Last week, a teenaged boy was attacked in Limbodara, in Gujarat’s Gandhinagar district, for daring to wear a moustache that suggested his masculinity was on par with that of his Darbarcaste neighbours. The attackers were trying to invoke an ancient caste privilege. But immediately after the assault, Dalit men across the state and beyond began sharing selfies of their own staches, changing their social media pictures t o a sign t hat said ‘Mr Dalit’, with a crown and a glorious moustache above it. If the attackers were trying to repress Dalits, they did the opposite – making the upturned moustache the symbol of Dalit assertion.
This is the same macho confidence and cool that Bhim Army founder Chandrashekhar ‘Ravan’ had patented, when he put up his ‘Great Chamaars’ signboard in Saharanpur and mobilised his motorbikeriding Ambedkarite comrades.
Chandrabhan Prasad, entrepreneur and thinker, describes it as a new and very different kind of assertion. “It is not about hiding your identity or being afraid, or taking people to court for using caste names. Now they’re saying, we’re chamar and we’re great,” says Prasad.
How one looks and what one wears is crucial to this assertion. “Dalits have to claim status, to prove society wrong. Thakurs and Jats don’t need to dress up, to get others to do salaams. But the idea that Dalits are dirty was a huge historical burden for my generation, and their hard labour left them little leisure to groom themselves or look good. But now, for the generation that has grown up in cities, or been exposed to jobs in factories and services, it’s changed.”
For many historically oppressed groups, style can be about conveying selfhood. If African Americans used their “cool” to show defiance and contempt rather than deference, a Dalit who chooses to wear a Western outfit is casting his lot with modernity and individual agency, rejecting caste strangleholds.
No one was more aware of the social power of apparel than BR Ambedkar, who wore three-piece suits, in stark contrast to Gandhian khadi, and exhorted Dalit men and women to dress at least as well as the upper castes. The recent Tamil movie Kabali carried on that proud spirit, with Rajnikanth as an indentured-worker-turneddon in spiffy suits and sunglasses declaring that his clothes were his resistance. “Kabali incorporated some everyday struggles and politics in Tamil Nadu. While there is no outright opposition to a Dalit in decent clothes, there is definitely some suspicion and discomfort,” says C Lakshmanan, associate professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies.
“It makes the blood of upper castes boil,” says Jayanti Makadiya of the Gujarat Dalit Sangathan. “Jab ghulam rehte hain to kuch nahi hota hai (When people stay enslaved, it’s all fine). But as social consciousness grows, people find the courage to live like others and this awakening is the reason that attacks happen,” he says.
In the graded inequality of Indian society, castes have always been demarcated by elaborate rules on what to eat and wear, how to move and where to live. “In Gujarat, we could not wear full-length chornos and dhotis or grow moustaches. We had to carry our shoes in our hands in the presence of upper castes. A dhoti could not have a border,” says Makadiya. Lower castes were made to wear their abjection on their bodies, across India. While the doms were only permitted to wear the cast-offs of the dead, Mahars had to identify themselves with a black thread around their necks. Women could not wear gold jewelry, and wore iron or silver, if at all. “If a women was wearing a thick anklet, she was likely to be lower caste, while upper caste women decorated their noses and ears with jewelry. Dalit women often wore a longer, baggier kameez rather than a blouse, and wrapped their saris differently, sometimes with a tie around the waist to let them work more easily,” says Prasad.
Kerala had one of the most elaborate sign systems for caste differentiation, which included clothing, jewellery, hairstyles, names and food. Your caste determined how close you could stand to a Brahmin, or if you could even be within their sight and hearing. Lower castes were not allowed headgear or umbrellas, the women could not cover their upper bodies in the presence of ‘melajati’ upper caste men. If you had the presumption to grow a moustache or cover your upper body, you had to pay a tax to the ruler. Kerala saw a series of agitations, from the Channar rebellion for women’s right to cover their chests, to the 1915 Ayyankali-inspired protest where Pulaya women cast away their kallumalas (stone bead necklaces), symbols of an oppressive identity.
