Casteless Mumbai is a myth

In Mumbai class differences are stark A highrise abutting a slum a swimming pool within shouting distance of a swollen drain and the homeless taking shelter outside a fivestar hotel are everyday sights As a land of opportunity and challenges it has continued to straddle these contrasts for over a century Rarely ever though have we seen the megalopolis through the prism of casteIn a new book Juned Shaikh associate professor of history at the University of California Santa Cruz examines why our view of Mumbai as a city of havesand havenots alone could be a narrow oneDrawing from rare sources written by the urban poor and Dalits in the Marathi languagemdashincluding novels poems and manifestosmdashShaikhrsquos book Outcaste Bombay University of Washington Press explores how language literature and activism became an important battleground for caste and cultural politicsMumbairsquos slums says Shaikh are not just quintessential markers of class but also important sites to witness caste clusters PicAtul KambleShaikh believes that the ldquoentanglement of class and caste in Mumbai had the effect of shrouding caste in the cloak of class and by extension modernityrdquo sustaining the perception of castelessness in the city ldquoOne associates caste with extreme forms of prejudice or violencemdashbeating lynching etc And because it is extreme one assumes that it is exceptional and is only found in villages But caste works in multiple ways many of which are mundane Since it is an everyday feature of life most people assume itrsquos not thererdquoHe explains how for instance access to housing jobs business opportunities education or even the partner one marries often depends on caste ldquoIn the case of Bombay the perception or the fablemdashas historian Gyan Prakash calls itmdashwas that it was a cosmopolitan city This made it difficult for some people to acknowledge caste But by the end of the 20th century there were already gaping holes in the myth particularly because of the frequency of communal and caste violence Now I think many Mumbaikars are more open to consider the reality veiled by the fablerdquoA journalist and former resident of Mumbai Shaikh says he came to political consciousness as a young adult in the 1990s ldquoAs you know this was the decade of multiple political economic and cultural changes in India One important change was the explosion of castebased regional political parties Another was the regularity of violence directed at Dalits A third change was the economic liberalisation in Indiamdashit was celebrated but also critiqued in newspapers and magazinesrdquo he recallsJuned ShaikhBut the event that remained marked in his memory dated back to 1997 when a subinspector ordered his platoon to open fire on a mob of Dalits for rioting at Mata Ramabai Ambedkar Nagar in Ghatkopar after the desecration of a statue of Dr Ambedkar Ten were killed and 26 injured in the firing ldquoIt made me realise that caste violence was not just a feature of rural India but also of citieshellip But I must add caste is one optic of my book the other important lens is class All of us juggle multiple identities simultaneouslymdashcaste class language ethnicityreligion gender Dalits in Bombay did it toordquoIn his book Shaikh discusses at length how the seeds for Indian Marxism were sown in then Bombay and how Dalit activism helped stir casteconsciousnessShripad Dange one of the most influential Marxists he feels wore ldquocaste blinkersrdquo ldquoThe blinkers prevented him from seeing his caste privilege It also prevented him for seeing how caste had shaped the lives of many lower caste and Dalit workersrdquo he says adding ldquoWhen the workers supported the antiBrahmin or the Ambedkarled Dalit movement of the 1920s and 30s he was incensed He called these movements fascists and reactionary He believed that a class revolution would get rid of caste Ambedkar and Dalit Marxists believed that the class and caste revolution should happen simultaneously otherwise the caste question will remain even after the communist revolutionrdquo Important however were the early works of Dalit writers like Annabhau Sathe whose loknatyas written between 1944 and 1955 dealt with issues of housing unemployment strikes and wages Later Baburao Bagul and Namdeo Dhasal followed his leadShaikh says his personal favourite work by Sathe is Muka Miravnuk Silent Procession which he wrote in 1949 ldquoIt is set in a chawl in Parel and discusses many thingsmdashtenancy subtenancy squatting on streets anxiety about the loss of class tensions within the neighbourhood over public water taps and mobilising to protest against government policies All these are issues that are still relevant to many people in Mumbairdquo he sharesBagul a proteacutegeacute of Sathe ldquoprescribed that writers move beyond simple representationrdquo of the humiliation and suffering experienced by the Dalits to address the ldquosocioeconomic and cultural structuresrdquo that produced itldquoBombay was and still is a very literary city In the 20th century writers working in many languages Hindi Marathi Urdu English Gujarati to name just a few were part of networks that discussed and debated Indian literature and world literature Both Bagul and Dhasal were part of these networks Their writings will offer Bombayphiles wonderful insights into the relationships of powermdashcaste class and gendermdashthat their characters were enmeshed in For them literature was more than just aesthetics It was a means of highlighting the humanity of those abhorred by societymdashthe sex worker the Dalit the poor the mavaali And literature for them was the means to raise consciousness and transform the social conditions that deemed them inhumanrdquo he saysApart from capturing the Dalit experience in literature Shaikh also trains his lens on the cityrsquos built environment and how it perpetuated the caste and class divide And it was everywhere to seeIn a recent podcast interview he discussed how caste was a significant player in building Bombayrsquos cotton textile industry a pillar of the cityrsquos economy for more than a hundred years Speaking about it now Shaikh points out that Indian capital has mostly relied on caste to nourish itself ldquoIn order to start a cotton textile mill in Bombay in the 19th century you needed a few things including money capital and labourrdquo Indian industrialisation he says always depended on the availability of cheap and largely unskilled staff ldquoTo source this cheap labour from villages and towns across India the mill owners relied on caste Their agents generally a mukadam or jobber recruited workers from his own caste and kinship network They would recruit workers who were dependent on them for a job for housing and for petty loans in times of need Apart from the patronage extended by the jobber to workers he also disciplined them by coaxing and coercing them to work 10 12 14 hour days Therefore we see the concentration of particular castes Many were from the MarathaKunbi caste from the Konkan Then there were Dalit workers from the same regions and Muslim weavers known either as Momins or Julahas from northern IndiardquoMumbairsquos slums too he says are not just quintessential markers of class but important sites for living and experiencing caste ldquoThe poor started living in slums in the 19th and 20th centuries because they were underemployed and underpaid and could not afford rents in chawls and buildings because they were remitting money to families in villages They wanted to save as much as possible from their lowwage work and therefore 1015 people lived in aroom Over a period of time such chawls housing was declared slumsrdquo he saysThe Dalits who occupied the slums had lowpaying jobs in textile mills at the docks in the municipal corporation and at city hospitals ldquoSo in slums today you find people of various castes and religions but you will also find a clustering of Dalits In a nutshell the lens of class is important to understanding slums but caste is important toordquo