Even a scientist wasn’t spared caste discrimination

For the whole of my schooling time and a good part of my college days, I was largely unaware of the discrimination and attitudes related to caste structure mainly because   I grew up in a liberal-minded family in Kerala and caste does not play a big role in one’s education or opportunities inside my home state anyway. Those days my understanding of casteist discrimination was mainly from the stories floating in the national media. That was the time when I always used to think that these things existed only in the illiterate and uneducated circles in some remote parts of India.

Hence it was a bit bewildering when I encountered the caste-related prejudice for the first time in 2009. I still remember it was a top academic meeting in physics and in the dining hall when I was searching for a table to sit with my plate filled with rice, vegetables and chicken curry, I remember a stiff voice pointing out (mocking me in front of everyone on the table): “On this table we have people from families and castes who eat only pure vegetarian food!”. I did not want to make a fuss about this and just quietly moved on to find a seat amongst some Bengali scientists, who are always open-minded and non-fussy about non-vegetarian food and fellow non-vegetarian diners.

Although this was a bad experience lasting only a couple of minutes, it made an everlasting impression on me because of the key fact that this statement or caste-prejudiced attitude did not come from an illiterate person in India but a highly educated physicist (and a self-confessed snobbish Brahmin from Karnataka). During the meeting, I noticed that this academic confined his interactions and proximity to only the chosen few from the high end of the Brahmanical class. Initially, I found this whole episode a bit too unprofessional and depressing in a professional academic meeting but then just like most pragmatic people in India, I learnt to swallow the bitterness and move on with my life.

To be clear, I have nothing against Kannadiga Brahmins because of this incident because I am logical enough to understand that such Brahmanical snobs and bigots exist in most states in India. Moreover, there are extremely open-minded, modern and civilised people from all these communities which far outweigh the number of such bigots by any yardstick

From time to time, as a student when you are asked to fill in application forms for various entrance and competitive exams in India, one gets reminded again  and again about their caste, reservation status, family background and so on. This in itself used to put people like me out of my comfort zone because it conveys this subtle message that it’s not just the merit or skills which matter. But that the future has a lot to do with one’s birth credentials beyond one’s own control. These application forms make one realise that your caste is not high enough to avoid snubs and mockery from above-mentioned bigots but at the same time, your caste is not low enough to give you any benefits or additional edge in these exams anyway. It is almost like a Hindu equivalent of being in a systemic purgatory solely because of one’s caste assigned at birth!

My second tryst with caste-related prejudice and stigma happened about a year after the first tale. A senior academic from a university in Andhra Pradesh invited me to his son’s wedding in 2010. After the ceremony, there was this explicit rule that the first set of people who sat on the high dining table consisted only people having the ‘sacred thread’. The so-called ‘low-caste mongrels’ were allowed to eat only after the so-called ‘priestly class’ ate. This event left an even bigger scar in my mind because of the fact that this severely bigoted attitude masquerades as part of rich Indian traditions in their wedding ceremony.

Having said all this, I am pretty sure there would be millions of others in India who would have had much more severe, harrowing and even violent tales to narrate on caste prejudices. But the key thing I want to highlight here is the fact that the people who endorsed or perpetrated these attitudes and prejudices in my experience were not illiterate or poor or deprived people of tough family backgrounds but they were regarded as distinguished and enlightened scientists in academic circles with privileged backgrounds and the best education in the country. Reading the legendary Meghnad Saha’s life story conveys that he faced similar stigmas and ostracising from college dining halls from fellow university students about 100 years back. It is a bit depressing to find that certain primitive attitudes do not change even in the span of a full century!

In general, scientists are the first people one would expect to grow out of such petty prejudices and look at the bigger picture of the human race and realise our humble place in the vast unexplored universe. This makes one wonder: if modern science, research and education have not managed to wipe away such horrible attitudes from some Brahmin Indian scientists, god only knows what will?