When beauty is rendered as a tool to assert and/or negotiate spaces

First generation dalit female students, who have migrated to metropolitan universities from across various  classes;  have  no  touch  of  and  knowledge  about  the casteism disguised in the elitist culture of these universities. This is not very easily visible, but practiced so vehemently in almost each and every classroom of the campus. In this post, I will highlight the negotiations and assertions which dalit girls intentionally and unintentionally have to make in these spaces. These processes sometimes results in higher level of confidence and sometimes it can come across as arrogance of dalit girls. Well, the reception to this change is not pleasant, confidence is treated as arrogance and stigmatized as another instance of negative caste stereotype.

At first if we look at the classroom structure at the Post Graduate level; we can clearly see class based groups are formed irrespective of castes. But slowly caste comes to the fore when the fees have to be paid or the scholarship dates are displayed on the notice board. This period is toughest for dalit girls who don’t have any visible caste identity, most don’t want to disclose their caste identities. Because of  the politically correct atmosphere on the campus, the so-called upper caste female students cannot express the unease and plain disgust for fellow dalit students openly, so they slowly start excluding dalit girls from the group (if there are any at all) and activities. Many of us hear this common phrasing of a sentence addressed to us: “you don’t look like your caste or you are different, you don’t represent your caste as such”, from those who make attempts to speak to dalit girls.

So, some very basic questions: what must a dalit girl look like? More importantly what is the image of a dalit girl in their mind? What makes dalit girls so different from other students? After making several efforts at interacting with the upper caste, elite girl students, from all my years on the campus, here are a few responses that I have gathered:

Dalit girls may not be  getting married so their parents have sent them here.

These girls don’t have a sense of clothing,  have no sense of wearing the right make up, and manners are useless.

They are caught up in the wrong place; and they can never match up to our standards.

They don’t speak politely, and are very direct (rude).

They can speak neither good English nor pure Marathi.

Their eating habits/tastes are gross.

They are not feminine enough.

They don’t belong to our culture.

They are different and so on…

What do these responses reveal then? This is gendered casteism clothed in mainstream, elitist materialistic notions of female beauty. Moreover, this beauty is not just the beauty we usually think about, but beauty which is intricately linked to upper class lifestyles. Dalit girls have to compete or adjust and live with this constant comparison and evaluation. Branded clothes, heavy accessories, where you are expected to know all the non-Indian (international) foods and have regular manicure and pedicure, bleaching for fair and clear skin and you should be in proper shape. How  can  dalit  girls  ever  match  these  metropolitan  elite standards – especially when there is no such financial, cultural and socially privileged opportunities available for most dalit girls. Therefore, when implanted in foreign and elitist settings it requires not just adopting a novel culture but also results in attempts of getting rid of our original dalit identity which is largely viewed as a stigma to carry.

The Fab Indianised culture of the academic intellectual elites of the university campuses is very alien to these girls. I have seen girls who buy fashionable clothes and accessories by doing part-time jobs (when the economic conditions are not sound), or by telling lies to their parents and spending from their pocket-money meant for other uses.  Most of the time, money is spent on the beauty products and parlors. Dalit girls try their level best to match these elitist metropolitan concepts of beauty in the campus. All these are attempts to get a sense of belonging-ness in that space; rather we can say creating their space among elites. But it is certainly futile; it only helps to give you the confidence to be ‘assimilated’ in that space but you still remain with the feeling of failure to achieve a ‘legitimate place’ in that space. Always on edge, you become intolerable in this circle, and all these attempts only seeks to throw you out from the place.

However, dalit girls do resist these attempts and as they aspire to find their own space, it poses a question whether we can call such moves as assertion? Or can we see it as negotiating with the changing situation and demands/requirements of the new spaces?

So beauty is not the very straight forward thing that dalit girls have previously known it to be; it has many layers to it, which are very complex to deal with at various levels.  This brings us to responses of male students who already have prejudices about dalit girls as being ‘loose’. Most importantly even if you surpass visibility of your caste identity; forget about others who never notice your existence, but men from your own community also never acknowledge you. Many try to convince you that it doesn’t suit you, your ‘agency’ is totally denied by labelling the change as a result of stupid strategies to become westernized, all the time by calling you an example of ‘fractured modernity’.

The big question before dalit girls then is: how to do well academically in such circumstances as most of their time is spent in trying to get some space of their own in the classroom and in friend circles (if they have any). Dalit girl students who were toppers at the college level become almost zero at the university level because of these complex structures, continuous demoralization and so much energy diverted away from academic activity simply to gain acceptance of peers. However, one cannot deny the possibilities of some democratic spaces being created as a result of the conscious efforts on university campuses where such mainstream ideas of beauty can be contested but there are very few.