There is no doubt whatsoever that India has a very rich and ancient culture that has been passed down to us from many generations. While some of it is beautiful to witness - the art, music, danceforms; there is no denying that much of the culture that we have inherited is indubitably entangled with the systemic oppression of minorities living in the country. As a Hindu majority nation, the caste system and patriarchal structure thrive here, resulting in social, economic, political, and cultural limitations for anyone who isn’t at the very top of the hierarchical constructs that are the defining attributes of Hinduism. This results in two major forms of subjugation, one being on the basis of gender, and the other on the premise of caste. However, these two forms of hierarchical structures don’t exist independently of each other. Instead, they go hand-in-hand with each other and give rise to Brahmanical patriarchy, which is a multidimensional reality of Indian society. Brahmanical patriarchy is inherently a part of Indian culture, and consequently, systemic oppression is an unfortunate salient feature of our culture. Dalits, specifically Dalit women, have to bear the brunt of it all as they are at the absolute bottom of this hierarchy. It is extremely important to acknowledge that caste is increasingly an aspect of culture rather than just social stratification, because it has incorporated the complete matrix of socio-economic, cultural, and political relations in the country from time immemorial. Being a Dalit means being deprived of and excluded from all spheres - social, economic, political, cultural, educational and religious. Dalits constitute around 25% of India’s population, which means that at all times, at the very least, a quarter of the country’s population has been ostracised from participation in all aforementioned spheres. This makes our cultural heritage a highly exclusive one, predominantly inherited from, and holistically accessible only to those belonging to forward castes, which is around 31% of the country’s population. Although the caste system has infiltrated almost every aspect of Indian society, as Dr. B. R. Ambedkar once said, “Caste is not a physical object like a wall of bricks or a line of barbed wire which prevents the Hindus from co-mingling and which has, therefore, to be pulled down. Caste is a notion; it is a state of the mind.” One can say that the success of any system lies in the hegemony of its ideologies, however subtle. Therefore, the obvious step to demolishing years of this pernicious apparatus is, for us, as a society, to develop caste consciousness and oppose and resist these oppressive systems to the best of our abilities. But this begs the question - if we were to eliminate every bit of the ancient Indian cultural heritage that stems from the oppression of marginalised groups as a result of Brahmanical patriarchy, how much of our nation’s rich culture that we flaunt today can we actually pride ourselves in, considering that it is the manifestation of the very oppressive systems we must reject?
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