Joel Lee in conversation with Paul Divakar, Rita Izsák-Ndiaye, and Mohamed Nur Iftin

“You cannot marry outside your caste,” the speaker explains to a packed hall in New York, citing the recent killing of a child whose parents came from different castes.  Many of us in the audience are nodding grimly as she speaks, thinking of Pranay Parumalla, a Dalit youth murdered last year in south India shortly after his marriage to a dominant caste woman, and of violence faced by other couples who loved across the untouchability line.  But the speaker, Professor Penda Mbow, is not talking about India.  It is her home country of Senegal that she describes, where she has witnessed first-hand the structural injustice of a social system that elevates one cluster of descent-based communities (the Geer) as ‘noble’ while ascribing an inherent lack of worth to another cluster (the Griot and Ñeeño), from whom low-status forms of labor are extracted.

Is caste a peculiarly South Asian problem?  In one form or another, a debate on this question has simmered since Roman Jesuit Roberto de Nobili justified his adoption of brahminical practices in seventeenth century Madurai by likening them to European traditions of social rank, triggering the Malabar Rites Controversy.  Nineteenth century abolitionists characterized the American racial hierarchy as caste in the very decades that, in a kind of mirror image of this conceptual move, radical social reformer Jotirao Phule launched in western India a critique of caste as a form of slavery, or gulamgiri.  Dalit activists raised the problem to global attention anew at the World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa in 2001, while sociologists continued to argue whether caste is better understood as a civilizational episteme unique to South Asia or a distinctive configuration of social structural features present in multiple, otherwise heterogeneous cultures across the globe.

In this hall in New York, the answer is decidedly the latter.  The 114 delegates assembled here—from twenty-one countries on five continents—represent communities that see in one another’s experiences parallel histories of struggle against a shared structure of oppression, a structure of oppression that, though it diminishes the life chances of well over two hundred million people around the world, is only beginning to be recognized as a global problem by the international community and its institutions.  Though known by different names in different places, this structure of oppression has worked its slow violence on communities as diverse as the Griot and Ñeeño described by Professor Mbow in western Africa; the Osu and Oru of Nigeria; the Gaboye, Midgan, Madhiban, and Yibr of the Horn of Africa; the Al Muhammasheen (‘Al Akhdam’) of Yemen; the Roma and Sinti of Europe; the Burakumin of Japan; the Dalits of India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka; and many others.  Representatives of these communities—activists, academics, parliamentarians—along with some NGO delegates and other allies, are gathered in New York to identify common ground, learn from one another’s struggles, and strategize collective action at the international level.

Two of the signal features of the structure against which these groups contend are enforced endogamy—the restriction of marriage prospects within the group, policed by violence from the dominant community—and coerced occupational specialization in stigmatized forms of labor.  Distilling these features into a single phrase meant to have traction in human rights discourse and United Nations deliberations, activists from these communities have introduced a new concept to global thought: Discrimination based on Work and Descent.  But while the utility of ‘DWD’ for global advocacy purposes is acknowledged in this gathering, many participants also express a desire for a term that more vividly captures the particularity and dehumanizing force of this form of discrimination.  The pursuit of a nomenclature that is simultaneously pragmatic, specific and capacious is evident in the name of this historic summit.  What brings us to New York from the 21st to the 23rd of September, 2019, is the International Congress on Discrimination based on Work and Descent, Casteism, Antigypsism, Traditional and Contemporary Forms of Slavery and Other Analogous Forms of Discrimination.

The following are excerpts from interviews held on the sidelines of the International Congress with three of its key figures: N. Paul Divakar, Chairperson of the Asia Dalit Rights Forum (ADRF) and founding member of the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR) in India; Senegal-based Rita Izsák-Ndiaye, member of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, former UN Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues, and Roma activist from Hungary; and Mohamed Nur Iftin, Somali Bantu representative and Member of Parliament in Somalia. 

“We are reversing this process of dismemberment.” 

Interview with N. Paul Divakar, member of the Global Forum on Discrimination based on Work and Descent, and founding member of the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR), India

Lee: To begin, could you tell me something about how this congress happened? How did the idea of a global network of groups facing caste-like structures of oppression come about, and how did it spread and gain traction in the various groups represented here?

