IAMD - DIRECTED STUDIO MINI PRESENTATION

KEVIN ILANGO
NBC’s The Office Season 9 Episode 14. NBC’s The Office Season 9 Episode 14.

I had often wondered whether the concept of “caste”

had any resonance anywhere other than India. It was
surprising to me suddenly see it come across a show
that I had been playing in the background. It sent a
sudden jolt through me because “untouchables” in pop
culture largely refers to strong, undefeatable charac-
ters. And to hear it here used in a context that is local
and national to me made me realise that the context
has indeed arrived, and is also open game for satire.
In cases like these, I believe it is important from who we
hear about caste, and how we hear about it from them.

NBC’s The Office Season 9 Episode 14.

Netflix’s Hollywood 2020. Netflix’s Hollywood 2020.

Although I think it is possible that “untouchability” as a

term could have travelled without much difficulty, it is
still surprising that in popular culture, the concept of
caste can be understood.

In this scene, from Netflix’s “Hollywood” (2020), a

character who is not film royalty in its Golden Age
identifies how casteism is also a manifestation of
elitism culture, i.e. how it places value on who is seen
more and most often.

Netflix’s Hollywood 2020.

 In this article, MN Srinivas, one of modern India’s earliest social anthropologists,
makes the claim that because agricultural production changed so drastically
under British colonialism, caste as a system was eroding.

He would refer to himself an “atheist and a rationalist” as well as a “Hindu and a

Brahmin”. While his scholarly and research contributions are huge, certain passag-
es from his personal diaries bring his methodology under scrutiny.

ABOVE: Sourced from Business-

MN Srinivas
Standard.com
“An Obituary on Caste as a System”
Economic and Political Weekly. February 2003.
BELOW: Sourced from asiasociety.org
In this essay by Richard Kamei, himself a
scholar and indigenous to Bhutan, in his
evaluation of the famous anthropologist
of MN Srinivas, was able to find moments
of bias that gave hints to a particular
schema. That it is possible to be native yet
differentiated from Indigenous peoples
and cultures to the same length as colo-
nialism keeps itself.
 What also emerged is that because the
religions of Indigenous peoples were forc-
ibly absorbed into the Hindu pantheon
and then ascribed lower status as being
“asuras” or, demons, for the sake of sur-
vival in proximity to dominant caste com-
munities, Indigenous peoples were also
forced to navigate and negotiate with
casteism but more directly, Brahminism.

Richard Kamei
“Uncivilising the Mind: How anthropology shaped the discourse on tribes in India”
The Caravan Magazine. March 2021.
A recent moment of protest against the
ancient figure Manu, who was author
of the “Manusmriti”, a set of codes and
laws written around 100 CE / AD.

The text’s influence prescribes endoga-

my within castes, while simultaneously
giving men the approval to marry a
woman in lower status, and instructing
punitive measures against women who
would do the same.

It also contains a diet by ennumerating

various animals that could not be killed
and consumed, as a way of expelling
communities whose regular diet would
contain any of those animals.

Deep Mukherjee.
“A day in the life of a Manu statue
in the Rajasthan High Court”.
The Indian Express. 2018.
Acharya Tulsi, a leading
figure of Jainism, believed
that upholding dharma is
for the present as well as
future lives.
C Subramanian, involved
in the Independence
Movement and crafting
the Indian constitution.
A revolutionary who
assassinated a British
officer and became a
martyr. Lesser known
for being a socialist and
critical of non-violence as
a movement.
Swami Vivekananda,
a Hindu monk and a
philosopher who believed
caste was a correct and
natural order, and also
influenced Gandhi.
Sree Narayana, a
reformer from Kerala
who believed in a non-
ritualistic and non-dogma
oriented version of
Hinduism.
Nehru, involved in the
freedom movement,
and was the first Prime
Minister, inaugurated the
Indian state.
The Dandi March (Salt
March), an act of civil
disobedience to protest
the British colonial salt
tax.
Coins function as reminders of enforced
value, but they are also enforcers of
national history, which in turn influence
public memory.

Despite Ambedkar’s contribution to the

development of the Indian economy, he
is pushed by a nation he helped build
into invisibility.

Moreover, Hindu nationalist groups have

also led efforts to tarnish dates particular
to him to make today’s outcaste
communities from being able to
celebrate him.

B.R. Ambedkar.

The Problem of the Rupee: Its

Origin and Its Solution. 1923.
The chief foot soldiers of the operation to demolish the Babri
Masjid were all recruited from the lower castes. The plan for
this attack is rumoured to have been in cultivation since the
late 1980s, as a reaction to affirmative action measures to out-
castes.

The phrase “garv se kaho hum hindu hain”, which translates to

“Say with pride that we are Hindu” was often used. That it
occurred on Ambedkar’s death anniversary is also unlikely to
be a coincidence.

This moment is particularly odd, because historically excluded

castes were excited to demolish this Islamic place of worship,
on the promise that they would now be included, that they
were part of the larger Hindu nationalist party and could even-
tually curry favour. Caste can mobilise those it already ex-
cludes, to create a constructed majority in order to humiliate
the community it considers the chief “other”.
An early iteration for an idea that con-
tinually kept occurring to me, that the
outcastes, the untouchables, are not
“outside” the caste pyramid, but rather
beneathe it, in its catacombs.

In its imagination, those in the varna

system determine their identity
through defining themselves
against the outcastes.
 In attending a lecture
on how caste interacts
with class, my imagina-
tion of what these rela-
tionships look like was
affirmed.

“Scheduled castes” is
the legal term for out-
castes within Hinduism.

Christophe Jaffrelot. “Caste and Class in Contemporary India”.

King’s College London Lecture Series.
Columbia Pictures’ 30 Minutes or Less 2011. Columbia Pictures’ 30 Minutes or Less 2011.

It’s equally surprising that the concept of untouchabili-

ty has been understood in its influence on partnership,
which points to the question of how relatable the con-
cept of caste and untouchability is beyond its supposed
South Asian cultures.

Columbia Pictures’ 30 Minutes or Less 2011.

 Yet another dimension of caste occurs
within queerness. As a Tamil myself, de-
spite the many previous poets and film-
makers and scholars who have evolved
contemporary Tamil culture and continue
to do so, upper-caste Tamils, despite ex-
hibiting much cultural innovation, are still
trap to notions of endogamy. Often at
times on the understanding that they
would want someone who they could
share all aspects of life with, including a
commonality in relationship to religion
and society. Being of the same caste can
also be a bargaining chip for the accep-
tance of one’s queerness.

As a design research endeavour, I feel

that I have overall begun to find a diversi-
fied set of materials that all represent the
artifacts of public memory, each repre-
senting how casteism gesturally becomes
culture.

Newspaper clipping from Harrish Iyer’s mother’s ad, seeking a groom for him.
Mid-Day India - Mumbai Edition. c. 2013.
THANK YOU