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Coming Out as Dalit
A Memoir of Surviving India's Caste System (Updated Edition)
by Yashica Dutt
ebook
1 of 1 copy available
“A moving personal story and a useful educational examination of persistent discrimination”—Kirkus Reviews
Winner of the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puruskar, 2020
Born into a “formerly untouchable manual-scavenging family in small-town India,” Yashica Dutt was taught from a young age to not appear “Dalit looking.” Although prejudice against Dalits, who compose 25% of the population, has been illegal since 1950, caste-ism in India is alive and well. Blending her personal history with extensive research and reporting, Dutt provides an incriminating analysis of caste’s influence in India over everything from entertainment to judicial systems and how this discrimination has carried over to US institutions.
Dutt traces how colonial British forces exploited and perpetuated a centuries-old caste system, how Gandhi could have been more forceful in combatting prejudice, and the role played by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, whom Isabel Wilkerson called “the MLK of India’s caste issues” in her book Caste. Alongside her analysis, Dutt interweaves personal stories of learning to speak without a regional accent growing up and desperately using medicinal packs to try to lighten her skin.
Published in India in 2019 to acclaim, this expanded edition includes 2 new chapters covering how the caste system traveled to the US, its history here, and the continuation of bias by South Asian communities in professional sectors. Amid growing conversations about caste discrimination prompting US institutions including Harvard University, Brandeis University, the University of California system, and the NAACP to add caste as a protected category to their policies, Dutt’s work sheds essential light on the significant influence caste-ism has across many aspects of US society.
Raw and affecting, Coming Out as Dalit brings a new audience of readers into a crucial conversation about embracing Dalit identity, offering a way to change the way people think about caste in their own communities and beyond.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
February 6, 2024 -
Formats
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780807045299
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780807045299
- File size: 1501 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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December 15, 2023
A Brooklyn-based Indian journalist recounts her childhood "passing" as a higher caste and provides an elucidating history of Dalit discrimination and activism. In a thoroughgoing work previously published in India in 2019--and expanded here with two new chapters, "Silicon Valley, Model Minority, and the Myth of Castelessness" and "The Reckoning of Caste in Tech"--Dutt reveals the persistent prejudice still surrounding this ancient system of oppression. Although outlawed by Indian law, discrimination against "untouchability"--those who traditionally fall into the lower castes such as Dalit ("manual scavengers")--stubbornly persists. Laws about "reservation," or affirmative action quotas such as the 22.5% allowed for Dalits in civil service jobs, only add to the prejudice and resentment among Indian social classes. Born in a Dalit family aspiring to educational and material success for generations, Dutt was taught by her mother to "pass" as upper-caste Hindu in her early schools and social settings in order to avoid the stigma of being Bhangi, or "low caste." The author instructively compares this common practice of "passing" to light-skinned Black Americans passing for white. As Dutt discovered, learning perfect speaking English was crucial to gain entrance to the best schools and secure lucrative employment. In an illuminating history lesson, the author explores the influence of early Dalit activist B.R. Ambedkar (1891-1956) and the incremental progress in Dalit rights, at least in the public sector. Corporations, however, are not subject to many anti-discrimination laws, and discrimination continues to proliferate, especially in the Indian-dominated tech industry. Dutt reveals how Indian media features relatively few Dalit views and how the mainstream feminist movement has essentially ignored Dalit voices. Her own "coming out" occurred after years of inward searching, as well as engagement with other Dalits struggling with many of the same issues. Both a moving personal story and a useful educational examination of persistent discrimination.COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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