Divakar: The vision has been there since the days of the World Conference Against Racism [in Durban, South Africa, in 2001]. But we are getting there by small steps.  What is the vision?  That we, who belong to these communities that have been discriminated against, take our issues from the villages where we are excluded, where we are dismembered in each small microcosm, and band together, network together, to make this into the foundation for a movement which can challenge these forces.  At Durban we pushed this issue from a primarily Dalit location—the location was the experience of Dalits, the location was South Asia.  But then we found that this approach was insufficient.  Not because it’s not an issue, not because it doesn’t have a force that demands justice and equality.  But because in the UN dynamics, we need to necessarily link up with similarly excluded groups.

Lee: Once you reminded me that before Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar’s anti-caste movement swept across colonial India, many of the affected communities—so-called ‘untouchables’—did not see themselves as sharing a single condition or collective identity with other ‘untouchable’ communities in different regions.  If memory serves, you suggested that what is happening here in this International Congress is comparable to that earlier historical moment. Would you care to elaborate on this?

Divakar: Yes, sometimes I am struck by parallels. In India, you often know Dalits by the caste names—Madiga, Relli, Mala, Paraya, Pallar, Dom, Mang, Mahar, Musahar, and so on—or by the forms of restrictions, exclusions, prohibitions, forced labor, discrimination or violence that happen to us.  But in some ways we are also distinct from one another—our skin color, languages, features, cultures, et cetera are very different from one another.  Until 1994, I never really linked with people outside my state of Andhra Pradesh.  The first time we did this was in 1998 when we decided to collaborate with this study on the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act which Smita [Smita Narula, of Human Rights Watch] was doing. Then it was possible to see that all our situations were similar.  And once it was similar, then alliance was possible!

You need to reverse the dismemberment that has come to these communities that are divided into small groups.  They dismembered us and spread us across the country in fragments under each of these six hundred thousand villages.  One can see a microcosm of the caste structure in each village!  Now, what did Ambedkar do?  He reversed it, turned it around.  He connected us all to break out as a strong force and a single name.  Whether Ambedkar did it or the British did it, this Scheduled Caste name—and then the movement related to the name—reversed the process of further shrinking.  Now when we growl, and when we raise demands, people will have to listen.  Why did this happen?  It’s because of this linking up, connecting.  Similarly, at the global level, there may be differences—in languages, in the way things are put—but nonetheless, there are several convergent factors that are happening.  I think these convergent factors are very, very important.  We are reversing this practice, this process of dismemberment. 

Lee: In 1910, a delegation of Mahars in what would later become Maharashtra drafted a letter to the British government of India comparing Dalits to the Burakumin in Japan and calling on the British to follow the Japanese example of abolishing untouchability in their empire. In the 1980s Bhagwan Das traveled to Japan and met with Buraku leaders, and the person-to-person contacts he established have flourished in the decades since.  Beyond the history of Dalit-Burakumin solidarity, can you tell me about some of the first encounters you have had with individuals from communities in Africa and Europe and the Americas that face structures of exclusion comparable to untouchability?

Divakar: When I first heard Muhammad Nur Iftin talk about his experience, I thought, ‘Am I dreaming? Is it a hallucination?’  He is talking about some of the exact things that are happening in my own district in south India: the whole spate of inter-caste marriages and the violence, the so-called ‘honor’ killings, murders of the grooms or brides by the dominant caste.  Dalits are being killed.  A similar experience has been explained by Nur Iftin.  And the volume of these voices grew louder and louder.  I met some people in Ethiopia.  Then I met some people in Kenya.  Then we were a small group, hosted by Amnesty International, to bring some of these people together.  Then we had a consultation in Dakar.  And then the floodgates opened: from Chad, Niger, Mali, Mauritania, country after country, these things are happening.  Okay, the nomenclature is very different, the pictures that we have conjured up in our minds are very different.  When I heard that many are so-called ‘slaves,’ I thought, ‘why are they describing themselves like that?’  But probably when people used to hear the word ‘untouchable’ with the apostrophes around it, it must have sounded very similar to them.  These are very powerful experiences, which compel us to say: if we are not in solidarity with each other, then who else will be in solidarity with us? 

Lee: What critical responses have you encountered to the idea of a single, unified, collective identity?

Divakar: See, one is that, ‘Oh, caste is unique. Slavery is unique.  What the Quilombola face is also a kind of racism.’  This kind of thing.  Or, ‘In Europe, it’s mostly Roma, and they are already using European institutions that are stronger than the institutions of the UN.  So do we really need to come together?’  But what we learned in the whole Durban process makes it easy to see the rationale for coming together.

