Shunya's Notes

A Day of Shame

A double whammy day: a year of Kashmir in chains and a vulgar display of majoritarian pride in Ayodhya. Today, it's worth listening to Baba Laldas, the former priest at the Ram Janmabhoomi temple in Ayodhya, on the motivations behind the Ram temple movement and its leaders. This is an excerpt from the documentary, Ram Ke Naam ('In the Name of God', 1992) by Anand Patwardhan, now on YouTube. Laldas spoke openly against Advani's rath yatra and the demolition of the Babri masjid. He was shot dead within a year and the case remains unsolved.

Caste and the Delusion of "Merit" in Indian Higher Education

(This essay appeared in The Caravan, August 2020)

The great engineers of medieval India were mainly Shudras. Members of the lowest varna in the caste hierarchy, the Shudras produced a steady supply of architects, builders, stonemasons, bronze sculptors, goldsmiths and other professionals. Sometimes called the Vishwakarma community, these artisans and craftsmen worked in hereditary guilds. They studied structural design, mathematics, material science and the artistic conventions of the day. Commissioned by kings, merchants and Brahmins—who disdained all manual labour themselves—the Shudras, aided by the labour of those considered “untouchable” and outside the varna hierarchy, built all of India’s engineering marvels, including its grand temple towns, magnificent cities such as Vijayanagar and medieval fort-palaces.

Take for instance the town of Khajuraho a thousand years ago, where Shudra artisans, in large workshops, conceived and carved their artwork and taught apprentices amid the sounds of hammers and chisels. Inscriptions show that with rising proficiency, artisans gained new titles. A skilled artisan was called Silpin, who sometimes inscribed his name on his creations, including on panels of erotic art with playful moods and delicate emotions. With higher skill, he became a Vijananin. A few became adept enough to be called Vaidagdhi Visvakarman, masters who went beyond mere technicalities of craft to conceiving large architectural projects and the finer aesthetics of art, winning much respect, social status and economic rewards. The Shudra domination of the engineering profession in India continued well into the colonial era.

By the late-twentieth century, however, things had changed dramatically. In my incoming class of 1985 at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur—one of five IITs founded between 1951 and 1961 that had become the premier engineering colleges of India—Brahmins were by far the largest caste group. Most of the nine students I shared a hostel wing with were Brahmin, and all belonged to dominant castes. Our faculty and student body were almost entirely upper-caste, representing less than twenty percent of Indians. There were hardly any Shudras, who comprise about half of the country’s population. Moreover, this utterly ahistorical domination of engineering education by the upper castes was now accompanied by their baffling claims of “merit”—implying that they had a higher natural talent and aptitude for engineering work than others. How did this extreme professional transformation come about?

The causes and contours of this great transformation are the subject matter of Ajantha Subramanian’s The Caste of Merit: Engineering Education in India, an original, incisive and scrupulous work of historical anthropology that was published last year. Subramanian, a professor of anthropology and South Asian studies, locates the start of this change in nineteenth-century British India, when new social and economic forces began shifting technical knowledge “from guild to state, shop-floor to classroom, and lower to upper caste.” She explains how, in less than a century, the engineering profession in India “went from being the purview of lower-caste artisans to becoming integral to state power, economic development, and upper-caste status.”

With a particular focus on IIT Madras and Tamil Nadu, Subramanian explores the psychology and the demographics of India’s new engineers, and the politics of caste, class and reservations. Of Tamil Brahmin lineage herself, she exposes upper-caste stratagems to both obscure and perpetuate their inherited social and cultural capital—mainly by attributing their professional attainments to their aptitude and innate brilliance, or “merit.” Indeed, such claims constitute a long-standing conspiracy of ignorance about the role of caste in shaping not just IIT education but all professional higher education in India.

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Read the rest on The Caravan website (subscription required).
(If you don't have an online subscription, why not get it? You'll get an excellent magazine—and support brave, independent journalism!)

Happy Childfree Day!

Today, August 1, is International Childfree Day, one of my favorite marked days of the year. Today I celebrate my early decision to never have children—one of the greatest decisions of my life—among my surest, bestest, zero-regret life choices. I feel like I dodged a bullet!

Though I like kids as people, on the rare occasion I've tried to imagine life with my own kids, it has felt like a horror movie that might leave me screaming and panting. Ok, I exaggerate, but only a little. 😊 Perhaps I simply had a weak instinct for fatherhood. I can't remember ever wanting it; it seemed like a bad deal. Were I religious, I'd thank god every day for saving me from a life of far more angst, suffering, and prayers—and not enough compensatory joy. In any case, I’m thankful for life’s countless miracles of non-birth and its precious unbundled love. 😀 And I'm lucky to have a life partner whose beliefs and values align with mine—a rare gift in life, without which the trials of parenthood, too, are far worse.

To younger folk in two minds about having children, esp. in the nauseatingly baby-obsessed culture of India, I assure you that going childfree can be a perfectly wonderful, fulfilling, and wholesome way of life. Don’t let social pressure—led by unimaginative family and friends—risk ruining your life. Don’t make babies because you’re expected to, or out of boredom, or to mask marital problems. Don't live someone else's dream for you. Unlike many other decisions, entering parenthood is non-reversible and could be your one-way ticket to far more misery than joy—witness the legions of parents stuck in toxic relationships, shrunken horizons, and mindless drudgery. But if it's then fair to say that parenthood is not right for everyone, the flip side holds too: being Childfree is not for everyone either. So think hard, very hard!

For some thoughtful writing on this topic, check out Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids.

Meanwhile, three cheers! Happy International Childfree Day from Namit and Usha! ☺️🌿