India’s caste problem has led to school and college dropouts and even suicides of Dalit students. Last week, a Dalit professor from an elite university that produced tech leaders including Sundar Pichai, quit, citing caste discrimination.The caste system in India has similarities to America's racism problem, a comparison Martin Luther King Jr. made after visiting India in 1959.
“Status quo organisations like this one deeply embed and entrench ideas that some people are superior by birth and some inferior,” said Kumar, who identifies as a Bahujan – a term that includes all the oppressed identities in India. “In India, you are your caste by birth,” he added. “But you can choose what you fight for and against.” On June 30, Kumar sued and demanded the arrest of a prominent state politician who had called his anti-caste posts “against the Constitution” and a “publicity stunt.” “The very nature of everyday civic and social life in India is organised around the deeply exclusionary principles of caste,” an anonymous Bahujan academic called “Buffalo Intellectual” told VICE World News. “No matter what the space or platform is, you see the same pattern of exclusion.”Dalits comprise 27 percent of India’s total population of 1.3 billion. Given the dominance of privileged castes in the mainstream media, anti-caste internet users have been turning to social media. But research shows that despite India's growing internet penetration – projected to reach 900 million people by 2025 – most users are from privileged castes.Data, anecdotal evidence and Brahmin government departments show that one of the world’s oldest surviving social stratification systems continues to thrive institutionally and in everyday life.
Suraj Yengde, a Harvard post-doctoral fellow who was named among the “25 Most Influential Young Indians” by GQ magazine, told VICE World News that most Dalits are not on Twitter. “I also see a lot of anonymous accounts,” he said, “which concerns me because anonymity is good, but it also gives space to toxicity.” A March 2021 report by the global advocacy group International Dalit Solidarity Network found that anti-caste tweets are prone to all forms of abuse such as trolling, cancelling and doxxing. “Constant caste abuse and inadequate measures by social media platforms to hold abusers to account can leave Dalit online users with psychological stress and anxiety,” the group stated.“The very nature of everyday civic and social life in India is organised around the deeply exclusionary principles of caste. No matter what the space or platform is, you see the same pattern of exclusion.”
In 2019, anti-caste activists launched a campaign called #cancelAllBlueTicksInIndia, as they accused Twitter of not verifying accounts of Bahujan people.“Constant caste abuse and inadequate measures by social media platforms to hold abusers to account can leave Dalit online users with psychological stress and anxiety.”
“Casteist posts are an area of serious concern” because casteism is a part of the Indian “ecosystem of violence designed to shame, intimidate and keep caste oppressed communities from asserting their rights,” said the report.“Caste is such a hushed topic, but I realised that if you’re silent, you’re complicit. So I decided to speak up despite casteist and sexist abuse online.”