Caste and Language: An Interview with Karuna Ezara Parikh
Karuna Ezara Parikh is one of the most recognizable writers of her generation in India, whose body of work includes the novel The Heart Asks Pleasure First (2021) and the poetry collection Where Stories Gather (2021). We initially crossed paths at a literary festival held in Kolkata, where we both engaged in an intriguing and thought-provoking discussion about writing in a post-pandemic world. Throughout our conversation, I was struck by her compassionate and insightful perspective on issues in contemporary Indian society which are, in many ways, global issues. Recently, she published a powerful poem that explores the ongoing issues surrounding the phenomenon of caste in India, which stirred up quite a bit of controversy. In this interview, we had the opportunity to delve deeper into this important topic.
Your poem “High Tea at the Kapurs” describes a scene from daily life in an Indian household. We meet Aunty Kapur and two young girls – the narrator and her college friend from London, Diana ("like the princess"), as well as Aunty Kapur’s (presumably) son Karan. But we also meet their household staff, Nandi, with the addition “didi” – meaning sister in Hindi – to her name. Usually, she would be invisible in a scene like this. What motivated you to give her space in your poem, despite her not having a voice (and not knowing any English)?
Every day, when I look at the news, I hear about a new crime related to caste. These crimes are always violent – both physically and psychologically – and are always against the most oppressed castes in Indian society. We’re conveniently taught that the idea of caste has been abolished and that this cruel and arbitrary system no longer exists. But one look at even something as insipid as the “matrimonial” ad section of the newspaper will tell you it’s alive and well and that people still give it immense importance. Just yesterday, a girl hanged herself at a medical college after months of caste-based harassment. Last week a different student did the same. In December, human feces was dumped inside a water tank used primarily by Dalits*. A month before that, an entire water tank was emptied and “purified” with cow urine after a Dalit woman drank from it. As you can see, caste is a sinister thing reminiscent of other dark moments in human history, such as the Apartheid and the Holocaust, and those who perpetrate caste-based violence believe in it in an unshakeable manner.
I wanted to examine this belief within the segments of society I belong to - that is, the more privileged in India and those who pride themselves on being educated and open-minded. At the core of these privileged lives is a truth we don’t like to discuss: our lives and homes are run by people considered “lower” caste. We like to call it class here, but so often, economic class has been inextricable from caste, and caste isn’t something we talk about. Domestic workers from oppressed castes cook food, walk pets, and tend children. They run errands, fold clothes, pick up after people, clean shoes, scrub toilets, and wash dishes, starting as early as five or six o’clock in the morning and not finishing their work until late at night. Domestic workers in India often live with the families they work for, being given no more than a mat to roll out and sleep on in the kitchen of a multimillion-dollar home they service. Not even the women who work in those homes have access to toilets. These are the same people who were once called “untouchable” by the oppressor castes. It’s very reminiscent of slavery, in the attitude that “this human is filthy, beneath me, and was made for hard work.” Even their salaries are negligible.
While I do not want to appropriate anyone’s struggle, I realized upon writing the poem that if I don’t take part in the conversation around caste, call out caste violence, or question my own prejudices, how do I afford myself sorrow over the same? In a way, my work stems from shame.
The COVID-19 pandemic reignited the discussion on the issue of inequality in Indian society. I remember reading an article about the problem of servants being obliged to keep social distancing, and the household where they worked suffered because of that. Your poems brilliantly reflect the realistic state of social interactions in India today. So, I want to ask, did you address the pandemic in your work?
Ah, lockdown. That brought our caste and related class politics into a whole new realm. The inequalities that we witnessed daily were magnified to a frenzied degree. Safety measures were not uniformly applied to all members of households. Those who hire employees in their homes frequently did not wear masks when interacting with them. In turn, the employees were often terminated or reprimanded for not wearing masks correctly. Far too few households chose to keep the people who worked there safe; many did not even try, insisting those who service their homes continue to come in, regardless of the pandemic, to wash, cook, and sweep. Inequality tends to run through every aspect of society, including geography; domestic workers had to travel from miles away on public transport to make it to their jobs and continue earning their salaries. Many households insisted on this until only a complete lockdown made it impossible. After that, they often refused to continue paying salaries, despite a part-time domestic worker’s monthly wage being, on average, the cost of a meal out or a pair of sneakers. Old, painful questions resurfaced – whose lives matter most, and who do we choose to keep safe and why? There were many layers to the pandemic here regarding caste – daily wage migrant workers were left stranded in cities far away from their homes, faced with an appalling lack of empathy from the “haves” that is ingrained in our society through the caste system and offers up a convenient idea of class destiny. Dalit workers were made to treat and carry the dead bodies of Covid victims. In the midst of all this, I remember an Indian jewelry designer in the United States (where Indian caste politics are exported and rampant) put a ring on her website called The Dalit Ring, priced obnoxiously high, with no profit reaching those she had named the jewelry after. I wrote a poem at that time –
At the start it was dalgona* –
We were obsessed with coffee foam and conspiracies.
Did you know the Korean actor Jung Il Woo
and not American bloggers, named it that?
This week, two Dalit boys were killed.
One for loving, the other for praying.
To pray and to love – aren’t these the very two things
that make us human?
That say, ‘I hope and I want.’
Somewhere across a series of oceans
a girl of “South Asian descent” (whatever that means,
if you ask me, I’m great ape descent, thank you)
a girl screaming #BlackLivesMatter
(so I thought she was the sort who cared)
started a jewelry company that created
an average adornment for an unaffordable price
and called it The Dalit Ring.
A ring is a promise, The Dalit Ring is a broken one.