But for the most part, the visual markers of caste have been obliterated by modernity and consumerism. Most Dalits we a r jeans, shirts and dark glasses, and the young women are fashion-conscious. “Nobody is working in the landlord’s field any more, they’re dressing up their bikes, wearing good clothes,” says Prasad. With no nostalgia for traditional attire, Dalits have every reason to be fashion-forward. And this impression of panache has made other communities insecure; recall the PMK’s Vanniyar leader S Ramadoss warning of Dalit men “luring” away upper caste women.
These tussles are getting more intense because of the ascendance of reactionary and right-wing forces, says Lakshmanan. “Those who attacked the boy in Limbodra were clearly told by their elders that in the old times, one could punish a Dalit for having a moustache — it has not happened in recent memory. These incidents are happening now because a section of Hindu society is nostalgic about their good old days,” says Prasad.
But as the moustache-twirling statement by Dalits makes clear, there’s no going back on freedom and dignity. years, TTT has done 75 brand collaborations with Cadbury, United Colors of Benetton, Accenture, Tinder, Kohler, and others, with writers having to submit stories around a theme or word (say, ‘united’ for UCB). TTT then picks the best of the lot to be published on its Facebook page, which has a audience of over one million. A collaboration with an international brand can pay between Rs 10 and 15 lakh. Ruparel says writers whose work is published, can make up to Rs 1,000.
When Anuj Gosalia started Terribly Tiny Tales Facebook page in 2013, it was just a group of about a dozen friends swapping stories. The 31-year-old says he had no long-term business plan and his fulltime occupation at the time was “trying out different hairstyles.” The following year, Ruparel joined him. The two were running an ad agency at the time called Not Like That. It all fit. “About 70% of our revenue comes from brand collaborations,” says Ruparel, 29.
Branching off into Terribly Tiny Talkies in 2015 was a natural progression. Their YouTube channel with short films between five and ten minutes has over 1.4 lakh subscribers. Among their mostwatched is a 12-minute film called Interior Café Night. Released last July, it has actor Naseeruddin Shah in the lead and over 2.6 million views.
The online- book- video j ourney is neither new nor unique to TTT. Brandon Stanton who runs the wildly popular Facebook page Humans of New York released a book of his intimate street interviews in October 2013. He has now started his own show on Facebook where instead of a picture and a quote-caption, one can watch the interviewee speak.
As for bite-sized literature making it to books, there are examples aplenty. Rupi Kaur, whose short free-verse poems and illustrations were popular on Tumblr, released her book Milk and Honey in December 2015. She has now come out with her second book, The Sun and Her Flowers. Last year saw the release of Manoj Pandey’s Tales on Tweet, which got Salman Rushdie and Margaret Atwood to contribute tweetsized stories under 140 characters. Last month I was in Bhutan, where there is a happy synthesis between plant and man. Instead of attempting to dominate over the natural world, the people blend with it. And nature is kind to them. In the valleys, apples and peaches flourish. So do roses and sunflowers. The Bhutanese take pride in the cleanliness of their roads and public places, and the neatness of their shop fronts and houses. You don’t see any litter lying around. And no sooner was I back on the outskirts of Dehradun that I was greeted by mountains of garbage – probably the same garbage that had been lying there the previous week. Of course we have the excuse of a massive population, but sheer apathy has a lot to do with it.
Apathy is the root cause of most of the disasters that we have witnessed during last August: Several child deaths in a Gorakhpur eternal snows. They are disappointed to find that I live in two small rooms — one for my books and one for my bed and boxes. And of course there is a window, to let in the clouds and sunshine. But as for snow….Well, I’ll tell you a secret. I hate snow. After the first fall, it’s messy, it’s dirty, and it’s dangerous. Dear tourist, be careful not to slip on my steps. Watching the news channels always depresses me. Recent events moved me to verse (or worse), and I jotted down the following lines for Mr Trump and Mr Kim, who have been threatening each other with instant obliteration: Rash men make bombs, We like to curse ’em, But time will come When they must burst ’em. You’ve made your cake, sirs – Now you must eat it, The grave is dug – And you’re standing in it!
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