And then there are the SDGs [Sustainable Development Goals].  That was another positive factor that has brought us together because everyone felt these issues of DWD [Discrimination based on Work and Descent] were excluded in the unpacking of the SDGs.  When you have all of these issues—poverty, hunger, education, health, inequality, gender concerns, justice and peace concerns, all of these—then why are the DWD concerns slipping out and dropping between the cracks, why is there no mention of our people?  They talk about inequality and ‘Leave no one behind’—but then they leave 260 million behind.  So that was another positive factor—the need for an umbrella.  If we not together then we are sure to be left behind, sure to be excluded.

Lee: Last question, I’ve heard you and others express dissatisfaction with the term DWD, Discrimination based on Work and Descent.  What are some of the other names you and others have considered?

Divakar: We’re still struggling with that, Joel.  Because slavery, antigypsism, casteism, all are true, but an adjective or a name which can capture these processes in just two words, that is difficult.  DWD is a very technical-sounding name, and we don’t want a technical-sounding name.  We’ll have to keep at it.  It will dawn in some time.

“It’s a kind of sisterhood and collectivity.”

Interview with Rita Izsák-Ndiaye, member of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), former UN Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues, and Roma activist

Lee: Can you tell me about your first encounters with Dalit narratives, as well as groups like the Gaboye in Somalia, the Ñeeño in Senegal?  Were these being discussed in the Roma activist circles you were in or was it during your work at the UN that you first encountered these groups and narratives?

Izsák-Ndiaye: No, not in the Roma groups.  That’s one thing about the Roma community—I have to be very critical—we’re very much in our own bubble.  It’s a problem that I think many minority groups have, we have so many issues on our own, we’re so caught up in our own struggles, that you feel you don’t have the energy to reach out to others, and to cater to others.  Still, when I was just a Roma activist, I came across Dr. Ambedkar and ‘Jai Bhim.’  Once I saw a publication on the subject of ‘quality education for all’ with a picture of a group of brown beautiful young girls and boys.  And I was convinced that they were a bunch of Roma kids.  And when somebody told me that this was a publication from Nepal, and that these were Dalits, I was shocked!  Because they looked just like Roma.  This was probably the first time I made a connection between the Dalit and the Roma community.

When I became the UN Special Rapporteur in 2011, I was fortunate because I travelled to so many different countries and met many disadvantaged groups facing the same challenges. In Japan I met Burakumin; I lived in Somalia for one and a half years, and I was working with minority groups there; I travelled to Brazil, and visited Quilombola communities; I went to Sri Lanka and Nepal and talked to many Dalits; and now I live in Senegal, where there is also an issue of castes—although it’s still somewhat a taboo topic.  So I believe I’m one of the very few people who are blessed to have this kind of first-hand experience and exchange of contacts with various communities in many different parts of the world.  So I am very happy now to see them all in one room and talking to each other.  In 2016, I published a report on caste systems; it was a breakthrough report, the first time that a UN report was dealing with caste systems globally.  It was not easy to put it together.  I was trying to get data from different countries and people often did not respond.  Even from my own country of residence, Senegal, I struggled because it was difficult to get reliable and up-to-date information, testimonies or data.

Lee: As a member of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and as former Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues, what are some of your thoughts on the strategic value of working with existing categories, or the effort to create new categories of thought, new categories of identity?

Izsák-Ndiaye: So, there are a few things to say. One is that the UN is very rigid, in that there is always a discussion about what exact mechanisms or institutions are mandated to work on a particular issue.  So in that sense, it is important to use a term that is covered by the conventions.  Because if you come up with something new—something that is not reflected in the resolutions, conventions, declarations, or covenants, etc. that give a mandate to a body—then these mechanisms won’t be able to deal with your case. 

Categorization is important in the UN.  It is important because you can only claim certain rights if you claim to be part of that group.  So if you say that you are ‘just a community,’ then it will be very challenging for you to vindicate the minority rights protection framework.  You can only claim your right to protection of identity for example if you are an actual minority and you self-identify as such.