Somewhere we don’t understand the equality of injustice
other than parroting ‘all lives matter all lives matter’.
Listen, let’s say justice is like cake.
If your friend has a slice and I don’t,
the next slice cut should come to me.
But if you look at your friend and say,
‘Let them eat cake,’
in the end your friend has
two slices, and a dalgona, and a black square all on Instagram.
And I still have nothing
and the Dalit boys are dead, and the black boys are dead,
and it seems all lives do not matter, no all lives do not.
"Caste is abolished in India now!" is the opening line of your poem, after which you portray the events in a simple daily life that prove otherwise.
Aunty Kapur clearly defines her identity: We are Khatri, she says. Khatri is a caste known for working mainly in the financial and commercial sectors. Can you explain to us how you define a caste (sorry … "class") in contemporary Indian society? Do you think Indian society would be able to function without being structured by this ancient tradition?
I’m not even going to attempt to dissect the history and current state of caste politics in India. There are plenty of incredible Dalit writers whose work I would encourage readers to explore, including the poetry of Meena Kandasamy, the speeches of Dr. Ambedkar, Yashica Dutt’s biography, and Suraj Yengde’s book. I will say this, caste has its roots in Hinduism, and with the Hindu nationalist government we currently have, I do not see this situation becoming any better, only worse. Dalits are not even allowed into most Hindu temples. I remember the famed Dalit writer Manoranjan Byapari saying once that when he heard of this as a young man, he wondered, how is this religion so weak that if he entered a temple, it would be desecrated, and he, a mere human, would not be purified. I wish more people asked such questions. You pose a very good question about whether India would even be able to function, should these horrific structures come crashing down. I wonder too. But there’s only one way to find out.
In one of your previous interviews, you said we reduce humanity’s chances by reducing everyone to nothing but given identities. What about your own identity? Why do you choose to write in English? And how does the language reflects the caste structure in contemporary Indian society?
It took me a long time to question my own caste identity. Sometimes consciousness works that way too. An ultra-liberal approach argues that we fail to see caste because we oppose it. But that, too, is problematic, and over the years, I have learned to see it, accept it, feel the embarrassment of it, and then work from that place of recognition, which I find healthier than the previous approach, which was uninformed. While I don’t know enough about caste and colonialism to comment on it, I think this system’s roots are so anciently exploitative that Dalits have been denied education for centuries, let alone the kind that teaches you different languages. That said, let’s not confuse this with the fact that English is no longer the language of another country. I wrote about this extensively in my book and find it particularly upsetting when asked how I speak “such good English.” I found it particularly shocking in the UK. I often wanted to say, “You occupy a country for over 200 years, force your culture upon the people, and then act surprised when they adopt it? Really?” I don’t choose to write in English. I choose to write. English is my language.
What was the reaction of the public to this poem? Did you expect it? What would be or what was your answer to your critics?
I was pleasantly surprised by how many people it resonated with. That gave me a sense of hope. I was expecting some backlash, but when it came, it was more violent than I had presumed. I was called names, my appearance was mocked, and of course, I was told I was ruining the image of Hindu culture.
One of the first things my married Indian friends shared with me was whether their marriage was a love marriage or an arranged one (I’ve only met the happy ones in both cases). We observe in your work that Aunty Kapur feels strongly in charge of arranging Karan’s marriage and is impatient about it. She feels empowered to approve (a foreign girl will also do) or disapprove (we know she wouldn’t call, say, a black foreigner home). At the same, we see that the characters of the younger generation don’t need this kind of protectionism; they communicate well independently, breaking away from tradition. Since it has to do with love, I assume this topic is relatively widespread in Indian popular literature, isn’t it? Which aspect of getting married would you write about in your future books?
My first book deals a little with the complicated world of arranged marriages and the question of what happens when people wish to cross the sharp boundaries our respective boxes set for us. In the case of my book, it was the story of an Indian Hindu girl who wishes to be with a Pakistani Muslim man, but every day in India, you hear about people being stopped from loving who they want to. Homosexuality was illegal until very recently; religious lines being crossed for love still have brutal consequences. In tiny urban bubbles of privilege, it might seem like people are breaking away from traditions. However, recent surveys show that most young people tragically still believe that marrying within their religion and caste is the correct way forward. Let’s not forget that India is a country where honor killings occur even now and with alarming frequency.
When I arrived in Kolkata, I was surprised that the little clay cups are used by people here as a one-time, disposable utensil. There are also steel cups for domestic workers (and Nandi Didi, who knows no English, sips tea, from a steel glass). These two different types of cups exist so that the masters and servants never mix their dishes. How do you feel the unspoken daily rules connected to caste divisions shaped your own poetic voice?
One strand of my work deals with the environment and environmental activism. Through it, I’ve often been surprised by things like the disposable clay cup – and have been reminded that India, with all her poverty, has often been “green” or sustainable, most naturally, for eons. Today, more and more, those clay cups are being discarded for tiny plastic ones. Another reminder of how capitalism goes against not just craft but the very earth. And yet, would you begrudge the poor man who serves you tea the extra rupees using a plastic cup saves him? The question has no easy answer, and the solution is to change an entire system. About the cups in the poem – these practices are so shockingly ingrained within us and our homes that we don’t even question something as absurd and, let’s face it, disgusting as separate sets of crockery for “servants” and “masters.” Why? I usually write poems when a feeling churns inside me for too long. Often, as with caste, the feeling that brings the poem, which has shaped my voice, is an abundance of unfiltered anger.
Interviewed by Iryna Verano
Photo by Upahar Biswas