[Note: The pictures are from the Dalit History Month Celebrations and Panel Discussion on Endurance, Solidarity and Liberation, conducted by the Pero Center for Intersectionality Studies at Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago.]
Let me begin with a piece of poetry:
What is silence?
What is Silence?
It’s when my soul yearns
to forge a fresh lexicon for
no given words befitting.
What is silence?
It’s the theft of self,
where shame weaves its web of untouchability.
What is Silence?
It’s the gasp of the speechless,
Stripped of their voice
What is silence?
It is the womb from which
One’s loudest convictions explode!
I wrote this piece of poetry five years back, recollecting my childhood experience of systemic casteism. During my childhood, I felt an unreasonable, frightful silence deep down within me, and I could not figure out what it was! If I put it more accurately, it was a kind of “unspeakability”! Insufficiency of the given language. A kind of bereft of language; “a linguistic debt.” Later, I realized that it emerged out of my particular social location as a Dalit Christian in the northern part of Kerala, one of the southern states of India. It primarily arose from the “shame” of being a Dalit Christian. If I put it in the language of Sonya Renee Taylor, the author of the beautiful book “My Body Is Not an Apology,” it was a kind of “META SHAME!” ( an intergenerational shame). In a culture of shame and honor, the shame of being a Dalit Christian weighed on me heavily, and it was like inhabiting in a stolen body! That kind of frightening, deep silence has engrossed me, producing many bodily effects of withdrawal, hiding, and canceling my own lived experiences of marginality. Later, I found that this deep silence out of the meta shame apparently manifested on the faces of my parents, and I am sure it was inscribed on the bodies of my ancestors. Caste/ race is primarily a bodily experience and a body arrangement.
Despite the radical love and exuberant joy that we shared in our family, there was a deep silence, like a subterranean roaring ocean. The Christian tradition we belong to has seldom provided the vocabulary to problematize the issue of “unspeakability” or that frightening silence. However, I was introduced to liberation theology through the Student Christian Movement, and later, my official theological studies in the seminary gave me a few vocabulary. The emergence of Dalit Theology as a contextual expression of Liberation Theology tremendously helped me to theorize the deep pathos and suffering. But somehow, I felt that Dalit theologians were primarily engaged in romanticizing the pathos and suffering of Dalit existence, rather than searching for the tools of undoing it. However, the contemporary Dalit theological imagination has shifted its focus significantly to the embodiment paradigm.
Almost a decade ago, when I was introduced to Womanist Theology and the idea of intersectionality, it was an epiphanic moment for me. I acknowledge the labor of Prof. Dr. Linda Thomas, my advisor and mentor, who radically shared her uncanny womanist wisdom in mothering and mentoring people like me at the Lutheran School of Theology, encouraging us to re-visit our roots and make radical connections. It was like an unapologetic exhuming process of reinventing our own identities. In that apocalyptic process of uncovering the entanglements of identities, the idea of intersectionality was tremendously helpful as a critical social theory and praxis. Kimberlé Crenshaw defines intersectionality; as “a lens through which we can see where power comes and collides, where it interlocks and intersects. “Within the matrix of oppression, multiple marginalized identities have a compounding effect on the level of oppression and marginalization. For those who are in the privileged social position already, the matrix of oppression adds compounded benefits and makes them hyperprivileged.
Through the lens of intersectionality, when I look back to my childhood experience of deep, frightening silence, invisibility, the debt of language, and above all, the bodily affects and emotionalities of meta-shame, I fathom the depth of that “unspeakability,” as a compounded effect of the complex matrix of oppression, where the systems of power like caste, gender, spatial positioning, marginal social location, religious beliefs, bodily distancing, intergenerational cumulative trauma, and many other countless microaggressions intersected and interlocked to exacerbate the pain. And I tried to decolonize and undo that specific casteist imprint on me using intersectionality as a tool, primarily by naming, confronting, and disentangling it. It was radical act of courage to find new ways of resistance. Here, I want to make an important point: “Our bodies are political. Undoing the caste imprints in our bodies is the most crucial political activism that we need to do.” Often we misunderstand political activism only can be expressed as exteriorities like public demonstrations and resistance. Indeed, it is essential. However, there is a crucial interior work waiting for us! The question here is whether or not we will use our bodies to uphold systems of oppression or defy them? This work of unraveling and undoing caste imprints is the most important political work that we should do as we talk about endurance, solidarity, and liberation. This is a collective work and an everyday act. Even the work of excavating tiny artifacts of the caste regime lives in us is truly liberating. I consider the most critical work yet to be done by the Dalits/Christians lies at the intersections of body, identity, and social justice.
Fortunately, we have different theoretic resources like intersectionality, epigenetics, race and caste critical comparative studies, fugitivity studies, etc., which expand the horizon of our understanding and open up new avenues of deep solidarity between marginalized communities all over the globe. Along with political engagement, academic activism is also crucial. Gopal Guru, one of the important Dalit Social Scientists of our time says; “Doing theory is a Dalit social necessity in order to become the subject of their own thinking rather than becoming the object of somebody else’s thinking. “Therefore, this is inseparably a two-way process of theory and praxis, and it is a liberatory way of reflective action, followed by critical reflection, again reflective action completing that loop endlessly. In fact, it is a collective global enterprise.
Where do we go from here?
Inspired by the theme; “Endurance, Solidarity, and Liberation,” I propose three critical intersecting movements to go forward,
1) Vertical Downward Movement: Going deeper and uncovering the unique and particular lived experiences of Dalitity and undoing the caste hegemonic imprints. It is the work of interiority and endurance.
2) Horizontal Movement: Building planetary connections between marginalized communities, fostering deep solidarity, which also means deeper solidarity with the more than human ecosystems en-wrapping us.
3) Enspiral Movement: Never-ending, self-reflective, spiral (counter to the hegemonic circularity), and integrating movements that bring healing and liberation.
Once again, I invite your attention back to my poem. I encourage you to read the poetical piece, through the lens of silence as linguistic debt, and juxtapose it with the experience of deep silent cry of the children in Gaza and elsewhere today, who are relegated to the position of “nobodies in nowhere,” being the primary victims of the war and genocide. I wonder how deep, frightening, will be that dreamless frightening silence and the gasp of “unspeakability” residued inside them? With an interlocutory sense, I re-signify the Dalit experience of systemic casteism as a portal through which a new vista of deep listening and solidarity opens, where the communities carrying the heavy weight of shame and exclusion can come together and do the work of reimagining together. Let me conclude with the hope-filled words of Palestinian Theologian Mitri Raheb: “Hope is not only an act of speaking about the future, but it is a fundamental counter practice of the present.”
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