘order-preservers’ (esp. accountants, lawyers and now software professionals) rather than order-challengers (activists, radicals) or even creatives.

   4. The realization after engaging with Dalit-Bahujan work that if questioning one’s privilege is not done consciously (and conscientiously) then:

      1. it becomes a facile and dismissive o-so-privileged-really-can’t-compare-with-their-plight crocodile tear.

      2. solidarity slips into a patronizing appropriation of the Other.

5. And that perhaps led me to put up this collection of Dalit thought and history of struggles online.