I am tired
of the Indian theorists
MN Srinivas, Bhikku Parekh,
Ashish Nandy, Akeel Bilgrami,
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Homi K.Bhabha,
Aijaz Ahmed, Upendra Baxi, Partha Chatterjee,
Ranajit Guha, Gail Omvedt, Ananya Vajpeyi,
Christophe Jaffrelot, Anupama Rao,
Rajni Kothari, Ghanshyam Shah,
Ramachandra Guha, Eleanor Zelliot,
Amartya Sen, Jean Drèze, Satish Deshpande,
Uma Chakravarti, Sharmila Rege,
Sanjay Palshikar, Valerian Rodrigues,
Peter Ronald deSouza, Suhas Palshikar,
Thomas Pantham, Romila Thapar,
SV Srinivas, Sitharam Kakarala,
Mary E John, Janaki Nair, Aditya Nigam,
M Madhava Prasad, Haragopal,
Balagopal, KG Kannabiran, Kalpana Kannabiran,
Sundar Sarukkai, Kancha Ilaiah,
Ashish Rajadhyaksha, Tejaswini Niranjana,
Shahid Amin, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Meenakshi Mukherjee,
Harish Trivedi, AK Ramanujan, Sisir Kumar Das,
Gauri Viswanathan, Rupa Viswanath, Arundhati Roy, J Devika,
Centre for the Study of Culture & Society,
Centre for Studies in Social Sciences,
Centre for the Study of Developing Societies,
Indian Institute of Advanced Studies,
EPW writers,
Oxford scholars,
Cambridge scholars,
Indian academia,

who discovers the Dalit
only after opening a book.

I am tired
of the South Asian scholar
who learns the vocabulary of humiliation
but never learns
the trembling of a Dalit household.

I am tired
of the progressive
Indian intellectual
who can pronounce
"caste oppression,"
"structural violence,"
"social exclusion,"
"epistemic injustice,"
"recognition,"
"dignity,"
"intersectionality,"
and "emancipation"

with the confidence
of someone who has never
had to introduce a Dalit person
as a beloved
to a family
that still believes
blood has a caste.

I ask a dangerous question:

Where does your theory end
and your life begin?

Because I have seen
too many Indian theories
that become revolutionary
on paper

and Sanatan Dharma
at the dinner table.

Too many Indian diaspora scholars
who want the annihilation of caste
in the Cambridge University seminar,

but want caste continuity
in the marriage market.

Too many progressive Indian intellectuals
who want Dalits
to be their subjects of research,
their fieldwork participants,
their citations,
their conference themes,
their books,
their grants,
their careers,
their moral credentials
but not necessarily
their sons-in-law,
their daughters-in-law,
their spouses,
their children's other parent,
their family,
their inheritance,
their everyday life.

And then I ask:
What kind of revolution
is this?
A revolution
that ends at the wedding hall?
A revolution
that stops
at the threshold
of the parental home?
A revolution
that can cross oceans
for a conference
but cannot cross
the small distance
between two caste kitchens?
A revolution
that can challenge the Indian ideology
in a footnote
but cannot challenge
one's own mother's
question:
"Who are her parents?"
Or:
"What is his caste?"
Or the softer version,
the sophisticated version,
the educated version:
"We have nothing against them,
but…"
That but
has buried generations.
That but
has maintained the wall.
That but
has survived every manifesto.
That but
has received PhDs.
That but
has written books
about equality.
That but
has become fluent
in the language of justice.

I am saying
that every non-Dalit
who writes about Dalits
is automatically a hypocrite.
Yes.
That would not be
another kind of intellectual laziness.
A non-Dalit theorist does have to marry
across Dalit castes
to possess moral concern.
A non-Dalit intellectual does have to reproduce
across Dalit castes
to oppose caste.
A non-Dalit scholar must stand with Dalits
by turning marriage
into a test of self-reformation.
Again, I am asking
a harder question:
What does your opposition to caste
cost you personally?
Not your article.
Not your conference paper.
Not your citation count.
Not your institutional reputation.
Not your grant proposal.
Not your carefully constructed
anti-caste vocabulary.
What does it cost
your comfort?
Your family expectations?
Your inheritance?
Your social circle?
Your matrimonial possibilities?
Your caste pride?
Your friendships?
Your domestic arrangements?
Your children's future
as imagined by your parents?
What exactly
have you been willing
to surrender?
Because if caste
is only an object
of academic investigation,
then perhaps
you have not yet
encountered caste.
Perhaps you have only
studied it.