When I prepared my global report on caste for the Human Rights Council in 2016, one of the major warnings that people gave me was that it will be contested that certain caste groups are minorities.  But my argument was that in many situations, communities affected by caste-based hierarchy are, actually, minorities—in the religious sense, sometimes, and in certain countries, they can be ethnically different.  In other countries, yes, they share the same language and religion with the majority.  But nobody can claim to have the truth in this sense, because it’s also about self-identification.  The Dalits have historically worked with the minority rights framework, and they have always come to the Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues for help.  So for me, from the very beginning, this was a minority question because of their self-identification as a minority group.  But if you look into this from a political point of view, a minority has to have a distinct identity and a desire to preserve that identity.  So it is tricky: do Dalits want to remain Dalits?  The Roma is a minority group in the classic sense of the term because they have their own language, their own traditions, their own history—it’s a completely different group that wants to preserve its difference.  Whereas with Dalits, do they want to remain ‘untouchable’ or do they want to actually get rid of the Dalit identity?  So that’s a much deeper and complex question.

Lee: Does the millennium-old connection of the Roma to India—this ancient history of migration—inflect the way you have seen Roma groups discussing and thinking about solidarity, commonality with Dalits?

Izsák-Ndiaye: It is interesting, more and more of us are taking DNA tests now just out of sheer interest in knowing where we actually came from.  Because, as you know, there is no written record, so we don’t really know what the line of migration was.  For every person I know who did the test, it always went back to India, all of us.  For some it’s fifty percent—the ratio differs—but it’s clear we are from there.

Lee: The linguistic evidence is so strong.

Izsák-Ndiaye: Exactly. So I think Roma are aware of that heritage.  I think that the Roma who are very traveled and exposed to international forums started having more than just sympathy or empathy.  It’s a kind of sisterhood and collectivity in our identity with the Dalits.  We’ve been labeled and described by the same negative words, all these expressions about filthiness and disgust and pollution and uncleanness.  So it’s interesting and sad to see that the same words are used for both groups. I think those of us who are exposed to and understand this connection, we feel toward each other even more, we are becoming like real brothers and sisters.

“We have a discourse.  We have an alliance.”

Interview with Mohamed Nur Iftin, Somali Bantu representative and Member of Parliament, Somalia

Lee: Thank you for taking this time. Could you tell me a bit to begin with about the kinds of discrimination faced by the Gaboye and the Bantu communities in Somalia? Sometimes people compare the Gaboye to the Dalits in South Asia, and I am wondering if you find this comparison helpful, and if people in Somalia also use terms like caste and untouchability.

Iftin: Today I am here to represent the voice of the voiceless of the Somali people. That includes the Gaboye, Madibhan, Midgan, Yibr, Bon, and the Ayle, as well as the Benadiri community, and the Somali Bantu.  I am here representing them. 

There is nothing different between the Dalit situation in South Asia and what we have here in Somalia, the challenge against these people. 

The Bantu and the Gaboye are distinctly different: physically, culturally, traditionally, historically, in terms of origin, and so on.  But they have the same or similar challenges.  The Gaboye—and the Madhiban, and the Gan, and the Yibr—are in the same category, the same cluster.  The reason they are being subjected as an ‘untouchable’ community—I do not know if it is true or a myth—but people say that sometime back there was a long-lasting drought.  In that drought some people, among the ‘client’ communities [dependent on the dominant Somali clans], people of these communities ate the carcass meat of a camel.  It was fresh, but it was not slaughtered.

Lee: A camel that had died naturally and then people ate it.

Iften: Yes. They ate it because of starvation.  And those who ate it were then subjected as a culture—as an ‘untouchable’ community. 

Actually, if you touch them, nothing will happen to you.  There is no shock.  I experienced this.  So I asked myself, ‘Why are these people being called untouchable?’  If they use a cup of water, if they drink from it, the other Somalis are not touching the cup.  They will not allow you to use the items of the Gaboye.  If the Gaboye touch it, the rest of the Somalis say ‘No no no no!’  So they developed that kind of belief.  But these ‘untouchable’ groups are Somali.   They are Muslim.  They are not harming anybody else.  They are doing their occupation.  They still have their own beliefs that have survived for a long time.  Yet they are being subjected as an ‘untouchable’ community. 

Lee: Do they not intermarry with other Somalis?

Iftin: There is no intermarriage. If you are among the Yibr, Madibhan, Migdan, Don, no one else can come and marry one of your ladies.  And their ladies will not accept marrying you.

