Growing Up in a Casteist Kerala Family

My mother and father, and all my grandparents belong to the Kerala caste called Nambeesan (and evidently married within their caste). It’s supposed to be the caste of people who do kazhakam in temples, i.e. making the garlands required for the deity (and possibly other odd-jobs inside the temple?).

I know a couple of relatives in my extended family who still do this job (along with other jobs), but my grandparents were mostly teachers in government schools. My mother is also a government school teacher, and my father just retired from being a doctor in government service a couple of months ago.

I have vague memory of one of my grandfathers wearing a janeu. I have not seen my father wearing it (ever?), but I think he had done the upanayanam ritual (the one where you start wearing the janeu) in his childhood. When I was about 15, my extended relatives were forcing me to do upanayanam. I didn’t particularly like my extended relatives. They were nosy and had ugly opinions about things. So, one could say that it was predetermined that I would refuse whatever they told me to do. I do not remember if I was already an atheist.

In any case, I refused steadfastly. They did try all kinds of tricks like “You don’t have to wear it forever, just during the ritual”, “You don’t have to follow any daily rituals afterwards”, “Just get it done along with everyone else”, etc. I managed to escape. And my brother who must have been 10 then also managed to escape by pointing at me.

I remember that my father would be on my side. He would, after all, not care much about these rituals. He would give us (me and my brother) non-vegetarian food whenever we went out. He was also the one who infused a healthy (unhealthy?) dose of irreverence towards authorities by then.

But I was also open-minded. I would join the meetings of these caste welfare groups, listen to their boring speeches, engage in cultural events, serve food, and generally participate in such programs. I was even the Kannur district (or north Kerala) convenor of their youth group, and one of the early blogs I had built on blogger.com was for the Mattanur division of SPSS (a welfare group for these pushpaka caste communities).

The logic of casteist thinking

As an atheist, the scripture based explanations of caste superiority didn’t make any sense to me. But that didn’t prevent my family members from giving me other explanations like “the superiority comes from waking up early and saying mantras, eating only food with good qualities, and other such superior lifestyle”. My maternal grandmother is an expert at such “logic” in that whenever she’s questioned on her casteist hatred for other people, she comes back with such reasons.

Fortunately, I had, by then, also developed a sense of rationalism which prevented these pseudo-scientific explanations from having an effect on me. But I have seen plenty of “smart” individuals fall for these.

Regardless of whether one starts believing in caste because of religious scriptures (karma and similar non-sense) or a “modern” rationalization like a superior lifestyle, the result is a sense of superiority. (Or vice versa for those who believe they are in the “lower” castes).

Atheism is Not Enough

Many anti-caste activists think that religion is the basis for caste and that annihilation of religion is important for annihilation of caste. I agree with them. But I also think that it is not just religion that needs to go, but also irrationality.

Rationalism is distinct from atheism. Atheism is only concerned with opposing god and religion. Being an atheist doesn’t make one a rationalist by default. Rationalism requires the adoption of a scientific mindset. It requires that one be aware of cognitive biases and develop meta-cognition. It requires one to think hard and long about every topic and be aware of knowledge gaps. If atheism is skepticism towards religion, rationalism is skepticism towards everything, including one’s own capacity to know the truth.

How caste prejudices operate

As I would learn to observe later, casteist activities operate in two (three) interconnected levels in these families:

• The cultural level which includes rituals, vegetarianism, application of chandanam (sandalwood), organizing on the basis of caste, marriages within the caste, etc.
• The conscious psychological level which includes thinking lowly of others, sense of superiority, purity, and other “good qualities”.
• The unconscious psychological level which includes unconscious patterns of behavior, including some developed by mirroring other people’s casteist behavior, like the desire to be flawless, the confidence/arrogance of being right and needing to teach others, savior complex, righteous aggression, automatically giving respect and reverence to people who look/speak/write a certain way, domination/authoritarianism, self-centering, self-victimization. (Do note that some of these could be conscious as well).

While it is the cultural stuff which are more obvious, it is the psychological stuff which show up as prejudices. It is well documented today how casteist thinking is at the root of different kinds of violence seen in “sophisticated” spaces like academia, healthcare, policy making, and other urban elite spaces.

The cultural stuff form the conscious/unconscious rationalization for the psychological stuff. And in turn, those who are psychologically hooked on caste propagate the culture further in caste communities.

Some examples of these prejudices I have heard in my childhood

• those who recite gayatri mantra every day morning has a distinct sheen on their face
• brahmins are extremely intelligent
• those people are not good because they eat meat/have different culture (especially during conversations around inter-caste marriage)
• eating sattvaguna food makes one smart / eating tamoguna food makes one not smart
• waking up at 4am and doing prayers increases one’s concentration and consequently intelligence
• brahmins inherit great genes
• reservation takes away chances for “forward caste” students

Social pressure

Till I was 8 or so my parents and I lived away from any of my other family members. I used to spend a lot of time with neighbors from different religions and castes.

After that we moved to a neighborhood which was populated by my extended family, including my grandmother. And that’s when/where the pressure to adopt the caste and religious identity really started.

The pre-teen me could simply remain playing and not hearing the instructions given to me. When I became a teenager, I could “talk back” and maintain distance.

But I was also lucky in that my father was on my side. Even when my mom would ask me to go to temple or light the lamp, I could refuse easily. And thanks to patriarchy, my mother’s wishes could be easily overridden by my father.

This extended to my grandmother too. There was no undue pressure on me to show fake respect to my grandmother. And consequently whenever she made a fuss about non-vegetarian food at home, etc I could simply tease her and ignore her.

In some ways, it was the extended family which had more power. It wasn’t as easy to be rude with them. But the times where it was required was very few too.

Erasures

As I write this post, I have come to a realization. Perhaps, more than what was taught, it was what was missed that made my family casteist. The erasure speaks more loudly.

Topics that I never heard about from my family (except rarely my dad) includes:

• social justice, anti-caste movement
• politics beyond party politics
• Dr BR Ambedkar, Jyotiba Phule, Periyar, Narayana Guru, Sahodaran Ayyappan, and other anti-caste scholars
• rationalism, liberty, fraternity, equality, constitutional morality
• privilege

Parting words

In this post, I’ve tried to remember as much relevant pieces of information as I can within the time limits I set myself. If I find things I missed, I’ll make another post. I have written about my privileges in a separate post and therefore it needn’t be repeated here.

It goes without saying that regardless of how much of the cultural and conscious casteism I get rid of, the unconscious parts would still be lurking in me, until I discover them (through help from my friends or others) and work for years unlearning them. Feel free to send me a message if you find something!

I also wish to say that I do not claim that my experience is generalizable. There maybe parts of it which are applicable to others (or not). The way I have analyzed/categorized things maybe useful to you (or not). Use it merely as ethnographic material for your own critical thinking.