#44 FiLiA meets: Vandana Aparanti
Vandana Aparanti is an anti-caste activist and expert in the field of oppressed caste women’s rights. She is co-founder and the Chair of STOP gender based caste oppression, one of the only women’s organisation raising awareness about caste discrimination in India and the UK. Vandana has been into active campaigning to bring caste legislation into British law, participating in protests and events around the issue. Vandana has spoken at a number of events about human rights violations on oppressed caste women.
Vandana holds a Masters in Sociology and is currently working as a Domestic Violence Officer in a well-known BME charity in London.
Vandana is speaking at the FiLiA Conference in 2019.
Listen here (Transcript below);
Transcript:
Kruti from FiLiA meets Vandana Aparanti
K – Could you introduce yourself and tell us what you’re fighting for and tell us why that’s important to you.
V – I am from the UK and fighting for the oppressed caste women. I do not like to call myself a Dalit but the world calls us Dalit which means crushed so I will always refer to us as oppressed caste women and not Dalit. It is important for me because the oppressed caste women are at the forefront of all the atrocities. They are the ones who are the most vulnerable and easy targets. Humiliating the oppressed caste women is humiliating the whole community and that is why I am fighting for this cause.
K – Could you introduce to us what the caste system is?
V – The caste system is a very old hierarchical system and has been practised in the South Asian communities and countries. It’s a rigid system and a water tight compartment. You cannot go vertically upwards. That’s the main thing about the caste system. It is divided into four categories mainly. The first one is the Brahmins, the second is the Kshatriya, third the Vaishya and fourth the Shudras.
The Brahmins were the teachers or priests and it was believed that they have come from the Brahma’s head. This is a religious god. The Kshatriya were the warriors who came from the arms of the God Brahma. The third category, the Vaishya, the traders who came from the thighs. The Shudras did all the menial jobs and came from the Brahma’s feet. These are the four categories the caste system is divided.
There is one that is outcast, the Dalits which is the fifth one which is not even included in the caste system known as the untouchables. These are the people who are the most oppressed and known as the Dalits.
These main castes are divided into 3000 castes and these 3000 castes are again divided into 25,000 sub-castes. Each one is based on a specific occupation.
The uniqueness of the caste system is that if you are born in one caste, you die in that caste. So basically it is an enclosed class. So you cannot change your caste.
K – So there’s no opportunity to move up, like other forms of oppression.
V – It’s a graded inequality and is arranged in an ascending scale of virulence and a descending scale of contempt. These castes have no power, the lower castes and have no status and are regarded as dirty and polluted.
Women are the most vulnerable people in society. They are humiliated and live in sub-human conditions, they undergo slavery. In India they are paraded naked, their nails are removed sometimes. People look at them as property, their bodies are property. Sometimes they have to eat obnoxious substances. They are at the mercy of the governing castes.
Also the Adivasi, who are the tribal people who live in the jungles of India. The atrocities are at such an extent that even taking a wedding procession onto the street is something the dominant caste do not like. They do not even like men to have moustaches or wearing nice clothes. That is what is going on in South Asia.
K – So in India and South Asian countries they are violated and humiliated and not allowed to behave like other people.
V – Even in urban places it’s the same. In big cities, you’ve heard about, a woman doing her doctorate in Mumbai, she committed suicide because she was targeted for two years. So not just in the rural area also in the urban areas.
The Indian Silicon Valley cities like Hyderabad, Lucknow, Patna even in these places you will find so many cases. This is the tip of the iceberg. There are so many other things happening and not reported to the police.
The mind-set hasn’t changed. They might be wearing modern clothes but it doesn’t mean their mind-set has changed.
They want to continue with it because they want to have their supremacy and their authority and to protect their privileges. That is the reason they continue doing it.
They are brought up in those circumstances. They are taught – this is our caste and this other caste who is your neighbour is a poor caste so you don’t have to respect those people. So right from a young age they are moulded into those thoughts at home and they listen to this, that is why it’s so common.
K – Do you think there’s any changes at all or is it a perpetual problem?
V – I don’t think it is changing with the younger generation. The reason being, as an affirmative action, India has a reservation for the lower caste and the upper caste feel that this is a privilege given to them and they don’t deserve it. But that is not the case. If you don’t have affirmative action, how do you expect the lower caste to come up, they have been out of education for years and years and the upper castes have been in education for thousands of years.
So if you do not have this affirmative action, I would say not only affirmative action we must have something more than reservation. But if reservation is looked at from the angle that this is something they do not deserve, then it’s a question. Then you will never have the younger generation coming out of the mind-set. It is fixed in their mind that these people have reservations and so they are taking up our seats.
Reservation was not the demand of the lower caste at any time. It was given as an affirmative action. If you want to abolish the caste system, then you have to not follow it. Why are there higher castes? By saying you are from a higher caste is saying you have those privileges.
K – What’s happening now. Are there organisations doing anything? Is the Government talking about this?
V – Under the Constitution of India, untouchability has been abolished but it doesn’t look like it when you look at it. Atrocities are happening and have risen. What does that show? It shows it has not been implemented. The conviction rates are also very low. This shows it’s not working.
K – What should the Government be doing?
V – I would like to say that after 70 years of independence and the same things happening in our country, we should be spreading the information throughout our networks and getting it onto discussion papers wherever possible. Just because it is going under the radar and people are not asking these questions. We can’t be just looking at it and saying – this is not going to go away; this is going to stay forever – no. Unless we get it across the table, it should be a global issue at the moment because it’s been happening for so many years and nothing has been done about it.
K – It’s happening in the UK as well. The Government Equalities Office in 2010 said that caste discrimination and harassment still exists in the UK and there was a consultation in 2017 that concluded that the Government wouldn’t be introducing caste into law and it would rely on case law for legal protection in cases of caste discrimination.
What is happening in the UK? Has anything changed? What do you make of the 2017 conclusion?
V – The Government was going to repeal it but they have not done it yet. Now we are preparing the MPs to ask questions and support us when the matter of repeal goes to the commons. This is what is happening at the moment. We are already doing the ground work by preparing the MPs to ask questions so let’s see what happens.
K – What would you like FiLiA or any of us to do? How can we help and how can make sure that anyone who is at risk of discrimination or violence due to their caste here in the UK and abroad? How can we help those people?
V – I would like FiLiA to help in spreading this information throughout our networks. We have organisations in the UK who can help like CasteWatchUK. We can help anyone going through harassment or atrocity in the UK. But before it comes to the law, it’s not in the law so we have to go by case laws at the moment. Let’s try and keep ourselves positive that something good with come out of it and we are there to help of course.