Episode 7 PART #2: Carceral Casteism ft. Dr Rev John Boopalan
Carceral Casteism has two parts and 2 choose-your-own-adventure Endings that will release staggered over the next few weeks. This project is meant for Learning & Feeling but not for ease or comfort. Part 2 is about invisibilisation, isolation & Social Order. It’s about how the spectres of the State play out in our classrooms, our nice residential colonies/neighbourhoods, our intimate relationships & our minds. Social Order creates criminals from the underclass & ensures a supply of surplus population to extract labour & resources from. There's no rational reason why savarnas should ever want to abolish it. Part 2 is a Harrowing. Part 1 was about fear & why we feel it. But Part 2 is about facing up to it. Indian Christians often grow up rootless, invisible in our whole identity to the larger system, occluded even to ourselves. We need to face up to caste, what it means to be a minority under attack, & what it means that half of our population is Dalit. Showing us how, is Rev Dr John Boopalan, drawing from his family's stories, his theological education, his fantastic paper Doing Constructive Theology with B. R. Ambedkar, & his irreverently joyful sense of humour. As he says, some Christians are so heavenly-minded that they are of no earthly use. When it comes to power relations & material conditions, you can't just pray, leave it up to God & peace out. You can't optimise, rationalise, or reform your way out either. Depoliticization may make the world seem safe, ordered, & under control. But that's not reality. Religion does soften life’s hard edges. It provides a framework for relating to others, guidance through difficult situations, a sense of community & purpose. But that's not faith. India has this whole PR rep as the birthplace of so many religions, but why did so many of these traditions form, catch fire, & sustain HERE? We know the stats, the facts, & our Fundamental Right to Profess, Practice & Propagate (subject to terms & conditions ofc) - we learn them in school. But it was reading Gail Omdevet's Seeking Begumpura showed me how to See the thread of liberation throughout the subcontinent's history. Seeking moral clarity, abolishing prison, annihilating caste - we have a lot to learn but no one person has All the Answers. But, when we make meaning of our own identities (like Nikita did), when we assert ourselves wholly (like Rev John does), when we shift the gaze that violates us (which Sanjana says is crucial to do) - we're arming ourselves & creating new paths. Their mad monk is making a killing field. The Ganga was swollen w bodies last summer. Our government refused to count our dead. If no one lost their lives from oxygen deprivation, who are all these ghosts around me? All the zoom funerals I attended, all the names my mother wrote down, all the grief we carry. There can be no answer for this. There's only us & what we choose to do. CREDITS Experts: Nikita Sonavane & Sanjana Meshram & Rev. Dr John Boopalan I made the episode art; big up to the Commons Opening theme & additional score: @jide_oj_ Production: @cartel.contra & @sansfuccs "...MADE GLORIOUS SUMMER..." - Shakespeare, Richard III 1 "...FROM WHENCE COMETH MY HELP. MY HELP COMES FROM THE LORD, WHICH MADE HEAVEN & EARTH" 1-2 - Psalm 121: A song of ascents// Support the show (https://paypal.me/experiencingAmbedk