In the case of Somali Bantu in southern Somalia, they are being kept under bondage—actual bondage.  It is slavery.  They are not allowed to have councils of elders.  There is no intermarriage between the dominant clan and the Bantus in the southwest.  The Bantu in the southwest, they use a phrase which means, ‘We are under the Rahaweyn’—that is, under the dominant clan.  And they call it mudo.  Mudo means a slave in Somali.

Lee: Paul Divakar told me about an intervention that you made in Somalia’s parliament when there was an inter-caste marriage and then the uncle of the bride or groom was attacked.  Can you tell me about this?

Iftin: This was a very painful and traumatic incident, which was not good for Islamic faith, and not good for human beings. This incident happened because the lady was from one of the dominant clans and the boy was a Bantu boy. The lady and the Bantu boy fell in love.  Their fathers met and the elders asked consent from the lady’s father.  They discussed the issue and finally the father agreed.  The lady’s mother and father were divorced, however the father offered his permission for the wedding, as an act of Islamic faith.    

After they wedding took place, three months later, a group from the lady’s mother’s side organized and demonstrated how violently they felt, how sick it made them, to see one of their ladies marry a Bantu boy.  They organized a group of eleven persons.  They came to see the lady’s husband, but he was not in the house.  They knew that his uncle, who was behind the wedding, was a mechanic operating at the garage.  They knew where the uncle was working, and they thought the boy and the uncle were together, because normally they worked together at the garage.  For some reason the boy was not there, but the uncle was there.  He didn’t expect violence, but they started yelling at him, they started beating him.  They had sticks, arrows, fire, and petrol.  They beat him until he became paralyzed.  After he became paralyzed they poured the petroleum on him.  Then they set fire to him.  He died.

As a junior member of Parliament, I saw that members of the Parliament were very reluctant to speak about this. After three days I said to the Speaker, ‘Why are we waiting to speak on this incident?’  Finally the Speaker of Parliament agreed and put it on the agenda.  This was my first time speaking in the Parliament.  I spoke much longer than the time I was given.  You have to speak out.  You are representing the community.  The communities deserve their voice to be heard, and that is why I could not keep quiet.  

Lee: In Somalia when this happened, how was it discussed?  Are Bantu seen as an ethnicity, or as a different caste, or—?

Iftin: Well, you can see the negative stereotypes and derogatory terms. If you are not among the dominant clans, then you will be called by affronting words. Sometimes they sing while they are insulting you. They finger point to every part of your body.  Imagine, as a young person, if someone approaches you from the dominant clans, and says, ‘Sanga duudu, kiswahili, afganga, Ethiopia, bah nagatak Mangistu, uu ha!’  They sing a song against each part of our body, pointing fingers, part by part. Sanga duudu means ‘big nose.’  Afganga means ‘unknown language’—because our language is different from the other Somali language.  And then the part which means ‘get out, go to Mangistu,’ who at that time was the president of Ethiopia.  We are Somali citizens.  I don’t know why they are calling us Ethiopians.  ‘Uu ha!’ means ‘You sound like a hyena.  You are not different from the hyena.’  So that kind of pervasive, negative abuses, those kinds of strong words, we have experienced.

Lee: Can you tell me how the conversation began between you and representatives of other groups from communities facing Discrimination based on Work and Descent?

Iftin: From September 2018, when I stood before parliament and spoke on that issue.  I think that is when publicly people came to know who I am, and the Human Rights organizations from different parts of the world reached out.  They asked if I can attend, if I can speak out on behalf of the Somali marginalized groups that include the Somali Bantu.  That is how I joined this journey.  And I have now become part of this worldwide marginalized group.  From Brazil, from Japan, from Burma, Nepal, Bangladesh, South Asia, East Africa, West Africa.  From different parts of the world people have come together in New York, the heart of the United Nations headquarters.  Since then we are together.  Now I feel strong, on behalf of the marginalized groups of Somalia.  Their voice is everywhere.  You see, their voice is everywhere!  We are not alone.  We have a discourse.  We have an alliance.  We will overcome.

Joel Lee is assistant professor of anthropology at Williams College, Massachusetts, and currently research scholar at the Indian Institute of Dalit Studies, Delhi.  He is author of Deceptions of the Majority: Hinduism, Dalit Religion and the Semiotics of the Oppressed (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming) and co-author, with Jayshree Mangubhai and Aloysius Irudayam, of Dalit Women Speak Out: Caste Class and Gender Violence in India (Zubaan, 2011).